Guest Post By Daniel Sullivan In this piece, I’m going to try to outline two of the problems in how the electoral system currently functions, coupled with some of the practical realities that accompany them, and then suggest two forms of electoral change that would actually address those problems. These problems and from which almost…
Posted by David Farrell (December 28, 2010) To succeed, political reform needs three things to happen: a reason for the reform, leadership to drive it, and engagement by citizens. We have the first; there are early signs of the second; the third is still a long way away.
The Irish Times has an interesting series this week on where we should go from here. Some of the ideas so far are insightful and thought provoking. Joseph O’Connor points to the huge programme of political reform which is needed and argues for a bottom up approach that envisages change coming from the people inlcuding…
The editors of politicalreform.ie wish to thank contributors and posters for participating in the website over the last six months. To date, over 100,000 hits have been recorded and this project continues to grow with new contributors and a greater variety of topics. Any suggestions on how to develop the website would be most appreciated.…
Guest post by Eleanor Fitzsimons (posted by Elaine Byrne) The prospect of a general election early in 2011 has seen the re-emergence of a contentious debate as to whether our sizable diaspora should be allowed to vote. Ireland is unusual in the fact that those not ‘ordinarily resident’, i.e. living in Ireland on 1 September…
Adrian Kavanagh, 21 December 2010 – latest updates: 30 December 2010 As an alternative perspective to the opinion poll results that have been published over the past few weeks and my constituency-level models and analysis of these, Newstalk 106-108 FM this morning presented the findings of a prediction survey that was able to draw on…
David Farrell (December 20, 2010) Political systems are very sticky. It takes a lot to uproot and alter them. This is why very few of the world’s established democracies have experienced the sort of radical reform that websites like this are calling for Ireland. The fact is that political systems are hard to change: once…
Adrian Kavanagh, 18 December 2010 Sunday Business Post-Red C opinion poll December 20: FF 17 (NC), FG 34 (+1), Lab 23 (-4), Greens 2 (-1), SF 14 (+3), Others 10 (+2) On the basis of these figures, my constituency-level analysis of the poll estimates seat levels as follows: Fianna Fail 27, Fine Gael 66, Labour 46, Green Party 0, Sinn Fein 15, Independents 12 (including 5 United…
Peter Mair (December 17, 2010: posted by David Farrell) One of the issues that is likely to dominate the forthcoming general election is the question of whether Ireland should default on the crippling debt repayments. Reading both on and between the lines in the analyses of a number of economic commentators in recent weeks, I…
Adrian Kavanagh, 15 December 2010 Irish Times Ipsos-MRBI opinion poll December 16: FF 17 (-7), FG 30 (+6), Lab 25 (-8), Greens 2 (NC), SF 15 (+7), Others 11 (+2) On the basis of these figures, my constituency-level analysis of the poll estimates seat levels as follows: Fianna Fail 26, Fine Gael 58, Labour 46, Green Party 0, Sinn Fein 18, Others 18 (including 6 United…
Irish Politics Forum 