Irish Party Research Articles

THE “SECOND SYNOD OF ST. PATRICK” AND THE “ROMANS” OF THE EARLY IRISH CHURCH

It is usually thought that during the seventh century, a formal split in the Irish Church had resulted in the creation of two rival factions: a “Roman party” of reform-minded ecclesiastics, and an “Irish party” intent instead on maintaining current practices. A partial record of their decades-long schism has been thought to be preserved in the Irish canonical compilation, the Collectio canonum Hibernensis, which attributes a substantial number of canons either to “Roman synods” or to “Irish synods,” and we have understood this to reflect a period in which the two groups had sought to advance their cause by holding separate synods from which their opponents were excluded. The foundations for this interpretation of the “Roman” and “Irish” canons of the Hibernensis were laid more than a century ago, but more recent scholarship provides reasons for rethinking the hypothesis. The article focuses especially on one of the texts which the compilers of the Hibernensis understood to be the work of the “Romans” — a short text which has come to be known as the “Second Synod of St. Patrick” — and argues that certain details within the text suggest an association with documents produced on the Continent, in the network of monasteries founded by the Irish peregrinus Columbanus. I suggest a new context for the creation of the “Second Synod of St. Patrick,” and argue that this in turn offers a new way of thinking about the meaning of the “Roman synods” and “Irish synods” attested in the Hibernensis.

It’s Only Words? Analysing the Roots of the Irish Party System Using Historical Parliamentary Debates

Abstract While the public image of legislative debates is often less than favourable, parliamentary deliberations can be an important indicator of policy preferences, issue saliency and cohesion within political parties. We consider the case of a parliamentary debate that had a considerable long-term political legacy, forging a party system that endured for almost a century. The debates in the Irish parliament over the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty were a critical juncture that split a dominant party, resulting in, first, a civil war and, later, a new mode of party competition. We analyse the text of the debates from this period to see if they contribute to a greater understanding of the ensuing split. Few differences between the two sides in parliament are found, which might explain why few were the differences between the key actors in the party system that evolved.

Faith and fatherland? The Ancient Order of Hibernians, northern nationalism and the partition of Ireland

AbstractIn 1912, the Ancient Order of Hibernians (A.O.H.) had become the most significant nationalist organisation in Ulster, a powerful auxiliary to the Irish Parliamentary Party, and a key part of what unionists feared would be Rome rule in a self-governed Ireland. However, while the A.O.H. is crucial to understanding nationalist Ulster and the border question, its reputation for fraternal secrecy and the apparent suddenness of its decline after the Irish Party's 1918 collapse has often seen it elude sustained academic enquiry. This article provides the first examination of the order from the Ulster crisis to the early decades of partition, drawing on the records of its governing Board of Erin. Scrutinising the grassroots and the leadership, this article interrogates dissension among Hibernians, the suspension of divisions and defections to Sinn Féin as the order reconciled proposals for Ulster exclusion with its traditional appeal. While Hibernians often found themselves part of a three-cornered conflict in the violent 1920s, the order ultimately survived on both sides of the border with regional variation important in estimating decline. Its persistence, therefore, illustrates something of the lived experience of partition and highlights important threads of continuity in a period of political and social upheaval.

Into the void: the collapse of Irish party democracy

ABSTRACT For most of the twentieth century the Irish party system was stable and unchanging, centred on Fianna Fáil, Europe’s most electorally successful political party. That system suddenly collapsed in 2011 when Irish electoral politics became unusually volatile, ending decades of one-party dominance and leaving democratic elections unable to provide for government choice and accountability. This paper traces this transformation of the party system, unmasking the altered dynamics of the country’s electoral competition, through a focus on its long-dominant natural party of government. It concludes by considering the challenges and prospects for Ireland’s party democracy.

