The ‘Stifling’ of New Climate Politics in Ireland

Louise Michelle Fitzgerald,Paul Tobin,Charlotte Burns,Peter Eckersley

doi:10.17645/pag.v9i2.3797

Abstract

In 2019, Ireland declared a ‘Climate Emergency,’ receiving plaudits from across the political spectrum for doing so. Some argued the country was experiencing an era of ‘new climate politics’: In 2017, Ireland had established the first Citizens’ Assembly on Climate, and in 2019 its Parliament debated a Climate Emergency Measures Bill, which was ground-breaking in its proposal to ban offshore oil and gas exploration. Yet, despite majority support for this Bill in Parliament, the minority Government blocked the legislation by refusing to grant a ‘Money Message,’ a potential veto activated following indication by an independent actor that a Bill would require the appropriation of public money. We introduce the concept of ‘policy stifling’ to capture how the Money Message was used to block the Climate Emergency Measures Bill. We conduct detailed process-tracing analysis, building on elite semi-structured interviews with policy makers and campaigners involved in the process. We argue that whilst the Government’s stifling undermined the new era of elite climate politics, it simultaneously boosted an emerging grassroots climate politics movement with the potential for effecting more radical change in the longer term.

Highlights

Ireland has the reputation of being a climate laggard (e.g., Little & Torney, 2017)
Whilst there have been steps forward, close analysis of technical legislative processes that led to the rejection of the Climate Emergency Measures (CEM) Bill reveals that the claim of a new era of elite climate politics may be premature, with climate action falling short of the transformations needed
The section outlines the operation of the Irish political process and the nature and status of the Money Message, before we develop and explain the concept of ‘policy stifling,’ drawing from the literature on veto points, policy dismantling and depoliticisation

Summary

Introduction

Recent developments—such as the Citizens’ Assemblies in 2017–2018 that discussed how Ireland can become a climate leader, the adoption of a Climate Action Plan in 2019 (Torney, 2020) and declaration of a climate emergency on the 9th May 2019— seemed to suggest a turning of the tide on climate action during the minority government of 2016 to 2020. This period witnessed a growing climate movement in Politics and Governance, 2021, Volume 9, Issue 2, Pages 41–50. We develop a novel concept of ‘policy stifling’ to describe this type of behaviour and suggest that decision-makers who engage in policy stifling seek to depoliticise their actions, in order to minimise wider political costs

Methods

Findings

Discussion

Conclusion