A Challenging Transformation: The Irish Green Party's Emergence into Power

Abstract

This article will examine a significant area of interest in Irish political sociology: the emergence of a social movement into politics and eventually government. The focus of the article will be on the transitions of the Irish environmental movement and Green Party. It will examine the background to this transformative process from the establishment of Comhaontas Glas from the Ecology Party in 1986 through to the moment when this process culminated in the Green Party taking its place as a junior partner in the Coalition Government in 2007. This process will be shown to represent a success for the politically pragmatic ‘relos’ over the socially emotive ‘fundis’ of the Greens at a time when the wider environmental movement has moved in the opposite direction. One of the key areas of analysis for the paper will be an application of Foucault's concept of political power to the processes which transformed the activist-based green movement into a viable coalition partner within a neo-liberal government. The paper will also examine the consequences of this transition in the context of Foucault's understanding of power as something fluid which emerges from the identity framing of ‘discursive formations’, rather than emanating out of the imposition of institutional hegemony. The paper concludes with an assessment of the impact of the Green Party's participation in government for its leadership and members, in the wake of contentious issues such as the two Lisbon Treaty referendums, and the coalition's bailout of the neo-liberal banking system.