The Irish Republic after the Crisis: Commemorating the Easter Rising in the 2016 Election Campaign

The Irish Republic after the Crisis:Commemorating the Easter Rising in the 2016 Election Campaign* Isabel Kusche (bio) A vote for myself and Sinn Féin is a vote for change, for a fair and just society based on the spirit and principles of 1916. —dessie ellis, candidate in the 2016 election The 2016 general election in Ireland was perhaps the most unpredictable in the country's history. In hindsight it would be called "the election that nobody won" and resulted in a complicated minority-government arrangement.1 The traditional parties Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, and Labour were confronted with a Sinn Féin rising in the polls, two newly formed parties (Renua and the Social Democrats), radical left-wing groups, and strong support for independent candidates.2 In this altered political landscape both new and established political actors faced the challenge of defining what they could offer to an electorate that looked back to years of austerity in the wake of the financial crisis. They needed to articulate an identity as political actors different from the others to an extent that made them more appealing to voters. This was also the centenary year of the Easter Rising and the Proclamation of the Irish Republic. An election campaign a few months before Easter in such a year was likely to include some acknowledgment of the significance of the anniversary. Yet which political actors would or would not attempt to associate themselves with it and how [End Page 128] they would do so was far from clear and are the subject of the following analysis. Commemoration and the Context of the 2016 Election The politics of history can be defined "as any social action that is essentially based on historical references and/or tries to influence the interpretation and representation of history."3 It often involves open conflict about competing interpretations of past events. The history of commemorating the Easter Rising in the Republic of Ireland offers ample evidence of how changing political constellations guide decisions about the form and content of commemorations.4 Some anniversaries, most notably the fiftieth in 1966, were turned into state celebrations of an Ireland whose progress and modernity were framed as the eventual outcome of the Rising and were also validated by it.5 Other anniversaries, for example, the sixtieth in 1976, were celebrated without major public commemoration organized by the state since the violent character of the Rising was deemed deeply problematic given the violence in Northern Ireland at the time. Commemorations were thus left to non-state initiatives, notably the Provisional IRA and its sympathizers.6 The commemoration of events imbues them with extraordinary significance and assigns them a distinct role in understanding the present.7 It defines and constructs a present identity based on an interpretation of the past, which is inevitably selective.8 In doing so, commemorations serve both sociopolitical and psychological [End Page 129] functions.9 The notion of articulation in discourse is helpful to clarify how commemorations connect past and present.10 Making such a link suggests a contingent unity as opposed to a necessary unity. The articulated unity does not simply bring together preexisting elements but changes the articulated elements by creating a specific context in which they are to be understood. Consequently, interpretive frames that relate the past to the present are also tactical tools that parties and politicians can use in political competition.11 In drawing on a past event to make sense of their present and their pledges for the future, parties attempt to define their identity and the nature of that past event as they relate to each other. If this articulation is successful, it will change the understanding of both—either subtly or more radically, depending on how similar to or different from previous articulations it is. After all, "to remember is to place a part of the past in the service of conceptions and needs of the present."12 In the context of the 2016 Dáil election most Irish parties could be expected to have some reason to try to make use of the upcoming centenary of the Easter Rising in the service of their own present position. First...

The issue content of party politics in Ireland: a new perspective on the Irish party system and its development

ABSTRACT The Irish party system has been exceptional both for the weakness of its left-right conflict and for its long-run stability. How then can party competition on policy, and particularly competition between the main parties, be characterised? This study examines the Irish party system from an issue competition perspective, examining the party system agenda and asking whether Irish party competition is marked by differences in issue focus. New data from Irish party manifestos (1981–2020) coded within the framework of the Comparative Agendas Project show that rather than competing by focusing on different issues, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael’s issue focus is very similar and has moved in parallel over time. Nor is a distinct focus on new issues evident in Sinn Féin’s offering as they have emerged as a major party. Moreover, it finds that ‘new politics’ issues have remained marginal and it examines how this has occurred using the ‘crucial case’ of environmental policy. While differences in issue focus do not help us to distinguish the main parties, the politics of competence continues to have an important role and positional politics may be coming to the fore.

