Parties In Ireland Research Articles

Devolution and the diffusion of power: The internal and transnational dimensions of the Belfast Agreement*

The 1998 Belfast Agreement incorporated both devolution and transnational linkages in order to achieve a cross‐community consensus in Northern Ireland. The article argues that during the negotiations, moderate nationalists and unionists accepted that these elements were interdependent, and that rather than working at cross‐purposes, devolved and transnational institutions could be made mutually reinforcing. Devolution, in the form of the Northern Ireland Assembly with executive powers, addressed important issues of self‐determination and political accountability, facilitating the two‐way process of establishing formalised links between both parts of Ireland. Though a multi‐layered institutional arrangement, the Agreement creates a unique political space for the people of Northern Ireland in which a region gains greater autonomy and significant cross‐border opportunities for co‐operation. Realising these benefits will take time. In the short run, major obstacles, involving contentious issues like decommissioning, police reform and parades, call into question whether Northern Ireland's parties have the political will to build a shared future as outlined in the Agreement.

Anatomy of Labour Landslide: The Constituency System and the 1997 General Election

ONE noted characteristic of the UK electoral system is that a party's percentage of the votes cast at a general election is usually substantially different from the percentage of the seats that it wins in the House of Commons. In general, parties with more than 30% of the votes get a greater percentage than that of the seats and are over-represented, whereas those with fewer votes are under-represented, in some cases very substantially so, as has been the experience of the Liberal Democrats over the last twenty-five years. There are some exceptions to this generalisation, however; small parties whose votes are geographically concentrated in a few constituencies (such as Plaid Cymru and several of the Northern Ireland parties) tend to get a number of MPs consistent with their share of the vote; in 1951 and 1974 (February) the party with most votes did not also get most seats; and then in 1997 the Conservative Party won 30.7% of the votes cast but only 25% of the seats. It is generally appreciated that this bias in the translation of votes into seats is created through the interaction of two geographies —the geography of support for the parties and the geography of the map of constituencies. The latter is overlaid on the former, which tends to be very consistent in its structure over time, even if its relief varies as party fortunes wax and wane. But can the bias be manipulated, by the parties or other agents, to partisan ends? To answer that question, we first define and then decompose the nature of bias in the UK electoral system and then look at the most recent general election in detail.

The Hanoverian Accession and the Tory Party in Ireland*

The Hanoverian Accession and the Tory Party in Ireland*

European Community politics and electoral representation: Evidence from the 1989 European Elections Study

Abstract: In spite of the fact that the European elections were, in most countries, not fought over the issue of Community building and European integration, this article shows that only a few parties take positions towards the Community which are clearly out of line with the average position of their voters. The parties involved are the orthodox‐Protestant combination in the Netherlands, the Workers Party in Ireland, the Italian MSI, and the greens in Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland and, to a somewhat lesser extent, Luxembourg. The discrepancies between these parties'positions and the attitudes of their electorates ‐ in combination with their generally successful electoral performance ‐ underscores what is known from other analyses: Parties do not acquire votes on the basis of European issue concerns, but on the basis of national political concerns. The result of the European elections may still, however, be considered as an ex post facto, endorsement and legitimation of parties'policies towards European integration.

The progress and potential of the green party in Ireland

The progress and potential of the green party in Ireland

THE GREENS IN EUROPE: ECOLOGICAL PARTIES AND THE EUROPEAN ELECTIONS OF 1984

Journal Article THE GREENS IN EUROPE: ECOLOGICAL PARTIES AND THE EUROPEAN ELECTIONS OF 1984 Get access Wolfgang Rüdig Wolfgang Rüdig Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Parliamentary Affairs, Volume 38, Issue 1, WINTER 1985, Pages 56–72, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.pa.a051977 Published: 01 January 1985

