The PSAI Public Policy Specialist Group held its annual workshop on Friday 15 May at the National University of Ireland, Dublin, bringing together researchers from across Ireland to discuss their work on public policy and policymaking. The workshop was organised under the auspices of the PSAI’s Public Policy Specialist Group and featured three thematic panels:…
Dr. Rory Costello is an Associate Professor in the Department of Politics & Public Administration at the University of Limerick. He is Director of WhichCandidate.ie and is a member of the Management Board of the National Election and Democracy Study. Across many developed countries, women have tended to be more left-leaning than men for several decades now…
Muiris MacCarthaigh is Professor of Politics and Public Policy and Director of the Centre for Public Policy and Administration at Queen’s University Belfast. This blog draws from an article published in 2023 in Irish Political Studies titled ‘Public policy accumulation in Ireland: the changing profile of ministerial departments 1922–2022’. As another coalition government takes shape,…
Alex Richardson is a Ph.D. candidate at the School of Religion, Trinity College Dublin whose research focuses on novel forms of multi-gendered, intersectional peacebuilding. On Friday 6 December, a group of academics, activists, and peace and security practitioners met at Trinity College Dublin, the University of Dublin, for a workshop that explored how we can…
Dr. Rory Costello is an Associate Professor in the Department of Politics & Public Administration at the University of Limerick and is a member of the Management Board of the National Election and Democracy Study. Most observers believe that the dramatic decline in support for Sinn Féin over the past year, and particularly during the…
Dr Valesca Lima is an Assistant Professor of Politics at Dublin City University’s School of Law and Government. The PSAI and PSA Participatory and Deliberative Democracy Specialist Groups held a one-day conference on August 9th, 2024 entitled “Cross-border Transformations: Deliberation and Participation in Constitutional Politics”. Hosted at the Geary Institute at University College Dublin, the…
The Irish Policy Agendas Project held a workshop this week, bringing together researchers using and generating Irish policy agendas data, developing plans for new policy agendas projects, and studying policy agenda-setting in other ways. The workshop was supported by the PSAI’s Public Policy Specialist Group through the PSAI’s Specialist Group Funding scheme, and the NUI…
As noted here a couple of weeks ago, it’s debateable whether Ireland complies with the requirement in EU law that MEPs are to be elected using a system of proportional representation (PR), be that a list system or PR-STV. At present 25 countries use some kind of list system, while Ireland and Malta employ PR-STV.…
Dr Alexander Dukalskis is an Associate Professor in UCD’s School of Politics and International Relations (SPIRe). The PSAI International Relations and Area Studies Specialist Group recently helped support a conference on Ireland-China relations. The event, held on May 23rd, was a collaboration between the UCD Centre for Asia-Pacific Research and the University of Notre Dame’s Clingen…
By Michael Gallagher The plethora of candidates for the European Parliament elections due in Ireland on 7 June raises the question of whether the country is using the most appropriate method of electing its MEPs. With 23 candidates in Dublin and South, and 27 in Midlands–North-West, voters will be faced with a disconcertingly lengthy ballot…
Dr Caitriona Dowd is an Assistant Professor in UCD’s School of Politics and International Relations (SPIRe). This post describes a workshop on Conflict & Hunger: New and Interdisciplinary Perspectives. The workshop was organised by Dr Dowd with the generous support of the PSAI’s Peace and Conflict Specialist Group. The UCD Africa Engagement Seed Fund kindly…
By Ken Carty, The University of British Columbia. Well over a decade ago now Theresa Reidy posted a blog comment asking “Referendums in Ireland, how many more can we take?” Rather than addressing the numerical question head on she went on to note how ineffective the process was as a mechanism for democratic policy-making. Few…
By Michael Gallagher 1. Previous post didn’t contain a prediction, but did observe that there were many considerations that could lead electors to a No vote while the benefits of a Yes outcome were uncertain and contested. Margin of defeat for the two proposals has taken everyone by surprise. 2. Many of the Yes advocates…
By Michael Gallagher So, the nation is (far from) convulsed by the two referendums that will take place on Friday, the ‘family amendment’ and the ‘care amendment’. (Of course, these could be seen as merely the warm-up before the really big referendum of the year, the eagerly-awaited vote on the Unified Patent Court that’s due…
This blog marks the launch of preliminary results from a national survey of candidates on the topic of political violence in the Republic of Ireland. The survey was carried out by Fiona Buckley (UCC), Lisa Keenan (TCD), and Mack Mariani (Xavier University), and is part of the cross-national The Cost of Doing Politics: Gender Aspects…
Irish Politics Forum 