Professor Michael Moran (June 23, 2010) This guest blog is by Mick Moran, WJM MacKenzie Professor of Government, University of Manchester and is an edited text of the keynote address to the Biennial Conference of the European Consortium for Political Research Standing Group on Regulatory Governance, and was presented at University College Dublin, 18 June…
by Eoin O’Malley (13 June, 2010) Coming up to and in the wake of the reports on the economic crisis in Ireland there was a gradual shift away from the Lehman Brothers defence and admissions that mistakes were made by Brian Cowen and the governments between about 2002 and 2008. This culminated last week with…
From Colin Scott An international and interdisciplinary conference on regulatory governance is being held at UCD next week, 17-19 June, under the auspices of the European Consortium of Political Research Standing Group on Regulatory Governance.
Posted by Dan O’Brien Reading this blog in recent weeks and Elaine Byrne’s piece in Tuesday’s Irish Times, it strikes me that while anti-intellectualism has long been a feature of Irish life, it seems that even the intellectual class in Ireland is hostile to ideas. Some thoughts. First, last weekend a conference was held on…
The Irish Times reports that Fianna Fail is completing a submission to feed into the Government’s promised White Paper on local government reform. The report indicates that there is some disagreement among the Coalition partners as to the importance of mayors with Fianna Fail preferring less executive powers. There is also some discussion on amalgamating…
Strong stuff from Elaine Byrne and Fintan O’Toole in today’s Irish Times. The latter berates the Irish people for lacking the ‘political viagra’ necessary to push through true political reform; whereas the former throws a punch directly at blogs such as this for ‘pouring cold water’ on the question of fundamental constitutional overhaul. Fair points?…
In today’s Irish Times (http://bit.ly/azsuil) Labour leader, Eamon Gilmore provides more detail about his proposal for a Constitutional Convention: “Labour’s proposal is that we should convene a 30-member constitutional convention with an open mandate. Ten of its members would be drawn from the Oireachtas, 10 from non-governmental associations and organisations, and 10 ordinary citizens selected…
This is in the text of the LibDem-Tory agreement 6. Political Reform The parties agree to the establishment of five-year fixed-term parliaments. A Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government will put a binding motion before the House of Commons in the first days following this agreement stating that the next general election will be held on the first…
In the absence of parliament’s ability to form a new government without recourse to an election, a minority government could be forced to limp on until its fixed term ends.
One half of last night’s RTE Aftershock programming was devoted to political reform, with both commentators calling for a new constitution to replace Bunreacht na hÉireann. In essence Dan O’Brien of the Economist Intelligence Unit argued that PR-STV ought to be replaced by a list system (he did not specify whether that should be open…
Irish Politics Forum 