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Investment in Quality1998; O’Donnell, 1998). Although Porter’s ‘diamond’ remainsrelevant wherever competitive advantage exists—since demandcondition, factor condition, firm strategy and inter-industrysynergies are necessary—the diamond is rarely contained withinIreland. Instead, the firms that succeed are often those that integratethemselves, with the help of Irish government agencies, intointernational networks. This can, of course, include closenetworking and sectoral strength within Ireland. Ó Riain’s analysissuggests that two broad modes of integration into the globaleconomy can co-exist, each ‘combining local and global networksin different ways’ (Ó Riain, 2000:160). It highlights the multipleroles which a flexible developmental state can play in fosteringmore advantageous connections to the global economy.The Council and others concerned with Irish public policy were atone time interested in the high quality of public governance andeconomic performance achieved in the most successful NorthernEuropean neo-corporatist countries in the post-war period. It isclearly tempting to see the emergence and significant success ofsocial partnership in Ireland as an adoption of ‘neo-corporatism’.But the Irish case, and perhaps also the Dutch case, suggests thatwhat has emerged in Ireland is different in several importantrespects. Firstly, Ireland displays few of the structural characteristicstraditionally seen as necessary for successful neo-corporatist‘political exchange’ (Hardiman, 1988). Secondly, the substance ofIrish policy under partnership differs from post-war European neocorporatism(Teague, 1995; Taylor, 1996). Thirdly, the socialpartners and government have developed a perspective which goeswell beyond the categories used to understand and characterisepost-war European neo-corporatism. Irish social partnership maybest be seen as a form of post-corporatist concertation, involving awider range of social groups, in the context of a rapidly changingand more internationalised economy and society.There was also a particular view about how enterprise-levelrelationships might evolve. Differences between the technologicaland managerial profile of foreign-owned and indigenous companieswere a cause of much research and concern in the 1960s and 1970s.144