Today’s Irish Times poll created a small social media storm as some took delight in the apparent public shift in positions on the restrictions in Covid, and others, particularly supporters of the so-called ZeroCovid strategy, were appalled and immediately tried to poke holes in the survey. They argued that the questions were biased, and pointed…
It took an unprecedented 140 Day for the Irish government to be formed. Does this suggest we need some mechanism to speed up the process?* While it is always theoretically possible to form a majority coalition, the level of fragmentation in the Irish party system in 2020 was at a record high. The effective number…
By Ken Carty University of British Columbia In a recent post I suggested that the evolution of the party system, and the dynamics of local constituency competition, had deprived Irish voters of any realistic capacity to choose their governments. Recent Dála have been full of politically insecure TDs, many at electoral odds with fellow partisans in…
The likely sharp uptick in support for Sinn Féin and the possible decline in support for both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael should pose a few questions for Irish political scientists, not least… Why did no one see the Sinn Féin rise come? The bad answer is that we’re not in the business of prediction.…
By Ken Carty (University of British Columbia) The 2016 Dáil has finally been put out of its misery with over 300 Bills, introduced by enthusiastic local TDs trying to make their mark, failing with it. The question facing the electorate is whether the next Dáil will be any different. If one takes the predictions of
Election 2020 has been called for February 8th. It’s a winter election, and called to preempt what would have been a likely government defeat in a confidence motion on minister for health, Simon Harris. The Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, hardly wanted to do his ‘Let’s take our case to the country!’ speech in the aftermath of…
Last night’s motion of confidence in the minister for housing, Eoghan Murphy, failed to pass; the vote was 53 for, 56 against, and 35 recorded abstentions. One of the reasons that it might have failed is because the Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said that a defeat for the government on this would cause a pre-Christmas election.…
Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish first minister, recently promised to introduce a new Scottish independence referendum before the next Holyrood elections in 2021. That timeline is thought ambitious by many in Scotland, and for some her more significant announcement was that there would be a citizens’ assembly to debate “what kind of country are we seeking…
Talks on forming a new coalition government in the Netherlands collapsed again on Monday evening, when chief negotiator Herman Tjeenk Willink said the four parties involved had decided not to pursue the alliance. This comes almost three months after the election. It’s hardly a record yet, but it should not surprise us if government formation…
Guest post by Chris Raymond, Lecturer in Politics at the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics, Queens’ University Belfast; and Jacob Holt, Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science, Columbus State University.
Irish Politics Forum 