The Politics of High-Tech Growth: Developmental Network States in the Global Economy Sea'n O' Riain The 1990's saw surprising economic boom in the Republic of Ireland's "Celtic Tiger" economy, driven by high-tech foreign investments. This book argues that beneath the Irish trade and foreign investment boom lies a much more interesting story of regional innovation promoted by an alliance between the state and local technical communities. This alliance was governed through a decentralized set of state institutions, drawing on "global" and "local" economic and political resources. The "Developmental Network State" has had a significant impact on the growth of Ireland's high-tech cluster and is central to the emergence of an international network of "global high-tech regions" from Silicon Valley to Ireland, Taiwan, and Israel. The book provides a detailed study of the rise of the software industry in Ireland and of the state institutions and political conditions that promoted it. It shows how new "network-state" policies and institutions have been central to high-tech regions elsewhere. Ultimately, the analysis points to an emerging political choice between neoliberal policies that attack these social and political institutions and social democratic policies that sustain the social embedding of the global information economy. Sea'n O' Riain is Professor of Sociology, National University of Ireland, Maynooth.