Economics:Marc Coleman is not short of vision. In his fluidly written account of the road this island has travelled over the past two centuries, and his crystal ball-gazing on where that road could lead in the decades to come, he covers many bases.
As one would expect from a trained economist, the insights and rigours of that discipline are much in evidence. There is, too, a passion for politics, a curiosity about society and the unease of a cultural conservative (he fears all that can be defined as Irish may not withstand the great changes to come).
But demography is front and centre in this thesis. The post-Famine population decline pains the author deeply. It is, he believes, the source of most of our ills because under-population has prevented urbanisation taking place in a manner that would make our toil more productive and our lives more content. It is eye-catchingly claimed that the Republic could triple its population by mid-century. Such an expansion would provide a golden opportunity to plan efficient urban conurbations. These, in turn, would put Ireland in pole position to succeed in the global knowledge economy, and allow us to stroll from home to office while doing so.
If this island is insufficiently peopled, tribalism has compounded its problems. As with so many other analyses of what ails Ireland, narrow-minded localism is Coleman's bête noire, even if he is more careful than most not to appear to look down his metropolitan nose at the likes of Jackie Healy Rae and his ilk. Although the picture he paints is too black and white, the point made is undoubtedly correct: the balance between local and national interests in Ireland is tilted further to the former than in most European democracies.
Our electoral system is the main institutional reason for this imbalance. While the author is surely right about this, his belief that voters are now more likely to accept change than they were in this past is moot (and his advocacy of the German voting system seems particularly odd given that Germany is hardly a world leader in pro-active reform). Along with electoral reform, Coleman advocates nothing less than a revolution in the structures of sub-national governance. Again, he is on the mark, arguing that the fragmentation of power among a plethora of institutions undermines effective planning, and good governance more generally.
BUT THE BOOK is not without weaknesses. The most serious is its demographic determinism. Citing one decade-old academic paper, the author asserts that population density determines a country's destiny, both in terms of economic development and quality of life. This is supported neither by the wider literature nor by causal observation of the world. Naples is choc a bloc, as are Cairo, Jakarta and Sao Paulo. None is a cauldron of creative energy. All have low quality of life, not least owing to their choking congestion. By contrast, the cities of the south and west of the United States sprawl, but succeed (and do so despite limited public provision of infrastructure).
The book also swerves dangerously close to that tiresome "it-could-only-happen-in-Ireland" genre of analysis. Vested interests thwart change that could benefit the majority and interest groups fight to keep their snouts in the trough of public money. This, alas, happens everywhere. The tragedy of the commons is not a uniquely Irish phenomenon. Pork barrel politics may be practiced more in Ireland than in the best-run European countries, but its ill effects are less than in, say, southern European countries, and far less than in most of the rest of the world.
There are, too, sins of omission. In a book that focuses so heavily on quality of governance, it is curious that the most important single counter-weight to local cronyism, short-termism and general maladministration goes unanalysed.
IN AREAS WHERE it has competence, the EU has been the most powerful force for better public administration in Ireland. From compelling governments to abide by the environmental rules that they themselves collectively set, to requiring capital spending programmes to be properly evaluated, to preventing the giving of taxpayers' money to multinationals who threaten to move jobs elsewhere, Brussels saves governments across Europe from their own weakness and idiocy.
But despite its flaws, this manifesto for the future is intelligent, worldly, mostly coherent and often original. Its tone is reasoned and calm, but never dull, its proposals mercifully non-ideological, and its politics non-partisan. Policy debate and political discourse in Ireland could do with more input of this kind.
Dan O'Brien is a senior editor at the Economist Intelligence Unit
The Best is Yet to Come By Marc Coleman Blackhall Publishing, 198pp. €15