In part 1, I discussed proposals periodically made to change Ireland's electoral system. The proposers of such change hope that by doing so they can orient Ireland's politics away from localism. The potential for intra-party competition in the current system is typically seen as causing our localist politics, so advocates of change typically propose electoral systems where politicians will not have to compete with their own party colleagues. I suggested that a lot of this thinking is a bit woolly, in particular claiming that these people overstate the extent to which electoral systems drive politics. For all that, a case can still be made for electoral reform. Even if our electoral system does not cause localist politics, it could be said to assist it; STV provides a fertile ground for... Similar posts

PR by the back door? Pause…….I know what you’re going to say: “But we have PR!” Well, actually, we don’t. What we have is an electoral system which admittedly is fair in that, unlike the UK, it actually counts all the votes. However, it isn’t proportional, because it sets a very high quota (Between 15%-25%) to win a seat, and as a result, voters cannot elect “pure candidates”. Small parties with small first preferences and poor transfers struggle to get elected. What it means is that most candidates who get elected are basically middle of the road, politics free, and transfer friendly. It means that we end up with politicians who have almost no political ideals. Just look at the Fianna Fail and Fine Gael parliamentary parties.... Similar posts

Ireland is a country of just over four million people, with a parliament consisting of 226 members in total, with 166 members in the the lower house and 60 in the upper, so for a nation of our size, we’ve a disproportionally high number of public representatives for a country our size. The constitution places upper and lower limits on the number of representatives in the lower house in article 16.2.2, specifically one representative for every 20,000 to 30,000 of the population. The use of electoral constituencies is implicit in the language of the article, but does not specify the shape of those constituencies, nor whether they can overlap--these are all matters of statute rather than basic law. As things stand, Irish politics is riddled with clientelism, with our politicians... Similar posts

And so the counting has begun following the elections, such as they were, to the perennially ignored talking shop that is Seanad Eireann. The campaign to woo the electorate of a few thousand politicians and university graduates has largely been ignored by the media- and for good reason. No body of well paid and intelligent people is as irrelevant to Irish society as is the upper house of parliament. The nature of the Seanad is such that it is almost always controlled by the government of the day, although an opposition majority would barely impact at all, since the scent of real power has not been detected in the chamber since 1936, when the Free State Senate attempted to stand in the way of De Valera's constitutional juggernaut and was abolished. As Vincent Browne notes, 12 reports on... Similar posts