... scholarly and politically alert, forensic and fascinating.David Gardner, Financial Times, 03/06/2012Among the many angry books to poke through the debris of the crisis that still engulfs Ireland, this is the most scholarly explanation of how it happened.David Gardner, Financial Times, 03/06/2012"Byrne has produced a perspicacious, highly readable account of the way Irish corruption morphed as the state's political, economic and social structures changed. In the wake of Ireland's loss of economic sovereignty, the book's central message – that only a vibrant, transparent political culture offers effective protection against the corrosive power of corruption – seems particularly vital."Peter Geoghegan, Freelance Writer/Journalist, Times Literary Supplement 26/10/2012an absorbing and very accessible book on how a defective moral code at the top of Irish politics and society contributed to the effective ruin of the country.Byrne, on the page as in reality, is never less than fair and never more than concise[a] powerfully made arguement"The publication of this book is to be warmly welcomed. There was a flurry of scholarship on brokerage and clientelism in Ireland during the 1970s and 1980s with important studies by Max Bax, Paul Sachs, Lee Komito and J.P. O’Carroll being published. However, as Byrne rightly notes, much recent scholarship on corruption has focused on governance in Africa, Asia and South America while ignoring corrupt political cultures in societies such as Ireland. Byrne’s well-written and detailed analysis is a very successful attempt to redress that balance."(Niamh Hourigan, University College, Cork, Irish Journal of Sociology, 2014)