THE FRANCHISE AND ELECTORAL POLITICS IN ENGLAND AND IRELAND 1832–1885

The history of the electoral system of the United Kingdom in the nineteenth century has been bedevilled by problems of focus and nomenclature. From 1801 the Kingdom consisted constitutionally of England (with Wales an at first quiescent and later querulous appendage), Scotland, and Ireland all of which enjoyed widely different cultural traditions and legislative frameworks. Yet, with few exceptions, historians talk of the Great Reform Act of 1832 or the Second Reform Act of 1867, when in each instance quite different acts were passed for Scotland and Ireland. To treat England not only as the major entity but as a surrogate for the United Kingdom as a whole is both lazy and misleading. During the half-century after 1832 it never returned more than seven-tenths of the members at Westminster. Its electoral practices in both the legal and general sense differed profoundly from those of the rest of the Kingdom. In a short essay it would be impossible to offer a universal conspectus. Instead, it is hoped that a commentary upon the contrasts presented by franchise and electoral developments in England and Ireland between 1832 and 1885 will help clear at least some of the ground for a more sensible understanding of political processes in the Victorian period. Although Scotland cannot be considered here, it would be quite wrong to bracket that country with Ireland in any discussion of this sort. Rather nineteenth century England stood culturally and legally between an electorally sober, upright, virtuous, and politically inert Scotland (separated above all by its unique legal system)1 and an Ireland in which special imperatives ensured that the normal conflicts of electoral choice sometimes spilled over and merged into movements of to use Sean Lemass's immortal words of 1928 at best a 'slightly constitutional' kind.2 In party terms also there were important differences. Wales moved from Tory hegemony in the 1840s and 1850s to Liberal hegemony in the 1870s and 1880s. Scotland remained a Liberal stronghold throughout the period, though somewhat less single mindedly so between 1837 and 1852 than before or after. England kept the Tory flag aloft with majorities in 1837, 1841, 1874, and (if Peelites are included) 1847 and 1852. Ireland's party system was quite different, though even there the Tories were able to maintain a substantial presence until the

The Autonomy of the Political: The Development of the Irish Party System

It is generally accepted that Irish party politics represent a rather incongruous strain within the relatively clear-cut patterns which exist throughout the rest of Western Europe. While some recent research demonstrates a certain limited scope for usefully including Ireland in cross-national comparative frameworks,1 the ultimate uniqueness of the Irish party system in relation to other Western European countries has not been substantially disputed. Much of the difficulty encountered in trying to situate the development of Irish parties within a comparative perspective lies in the problem of definition, in that the two largest parties, Fianna Fdil and Fine Gael, seem incapable of other than sui generis classification, their initial momentum deriving from the positions they adopted in, or as a result of, the civil war.2 The only other major party in Ireland is the Labour party, and while it is classifiable within the cross-national social-democratic tradition, its relative weakness vis-a-vis its larger opponents, and its inability as yet to develop a level of voting support equivalent to most of its European counterparts, simply seem to confirm Ireland's anomalous position.

Modern Developments in the Northern Ireland Party System

Modern Developments in the Northern Ireland Party System Get access Ian McAllister, Ian McAllister Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Sarah Nelson Sarah Nelson Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Parliamentary Affairs, Volume 32, Issue 3, 1979, Pages 279–316, https://doi.org/10.1093/pa/32.3.279 Published: 01 July 1979

Jonathan Swift's "Prefermts of Ireland," 1713-1714

IN THE WINTER of 1713-17I4 Swift submitted to Robert Harley, earl of Oxford, and to Thomas Lindsay, the new archbishop of Armagh, a list of preferments and promotions in the Church of Ireland to which the new dean of St. Patrick's had obviously given much thought. The plan it was designed to carry out was patriotic, partisan, personal, and unselfish, and it had the advantage of multiplying shrewdly the limited number of preferments possible in Ireland. Had Swift's recommendations for filling the four major and four minor Irish bishoprics been complied with, had the contingent promotions to two deaneries, at Trinity College, Dublin, and at St. Patrick's been possible, many worthy Irish clergymen who were friends of Swift would have found places commensurate with their merit. The bench of bishops and control of TC.D. would have been safely secured in Tory hands for at least a decade; and it is also possible that such promotions might have changed the fortunes of the precariously balanced Tory party in Ireland at this time, although the death of Queen Anne would probably have eventually brought them down. Although Swift's plan was successful only in part, it is illuminating to trace through his recommendations the outline of the ecclesiastical establishment as he wished it to be. The autograph of Swift's list, recently acquired by the Huntington Library, is reproduced below. HM 27943 consists of one page quarto (8 Y8 x 6 12) of writing. It is pasted onto a larger sheet of modern ruled notebook paper numbered 34 in ink at the top and headed, in a nineteenth-century hand, Jonathan Swift, D.D.= 16671745' Swift's own heading, Prefermts / of Ireland', is pasted to the MS; under it, also in Swift's hand, is another, which, under strong light, appears to read simply 17I3-14