The Europeanization of social inclusion: an examination of the EU’s Impact on Irish politics, policy and polity

This research focuses on assessing the extent to which Irish politics, policy and polity in the policy subsystem of social inclusion in Ireland have been Europeanized. Social inclusion is a subsystem that lies outside the EU’s legal remit. As a result, an assessment of the EU’s ability to embed change in politics, policy and polity at member state level in this subsystem furthers our understanding of Europeanization through 'soft law'. This is important as there continues to be an empirical deficit within the literature on the Europeanization of policy subsystems that lie outside the EU’s legal competencies even though 'soft law' is increasingly being employed at EU level. To address this research agenda, this thesis uses a research framework based on theoretical and methodological frameworks. The theoretical aspect of the framework is based on the concept of Europeanization, the dominant concept for assessing the role of the EU domestically. The methodological aspect of the research framework is based on gathering data through document analysis of primary and secondary sources, semi-structured in-depth interviews with key policy actors and Q methodology. This research finds that within the subsystem the ability of the EU to embed change in the areas of politics, policy and polity is limited in Ireland and that often the EU through 'soft law' is 'used' by domestic actors. The contribution of this study lies in its ability to further empirical knowledge on Europeanization through 'soft law'.