2001–2008: European Integration Intensifies

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to review the conduct of policy in each of the countries in the study in the period between 2001 and 2008 when the world was incubating the most acute financial system crisis since the Wall Street Crash of 1929. By 2001, the global context had shifted still further from that in which Katzenstein (1985) analysed the polities of the selected small open economies of Europe. That those countries had displayed a remarkable capacity for adaptation to changing circumstances is evident from the previous chapter. Ireland and Finland too seemed to be set to be developmental states characterised by innovative, nimble and coherent policies.