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Given the heated academic and policy debate regarding the fate of garment manufacturing in a high-wage developed economy in the 21st century, this study aims to explore the production and export strategies of apparel “Made in Ireland.”

A logistic regression analysis of 4,000 apparel items at the stock keeping unit (SKU) level sold in the market from January 2018 to December 2021 was conducted to evaluate the production and export strategy of apparel “Made in Ireland” versus foreign-made imported items sold in Ireland.

The statistical results showed that Ireland’s apparel manufacturing sector survived the market competition by leveraging non-price competing factors, such as distinct product assortment, cultural heritage, history and traditional craftsmanship.

The findings challenged the conclusions of the classic trade and economic development theories regarding the trajectory of the garment manufacturing sector and called for a rethink about the strategies for expanding garment manufacturing in a high-wage developed country in today’s global economy.

International security addresses questions of force: how to spot it, stop it, resist it and occasionally threaten and even use it. It considers the conditions that encourage or discourage organised violence in international affairs and the conduct of all types of military activity. It therefore deals with the most fundamental questions of war and peace and so the highest responsibilities of government. For this reason it has long been an area of academic endeavour where it is considered both appropriate and possible for scholarship to feed into the policy process. Yet as the danger of total war has receded, and as the complexities of the workings of the international system have come to be appreciated, many now question whether there is a research agenda here that is either intellectually coherent or of more than passing policy interest. This article argues that the issues here are still of vital importance, but they need to be recast to take account of the changing patterns of world politics, and in particular those that allow for a more discretionary engagement by the stronger states in the problems of the weak.