Abstract
This chapter looks at the election and its aftermath from a historical and comparative perspective. It considers electoral turbulence in general as well as the decline of the two traditionally dominant parties. It shows how Irish voters are now relatively volatile in both historical and comparative terms. The changes that are associated with high levels of electoral volatility have fragmented the party system in a manner common elsewhere. This makes government formation potentially less straightforward as coalition is always necessary. The chapter considers how real these difficulties are, arguing that these stem more from challenges to political identities than from actual policy differences.
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Notes
- 1.
John Coakley, ‘The general election in context: historical and European perspectives’, pp. 153–72 in Michael Laver, Peter Mair and Richard Sinnott (eds), How Ireland Voted: the Irish general election 1987 (Dublin: Poolbeg Press, 1987), pp. 171–2.
- 2.
The levels of decline in combined support for the two dominant parties over four decades in these countries were as follows (election years in brackets): Greece (1981–2019), −36 per cent; Austria (1979–2019), −34 per cent; Germany (1976–2017), −29 per cent; Spain (1982–2019), −26 per cent; and UK (1979–2019), −5 per cent. In Portugal there was a small increase (1976–2019), +5 per cent.
- 3.
These 17 countries include the 15 member states of the EU that had joined by 1995, plus Norway and Switzerland.
- 4.
William Ascher and Sidney Tarrow, ‘The stability of communist electorates: evidence from a longitudinal analysis of French and Italian aggregate data’, American Journal of Political Science 19:3 (1975), pp. 475–99, at p. 480. The index was popularised by Mogens Pedersen; see ‘The dynamics of European party systems: changing patterns of electoral volatility’, European Journal of Political Research 7:1 (1979), pp. 1–26.
- 5.
For discussion of trends across Europe, see Alessandro Chiaramonte and Vincenzo Emanuele, ‘Party system volatility, regeneration and de-institutionalization in Western Europe (1945–2015)’, Party Politics 23:4 (2017), pp. 376–88, and ‘Towards turbulent times: measuring and explaining party system (de-)institutionalization in Western Europe (1945–2015)’, Italian Political Science Review 49:1 (2019), pp. 1–23.
- 6.
For the original discussion of this measure, see Markku Laakso and Rein Taagepera, ‘“Effective” number of parties: a measure with application to West Europe’, Comparative Political Studies 12:1 (1979), pp. 3–27.
- 7.
Data on governments used here are derived, with thanks, from the data collection of Staffan Andersson, Torbjörn Bergman and Svante Ersson, The European Representative Democracy Data Archive, Release 3, 2014. Main sponsor: Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (In2007-0149:1-E). (www.erdda.se)
- 8.
In 1933, 1938 and 1944 snap elections saw support for the Fianna Fáil government rise, but in early elections in February and November 1982 support for the governing parties fell. Comparative evidence suggests that early dissolutions are often (but by no means always) to the advantage of the government; see Petra Schleiter and Margit Tavits, ‘The electoral benefits of opportunistic election timing’, Journal of Politics 78:3 (2016), pp. 836–50, at p. 848; Kaare Strøm and Stephen M. Swindle, ‘Strategic parliamentary dissolution’, American Political Science Review 96:3 (2002), pp. 575–91.
- 9.
For development of this point, see John Coakley, Reforming Political Institutions: Ireland in comparative perspective (Dublin: Institute of Public Administration, 2013), pp. 227–31.
- 10.
For comprehensive analysis of the differences between the parties in the past, see Michael Gallagher, Political Parties in the Republic of Ireland (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1985), pp. 140–5; Peter Mair, The Changing Irish Party System: organisation, ideology and electoral competition (London: Pinter, 1987), pp. 138–206; Richard Sinnott, Irish Voters Decide: voting behaviour in elections and referendums since 1918 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), pp. 81–2; Michael Laver, ‘Are Irish parties peculiar?’, Proceedings of the British Academy 79 (1992), pp. 359–81; and Michael Gallagher and Michael Marsh, Days of Blue Loyalty: the politics of membership of the Fine Gael party (Dublin: PSAI Press, 2002), pp. 180–90.
- 11.
Gallagher, Political Parties, p. 140; a similar point is made in R. K. Carty, Party and Parish Pump: electoral politics in Ireland (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1981), p. 43. See also Chap. 11.
- 12.
Liam Weeks, ‘Parties and the party system’, pp. 111–36 in John Coakley and Michael Gallagher (eds), Politics in the Republic of Ireland, 6th ed (London: Routledge and PSAI Press, 2018), p. 114.
- 13.
Michael Gallagher, ‘The changing nature of electoral competition in Ireland’, pp. 110–28 in Niall Ó Dochartaigh, Katy Hayward and Elizabeth Meehan (eds), Dynamics of Political Change in Ireland: making and breaking a divided island (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), at p. 123. The same labels were frequently used against the two parties by Sinn Féin during the 2020 election campaign; see Chap. 4.
- 14.
Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass [1872], pp. 126–254 in The Complete Illustrated Lewis Carroll (Ware: Wordsworth Editions, 1996), at p. 166.
- 15.
See James Tilley, John Garry and Neil Matthews, ‘The evolution of party policy and cleavage voting under power-sharing in Northern Ireland’, Government and Opposition 56:2 (2021), pp. 226–44, and Sean D. McGraw, How Parties Win: shaping the Irish political arena (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015), pp. 84–7.
- 16.
