The State of Irish Democracy

Abstract

308 Studies • volume 106 • number 423 The State of Irish Democracy Stephen Collins In the time of Brexit and Donald Trump there is a strong temptation to fear for the future of the tolerant democratic values that have brought peace and prosperity to Ireland and the western world for the past few decades. It is nearly a century since Captain Boyle in Sean O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock uttered the immortal line: ‘Th’whole worl’s in a terrible state o’chassis’, and the words seem particularly apt today. Yet, for all that has happened over the past few years, the world is still a far more benign place than it was at a number of junctures during the twentieth century. While Brexit and Trump have raised deeply uncomfortable questions about the future of western liberal democracy, the response of the European Union and some of its bigger member states over the past year has been encouraging. At the start of 2017 comparisons with the 1930s were commonplace, but Vladimir Putin is not Joseph Stalin and the populist demagogues that have come to the fore in many European countries are a far cry from Adolf Hitler. Whatever is happening in the world, there is no sign of the kind of tensions between large states that led to the First World War or of the aggressive nationalism that led to the Second. The stunning election victory of Emmanuel Macron in France and the continuation of political stability in Germany has shown that the centre can indeed hold, if its defenders have the vision and courage to articulate the values of parliamentary democracy in a way that ordinary voters can understand. Defending our politics The task facing the political mainstream in Ireland is to build on this EU response and convince the public that the current political system, with all its flaws, is far better than the alternative of chaos and confusion being promoted by those on the far left and far right. The first thing that defenders of the tolerant, outward looking philosophy that underpins the EU need to do is analyse why so many people in prosperous nations have voted against what appears to be their own self-interest and in favour of a return to a narrow nationalism. The far left and right are united in their hostility to globalisation, international institutions and the prevailing Stephen Collins Studies • volume 106 • number 423 309 social order. The UK is a classic example with the Conservative right and the Labour left equally dismissive of the EU. The majority of MPs in the House of Commons are probably somewhere in the middle, but the leadership in both major parties is at the extreme end of the spectrum. In one of his final speeches as Taoiseach, Enda Kenny worried about the future of Western democracies where so many people have been pushed to the hard left by anger, and to the hard right by fear. The conventional explanation for this is that it is a response to the economic crisis of 2008, the decline of traditional working class employment for men and the development of massive income inequality across the Western world. There is obviously a lot of truth in such an account. The economic crisis and the bank bailouts were the cause of widespread hardship and anxiety about the future. The apparent inability of the legal system to punish more of those in the banking and political systems, whose decisions precipitated the crash, further eroded public confidence. The increases in taxes on ordinary people and the cutbacks in social spending that were required to keep the economy from spinning out of control fuelled the mood of disillusionment and eroded support for mainstream political parties. Yet, this does not fully explain the scale or the extent of the reaction against the parties which had dominated Irish politics for so long. It is worth a serious look at the way the Irish authorities responded to the financial crisis that erupted in the autumn of 2008, a crisis that ultimately led to an EU/IMF bailout in the winter of 2010. The most immediate impact was felt by those who lost their jobs...