Book Review: Independents in Irish Party Democracy

Book Review: Independents in Irish Party Democracy

WOMEN IN THE IRISH PARLIAMENT: HISTORY AND MODERN STATE OF POLITICAL REPRESENTATION

The article attempts to trace the history of women's political representation in the Irish parliament - from the struggle for the right to vote and to be elected to parliament to the current level of women's representation in the Oireachtas and related discussions in the political elite and Irish society. The author draws attention to the specifics of the policy of various Irish parties in relation to the problem of representation of women in parliament and demonstrates the importance of political and national culture for such a phenomenon as the participation of women in politics. Analyzing the change in the proportion of women in the lower house of the Oireachtas, the author demonstrates the influence of the Irish women's movement on the dynamics of the number of female TDs. The author concludes that the policy of affirmative action played a significant, but insufficient role in the country, which for a long time remained under the influence of the Catholic Church and its patriarchal view of the role of women in society.

Are Irish voters moving to the left?

ABSTRACT The Irish party system has been an outlier in comparative politics. Ireland never had a left-right divide in parliament, and for decades, the dominant centrist political parties competed around a centre-right policy agenda. The absence of an explicit left-right divide in party competition suggested that Irish voters, on average, occupy centre-right policy preferences. Combining survey data since 1973 and all Irish election studies between 2002 and 2020, we show that the average Irish voter now leans to the centre-left. We also show that income has recently emerged as a predictor of left-right self-placement, and that left-right positions increasingly structure vote choice. These patterns hold when using policy preferences on taxes, spending, and government interventions to reduce inequality as alternative indicators. We outline potential explanations for this leftward shift, and conclude that these developments might be anchored in economic inequalities and the left populist strategies of Sinn Féin.

An Irish Party and the British Parliament: Conor Cruise O'Brien's Parnell and His Party

AbstractThis essay reassesses the importance of Conor Cruise O'Brien's Parnell and His Party, 1880–90, originally published in 1957, with particular reference to its significance in the history of the British parliament. While establishing the book's continuing relevance, both as a study of a specific political phenomenon and as a model for analysing political movements, the essay questions aspects which do not hold up in the light of subsequent research. In particular, O'Brien's account and interpretation of Parnell's behaviour in 1890–1 in the aftermath of the O'Shea divorce case is shown to be inadequate in the light of more recent research and writing.

Rally around the EU flag: Irish party positions on the EU in the wake of Brexit

ABSTRACT When national interests are threatened by an international political crisis, there is often a ‘rally around the flag’ effect among both the public and the political elite, interpreted as a patriotic response to an external threat. Brexit represented a significant threat both to the Irish economy and to the constitutional settlement on the island of Ireland. In contrast to other international crises that have been studied in relation to the rally effect, a supranational body (the EU) was acting on behalf of the threatened state (Ireland) in the negotiations. This paper examines how Brexit affected Irish party positions on EU affairs in the Republic of Ireland and asks if there was a ‘rally around the EU flag’ at the elite level. Using automated content analysis of parliamentary debates in Ireland between 2014–2019, the results show that there was indeed a significant and sustained pro-EU rally among most Irish parties. The findings also show that the rally effect differs depending on whether the party has a nationalist or internationalist orientation.

James Doherty Irish Liberty, British Democracy: The Third Irish Home Rule Crisis, 1909-14 (review)