Jane Suiter and David M. Farrell, ‘The parties’ manifestos’, pp. 29–46 in Michael Gallagher and Michael Marsh (eds), How Ireland Voted 2011: the full story of Ireland’s earthquake election (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 42–3; Rory Costello, Paul O’Neill and Robert Thomson, ‘The fulfilment of election pledges by the outgoing government’, pp. 27–45 in Michael Gallagher and Michael Marsh, How Ireland Voted 2016: the election that nobody won (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp. 30–2.
- 17.
Luke Field, ‘Irish general election 2020: two-and-a-half party system no more?’, Irish Political Studies, 35:4 (2020), pp. 623–36.
- 18.
See the site developed by Rory Costello of the University of Limerick, www.whichcandidate.ie/, with data available at dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/ines2020; and Thomas Däubler’s post, ‘We only agree to disagree: forming a government after the 2020 election’, Connected Politics Lab, University College Dublin, 4 March 2020. Available www.ucd.ie/connected_politics/.
- 19.
John Coakley, ‘The significance of names: the evolution of Irish party labels’, Études Irlandaises 5 (1980), pp. 171–81.
- 20.
See Carty, Party and Parish Pump, pp. 102–3.
- 21.
See Jose Pedro Zúquete, ‘Populism and religion’, pp. 445–66 in Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, Paul Taggart, Paulina Ochoa Espejo and Pierre Ostiguy (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Populism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), at p. 453.
- 22.
Rogers Brubaker, ‘Between nationalism and civilizationism: the European populist moment in comparative perspective’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 40:8 (2017), pp. 1191–226, at p. 1205.
- 23.
Dáil Debates 992, 20 February 2020.
- 24.
Gallagher and Marsh, Days of Blue Loyalty, p. 183.
- 25.
Dáil Debates 22: 1615–16, 21 March 1928.
- 26.
Report of the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning, 26 September 2005, in Annex K in Final Report of the IICD, 28 March 2011; http://www.justice.ie/en/JELR/Pages/IICD-Final-Rpt; Twenty-Sixth and Final Report of the Independent Monitoring Commission, p. 12; http://www.justice.ie/en/JELR/Final IMC Report.pdf/Files/Final IMC Report.pdf.
- 27.
Paramilitary Groups in Northern Ireland: An Assessment Commissioned by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland on the Structure, Role and Purpose of Paramilitary Groups Focusing on Those Which Declared Ceasefires in Order to Support and Facilitate the Political Process, 19 October 2015; https://www.mi5.gov.uk/mi5-in-northern-ireland.
- 28.
Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, ‘Introduction’, in Aisling 1916–1976 (Dublin: Sinn Féin, 1976), p. 2.
- 29.
Michael McDowell, ‘Sinn Féin’s problem with names much more than mere wordplay’, Irish Times, 26 February 2020. A small number of those elected to the second Dáil at the 1921 election, all of whom opposed the Anglo–Irish Treaty signed later that year, refused to accept that this Dáil had ever been validly dissolved, and maintained that consequently the 1922 election, and all following elections, had no validity and that the second Dáil, personified by them alone, continued to exist. While most anti-Treaty TDs followed de Valera into Fianna Fáil in 1926, seven refused to compromise and participated in the ‘transfer’ of authority in 1938; see Richard English, Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA (London: Macmillan, 2003), p. 401, n. 47. This group’s moral authority was undermined by the fact that, although all had been returned in 1921, they subsequently contested elections to the constitutionally established Dáil; two were defeated in 1923 and four in June 1927. The remaining member, Tom Maguire, stood down in 1927 and played a political role in ‘legitimising’ the Provisional IRA and Sinn Féin in 1969–70 and later.
- 30.
Simon Carswell, ‘Why are Varadkar and Martin refusing to go into coalition with Sinn Féin?’, Irish Times 27 January 2020.
- 31.
Pat Leahy, Conor Lally and Fiach Kelly, ‘Parties still talking to SF despite IRA link’, Irish Times 22 February 2020.
- 32.
Robert Michels, Political Parties: a sociological study of the oligarchical tendencies of modern democracy (Glencoe: Free Press, 1958 [1911]), p. 418.
- 33.
Michael McDowell, ‘Abolition of Provisional IRA was never on the cards’, Irish Times 26 August 2015.
- 34.
Sophie Whiting, ‘Mainstream revolutionaries: Sinn Féin as a “normal” political party?’, Terrorism and Political Violence 28:3 (2016), pp. 541–60, at pp. 551–2, 555.
- 35.
See earlier volumes in the How Ireland Voted series, and also: Michael Marsh, David M. Farrell and Gail McElroy (eds), A Conservative Revolution? Electoral Change in Twenty-First-Century Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); Michael Marsh, David M. Farrell and Theresa Reidy (eds), The Post-Crisis Irish Voter: voting behaviour in the Irish 2016 general election (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018); Fiona Buckley and Yvonne Galligan, ‘The 2020 general election: a gender analysis’, Irish Political Studies, 35:4 (2020), pp. 602–14.
- 36.
On differences in Sinn Féin policy in the two parts of the island, see Gary Murphy, Electoral Competition in Ireland since 1987: the politics of triumph and despair (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016), pp. 116–18; John Garry, ‘Nationalist in the North and socialist in the South? Examining Sinn Féin’s support base on both sides of the border’, pp. 145–56 in Ó Dochartaigh et al., Dynamics of Political Change. See also Chap. 13.
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Coakley, J. (2021). The Election in Context. In: Gallagher, M., Marsh, M., Reidy, T. (eds) How Ireland Voted 2020. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66405-3_14
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