By Michael Gallagher Leaving aside the broader issue of electoral reform (I’ve put some thoughts on this here), the question of how to fill casual vacancies has been discussed. At present, by-elections are used to fill such vacancies, and this has been criticised as an anomalous way of filling vacancies arising under a PR system.…
By Michael Gallagher The novelty of the leaders’ debates at the 2010 British general election has focused attention on this aspect of election campaigns, especially given the sudden surge in Lib Dem support in mid-April after party leader Nick Clegg was widely adjudged the winner of the first debate. Not surprisingly, the Labour Party here…
I have recently returned from a research fieldtrip to Australia. The following is an extract of an article of mine from The Irish Examiner, April 2 2010. I have examined the experience of the Australian Senate, of interest in Ireland because of Fine Gael’s proposals to abolish the upper house. (Given the likelihood of a…
The following is taken from an article of mine in The Irish Examiner, April 9 2010. It may be of interest considering the Tasmanian experience of PR-STV. THE DEVIL’S IN THE DETAIL The first thing that struck me about Australian politicians is their responsiveness. Last January I e-mailed a large number of parliamentarians, both past…
Before last Thursday’s leaders’ debate the LibDems privately conceded they’d lose some seats to the Tories on May 6th. Their best case scenario was that they’d be in the position of King-maker in a hung parliament and the price of their (external) support would be electoral reform. However, it’s probable that any party would have to offer…
By David Gwynn Morgan, Professor of Law, University College Cork Recently, the President of the High Court (Kearns P) announced that the long-awaited judicial council for standards and conduct might be set up this year (Irish Times, April 12). Surprisingly, the present system is still the one which grew up in reaction to the absolute monarchs…
Eamon Gilmore’s uplitfting ‘One Ireland’ speech to his party conference (http://bit.ly/crTAaq) this weekend ended with a set of interesting proposals for political, public sector and constitutional reform, with some pretty novel ideas such as the one to establish a Department of Public Service Reform. The major plus was just how many of the issues that…
Here’s a link to Fine Gael’s reform proposals in 1985. It was pretty limited in ambition, but interestingly most of what they debated was introduced and to little effect. Presumably at the time these were thought to be somewhat radical. Which may go to show that changes don’t always have the effects we expect.
There is a practice for UK prime ministers to be asked in the Commons about their engagements that day before the supplementary questions would come in and start asking them what really was meant to happen. It always seemed to me to be an odd tradition and I couldn’t find or see the logic to…
Irish Politics Forum 