Reviews James Doherty, Irish Liberty, British Democracy: The Third Irish Home Rule Crisis, 1909–14 (Cork: Cork University Press, 2019), 320 pages. What a pleasure it is to read a book on the Third Home Rule Bill which places it firmly in the politics of the state – the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland – in which it was by far the most important political issue in the years leading up to the outbreak of the First World War. This is in stark contrast to the current ‘decade of centenaries’ commemorations in Ireland, where the Third Home Rule Bill is portrayed as the beginnings of an ascent which, barring a few serious stumbles such as partition and civil war, leads inevitably and inexorably to the sunny uplands of Irish self-determination – an Irish nationalist version of the Whig interpretation of history. The struggle for Irish Home Rule in this period was a metaphor for the transformation of the United Kingdom into a fully-fledged democracy. To most British democrats, which included Liberal Party members, backbench Liberal MPs and the Labour Party, the passing of the Third Home Rule Bill was the test of whether the 1911 Parliament Act had, through emasculating the powers of the non-elected House of Lords, been successful. Viewed from this perspective, Irish Home Rule was the litmus test of Britain’s democratisation, far surpassing in importance other contemporary issues besettingAsquith’s Liberal government, such as women’s suffrage, industrial unrest and the naval race with Germany. Successful Home Rule legislation for Ireland would both symbolically and actually prove that the entire United Kingdom had made the transformation into democracy. The book is revelatory in many ways. The similarities between the structures and tensions of the Liberal Party and the Irish Party are remarkable. Both were loose coalitions and the strains and tensions inside both parties were at times at breaking point. The British Liberal Party and Liberal government were dominated by liberals who were not necessarily democrats. Men like Asquith, Haldane and Grey believed in liberty, but had substantial reservations about equality. They were leading a party which, by now, was heavily influenced by the philosophy of New Liberalism, that required the state to take a far more pro-active role in promoting a new era of equality and democracy. These social democrats were firm in their belief Studies • volume 109 • number 435 336 Autumn 2020: Book Reviews that the passage of the Third Home Rule Bill was totemic of their drive to democratise Britain and both Liberal Party members and backbenchers saw the Irish Party and their demands as advancing democracy throughout the entire United Kingdom. Even many Nonconformist Liberals, dubious about Irish Home Rule and its perceived threat of the resurgence of a rampant Roman Catholicism, were swayed by appeals to their reason, sense of justice and religious liberty, and these usually trumped any reservations they may have otherwise had. The New Liberals, now the majority in the party, regarded Home Rule as the battering ram for democratisation, even though they recognised that it took up valuable parliamentary time which could have been used for social reform. The author argues that by 1914 Asquith was under no illusion that defying radical Liberals, Irish nationalists and Labour on Home Rule would lead to the shattering of his party. The recipient of all this support from the radical wing of British politics – the Irish Party – was even more a broad church than the Liberal Party. For a start, the Irish Parliamentary Party was hardly a party. It was racked by residual rivalry and hostility dating back to the Parnell era, particularly between John Dillon, T M Healy and William O’ Brien. The Irish Party’s political dominance in Ireland arose practically in default of effective alternative movements. It was led by John Redmond, an imperialist at heart like so many others in the Irish Party, to whom there was no incompatibility between Irish nationality and imperial patriotism. These Irish nationalists wanted a self-governing Ireland to play a prominent role in the affairs of the Empire along the lines of the white settler dominions such as Canada and Australia. Rather than lead to the break...

El sistema de partidos norirlandés tras los Acuerdos de Viernes Santo

El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar el modo en que los Acuerdos de Viernes Santo, firmados en 1998 y que culminaban el proceso de paz que ponía fin a la violencia sufrida en la región durante tres décadas, han afectado a la configuración del sistema de partidos norirlandés. Trataremos de validar la hipótesis de que los acuerdos han favorecido a aquellos partidos situados en los extremos. Sin embargo, también trataremos de demostrar cómo dicho auge de los partidos situados en el extremo ha venido acompañado de una moderación de sus postulados. Para ello, analizaremos el impacto del modelo institucional en tal proceso. Llevaremos a cabo este análisis desde la perspectiva teórica del consociacionalismo.

