This paperback edition makes more widely available an important text for scholars and students on an aspect of Irish society that has been inadequately covered elsewhere. Ireland is one of the nations of the western world in which industrialization was longest delayed. In these papers, sociologists, economists and political scientists offer 'rich and original insights into how Irish society has developed, particularly over the last 30 years' (Irish Times). Questions of the typicality or 'exceptionalism' of the Irish experience are discussed, and the relevance of this experience for current theories of industrialism and 'modernization' is critically examined.