Donal O’Brolchain reviews pre/post- election developments on direct democracy The February 2016 election continues a pattern of nearly 50 years ie. voters have not re-elected an outgoing government. Since 1969, this has happened once in 2002. Despite Ireland’s undoubted successes (eg. joining the EU, a rising population and workforce) over these years, we…
Irish Political Studies (IPS) is seeking expressions of interest in a co-editor position, tenable for three years from 2017. A specialist background in the politics of the Republic of Ireland would be an advantage, while editorial experience and a clear vision for the future of the journal are highly desirable. Interested candidates should send their…
Notice: Book Launch Symposium: UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School Thursday 19th January, 2017 – 4:00-6:30 pm Austerity & Recovery in Ireland: Europe’s Poster Child and the Great Recession, Editors: William K. Roche, Philip J. O’Connell and Andrea Prothero (Oxford University Press) Symposium – 4:00-5:30pm, Lecture Theatre 1 1. Welcome: Orla Feely, UCD Vice-President for…
On October 15 1987 the senior and well respected BBC weatherman, Michael Fish failed to predict the onset of the worst storm to hit the South of England in three centuries. That incident is emblazoned in the annals of the weather forecasting industry, resulting in some serious rethinking about how to deal with extreme events.…
Guest post by Peter Emerson, director of the deBorda Institute in Belfast. (If you ask a silly question, you get either a silly answer… or nothing. That was Brexit, and we still don’t know what the answer was, is, or will be.)
If you felt that media coverage of the recent US Presidential Election appeared to lack focus on policy issues, you may well be correct.
Guest post by Michael Brennan, Political Editor of the Sunday Business Post. Every year, there are hundreds of theses completed by students of political science. Some may make it into academic journals and others are the source material for articles in the opinion pages of newspapers or are highlighted by the Political Studies Association of Ireland…
Today I had to give the first lecture of my ‘elections and voting’ course since Donald Trump’s shock victory. To be honest, I’m glad it wasn’t yesterday. I found myself genuinely upset by the result, to the point where any sort of objective analysis was probably impossible. Anyway, I had a good night’s sleep and spent the…
On 16 November 2016, there will be a one-day workshop looking at voting rights reform in Ireland. There will be two areas of focus; voting rights for emigrants and reducing the voting age to 16. The programme includes academics and campaigners. The workshop will take place in the offices of the National University of Ireland…
The inaugural meeting of the new Irish Citizens’ Assembly was held in Dublin Castle last Saturday. Its establishment and the fact that it follows in the wake of the 2012-14 Constitutional Convention marks Ireland out as a world first in the repeated use of a ‘mini-public’ (deliberative) approach to constitutional review, an approach that includes…
Irish Politics Forum 