"Our Dead Chief:" The Irish Press and the Death of Parnell

"Our Dead Chief:"The Irish Press and the Death of Parnell Michael de Nie Sometimes imperious, always emotionally distant, Charles Stewart Parnell (1846–91) was an enigma even to his closest companions. Nonetheless, with unceasing resolve and supreme self-confidence Parnell bent others to his will and transformed Irish nationalism. But, at the peak of his popularity and influence he suffered a sudden and terrible fall and was subsequently hounded to the grave by the braying British press and sanctimonious Irish Catholic prelates. Or so the story goes. These well-worn narratives of Parnell's rise and fall have deeply influenced both popular memory and academic study of the Irish leader. The meaning of Parnell and Parnellism, however, has always been contested, from the biographies that appeared within weeks of his death up to the present day.1 One of the prime theaters of this contest was the Irish newspaper press—where the majority of the Irish public learned of the leader's death and read the first postmortem meditations on his life and career. The story of the Parnell Split is well known, but it is helpful to begin with a quick overview of the key events and how the Irish newspapers positioned themselves during the controversy. In December 1889, Captain William O'Shea [End Page 106] sued his wife Katherine for divorce, naming Parnell as co-respondent. Parnell and Katherine had been carrying on an affair since late 1880 and he had fathered two of her daughters, yet he was amazingly confident that the messy divorce proceedings would have no impact on his political career. The initial response seemed to justify Parnell's sanguinity, as his political allies rallied to his side and the bishops remained silent. The trial proved extremely embarrassing to Parnell, who offered no defense in order that the divorce be granted so that he might marry Katherine. A decree nisi (that is, a ruling that the divorce could proceed) was delivered on November 17, 1890, but Parnell's supporters reasserted their loyalty at a November 20 meeting in Dublin and then re-elected him chairman of the Irish Parliamentary Party on November 25. On that same evening, things began to unravel for Parnell after William Gladstone published a letter in a special edition of the Pall Mall Gazette indicating that he could not continue to work for home rule with the Irish Party if Parnell remained its leader. With his Nonconformist political base scandalized by the conduct revealed at the trial, Gladstone knew that he could not continue the Liberal-Irish alliance unless Parnell stepped aside. The choice was now Parnell or Home Rule, and within a week many of those who had proclaimed the Chief indispensable now called for him to step down. Parnell's position was further undermined over the next two weeks by the publication of his badly received Manifesto and statements from the delegates in America and the Irish Catholic hierarchy. On December 6, a majority of the Irish MPs voted to repudiate the Chief, splitting the party. Over the next ten months what remained of Parnell's support in Ireland steady evaporated as he was attacked across the Irish press and his rump party lost several by-elections. A somewhat pathetic figure by the fall of 1891, Parnell died suddenly on October 6. Generally speaking, the Irish press followed the same trajectory as the Irish Parliamentary Party. The majority of newspapers strongly supported Parnell in the week or so after the divorce decree was issued. Like the Irish MPs, they began to peel away from the leader after Gladstone's letter was published. By the time the party officially split, the majority of Irish newspapers had already come out against Parnell, although with varying degrees of vehemence. Of the thirty-five newspapers examined for this paper, five remained true to Parnell, twelve were anti-Parnellite, eleven were Unionist, and three were nonpolitical newspapers that tried to avoid taking a position. The remaining four newspapers can be regarded as special cases. The weekly United Ireland came out strongly against the Chief in early December but was reclaimed for Parnell after a mob, led by the man himself, famously attacked the...

‘If you shoulder a rifle […] let it be for Ireland’: James Connolly's War on War

As virtually all Europe's major socialist parties re-aligned with their own national governments with the outbreak of World War I, Irish socialist and trade unionist James Connolly found himself internationally isolated by his vociferous opposition to the war. Within Ireland, however, Connolly's energetic and relentless calls to interrupt the imperial transportation and communications networks on which the ‘carnival of murder’ in Europe relied had the converse effect, drawing him into alignment with certain strains of Irish nationalism. Connolly and other socialist republican stalwarts like Helena Molony and Michael Mallin made common cause with advanced Irish nationalism, the one other constituency unamenable to fighting for England under any circumstances. This centripetal gathering together of two minority constituencies – both intrinsically opposed, if not to the war itself, certainly to Irish Party leader John Redmond's offering up of the Irish Volunteers as British cannon fodder – accounts for the “remarkably diverse” social and ideological character of the small executive body responsible for the planning of the Easter Rising: the Irish Republican Brotherhood's military council. In effect, the ideological composition of the body that planned the Easter Rising was shaped by the war's systematic diversion of all individuals and ideologies that could be co-opted by British imperialism through any possible argument or material inducement. Although the majority of those who participated in the Rising did not share Connolly's anti-war, pro-socialist agenda, the Easter 1916 Uprising can nonetheless be understood as, among other things, a near letter-perfect instantiation of Connolly's most steadfast principle: that it was the responsibility of every European socialist to throw onto the gears of the imperialist war machine every wrench on which they could lay their hands.

In the Firing Line: Censorship, the Civil War in Ireland, and its Aftermath

In the Firing Line:Censorship, the Civil War in Ireland, and its Aftermath John Horgan Correction: Ceartúchán: Correction We wish to correct an error in volume 33, no. 3 (Autumn, 2018) in the article "Redemptive Suffering in the Isenheim Altarpiece and Bernard MacLaverty's Cal,"https://muse.jhu.edu/article/714957 by Lanta Davis. The image on page 82 is mislabeled. The image credit should instead be: The Isenheim Altarpiece (third view). By permission of Musee d'Unterlinden/Art Resource, NY. We regret the misidentification. The online version has been corrected. Much of the research about media in independent Ireland in the first half of the twentieth century has focused, understandably, on the controversies that attended the establishment and convoluted history of the Censorship of Publications Board, especially in relation to work by Irish writers that was thought to impinge on the allegedly pristine and incorrupt nature of Irish sexuality, and on political censorship during the World War II. Less studied—perhaps because it was more chaotic, and also more short-lived—is the military and political censorship instituted in the early years of the Free State by an administration that found the problems of establishing its legitimacy exacerbated by the unexpected but lethal and intense, events of the civil war.1 The challenge of focusing on this brief, but significant period of controversy is made more difficult by the sometimes chaotic condition of the early Free State administration's filing system, and by what appear to be differing (but, at least on paper, unvoiced, views within that administration on the relative values of military activity and of more irenic measures to be taken against their republican opponents. This is particularly true of the period of heightened tension and, eventually, civil war, following the Treaty setting up the Irish Free State administration in January 1922, which was to be ratified by the UK parliament on December 6 of that year. It is impossible to overestimate the climate of fear and suspicion that prevailed in 1922–23 as former comrades-in-arms found themselves first politically, and then militarily, in conflict with each other in the increasingly ruthless civil war that broke out in July, and the heightened tension following Michael Collins's assassination on August 22. The security and [End Page 62] military situation was further exacerbated after November of that year, following the execution of eight republican prisoners, and the retaliatory murder by republicans of the TD Sean Hales in Dublin in December. Clearly, political and administrative responsibility for managing the resultant challenges presented by the institution of media censorship was diffuse and inadequately centralized, involving recurrent tensions between military and civil leaders. The cabinet papers from this period reveal many unresolved tensions, and disputes about areas of responsibility between different government departments, about the role of the military, and regarding the nascent and erratic machinery of censorship itself. The leaders of the Anglo-Irish War had not anticipated this problem; this may, in part explain, their unfocused, often uncertain (and on occasion, despairing) attempts to deal with it. The relatively scant records that remain also reveal that newspaper editors' attitude to the new Free State government did not preclude attempts by both the Irish Independent and the Irish Times to record some of the events of the civil war in ways that sometimes failed fully to heed the new government's hostility to any language that might imply that their military opponents had claims to political legitimacy. The implications of the onset of civil war for newspapers had been considered poorly, if at all, by the new administration. The national daily newspaper with the greatest circulation in Ireland, the Irish Independent, had been hostile to the Rising because of its loyalty to the fast-disappearing Irish Party at Westminster, but by the time of the civil war it had patently shifted its loyalty to the new Free State administration. Its national contemporary, the Protestant-owned and Unionist Irish Times had—albeit for different reasons—been hostile to constitutional Irish nationalism, and opposed post-1921 Irish Republicanism virulently, but rapidly came to a political accommodation with the new Irish Free State—not least because of that newspaper...

Irish Party System after 2011: Change or Revolution?

Until recently the Irish party system has been considered as very stable. It was dominated by two rival conservative political parties, which only in the 1990s allowed the possibility of forming coalition governments with other parties. In 2011 there was a historical change – for the first time since 1932 Fianna Fail lost the parliamentary elections with the worst result in history. However, the classical parameters of the dynamics of party systems did not adequately reflect this transformation. In the article, we argue that without taking into account significant socio-cultural changes, the method of system analysis, focused on data obtained on the basis of election results, remains an insufficient tool to describe the Irish party system. We reconstruct the most important events related to the evolution of this system between 2011 and 2016 and try to answer the question of how relevant political parties reacted to changing patterns of competition.

Beyond Nationalism? The Anti-Austerity Social Movement in Ireland: Between Domestic Constraints and Lessons from Abroad

ABSTRACTThe European financial crisis has inspired a wave of social activism, challenging established party politics. In Ireland, a large social protest movement produced a Right2Change political campaign in 2015 that confronted the right-wing consensus in Irish politics. Some activists sought to emulate and learn from the example of new parties like Spain’s Podemos. Yet, to date, the traditional party structure remains intact, and hopes of emulating the success of activists elsewhere remain muted. At the same time, anti-austerity activism in Ireland has seen a conscious attempt to engage in intense dialogue with the pan-European experience. Irish activists have looked to Europe before for inspiration and a sharing of experiences; but the most recent attempt to create a Europeanised public space in response to the perceived ‘blockage’ in the Irish party system is something fairly innovative. This article, based in part on ten semi-structured interviews with politicians and social movement activists, considers the achievements and failings of the Irish anti-austerity movement to date.

The (not-so-surprising) non-partisanship of the Irish Supreme Court

ABSTRACTThere is a growing literature which argues that courts are effectively legislators. As a result, political leaders have an incentive to control judicial decisions by appointing justices whose policy preferences are as close to their own as possible. For this reason, in many countries judicial appointments to the highest courts have become highly politicised. This can be for a number of reasons. One is the ideology of the Justices, the other is their strategic incentives. Irish parties display small ideological differences, but deep partisan ones. We could expect partisan heritage to have an impact on judicial decisions. We test this expectation on Ireland, a common-law country with, it has been argued, one of the most activist judiciaries in the world, and a highly politicised and partisan appointments’ process. Ireland is therefore a country in which we would expect partisan heritage to be reflected in judicial decisions. We analyse over 5,000 decisions of the Irish Supreme Court and despite rigorous testing we find no evidence of partisanship in decision-making.

From cartel party to traditional membership organisation: the organisational evolution of Fianna Fáil

ABSTRACTThis paper examines patterns of intra-organisational evolution and reform of Fianna Fáil as a party organisation before and after the 2011 Dáil election, widely considered an ‘earthquake election’ that fundamentally undermined Fianna Fáil’s status as the dominant party in the Irish party system. Electoral losses had triggered reform in Fianna Fáil prior to 2011, but such reforms tended to be minor, as the party expected its opposition status to be temporary. This orientation changed after 2011, as the party’s very foundation seemed threatened, having suffered a historic decline of its electoral support and membership. We argue that the post-2011 re-orientation can be usefully characterised as a movement away from organisational characteristics associated with the ‘cartel model of party organisation’ towards characteristics echoing more ‘traditional mass party structures’, an organisational model less dependent on state resources, and more able to generate loyalty through organisational means. Whether the 2011 reforms will lead to lasting change is likely to depend on whether, and if so how quickly, Fianna Fáil can reclaim its position as the major party of government.