Feminism, nationalism and the re-ordering of post-war political strategies: the case of the Sinn Féin Women’s Department

Guest Post from Dr Niall Gilmartin, Department of Sociology, National University of Ireland Maynooth. The post draws from research published in Irish Political Studies and available free online until the end of April at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07907184.2016.1146698 The Sinn Féin Women’s Department emerged at a time of great flux within Provisional republicanism. The kernel of the department resided…

Time taken to form a government is not unusual

Guest post by Brian Hayes MEP The people have voted, the counts have finished and the 32nd Dáil has sat, yet we have no government. People are beginning to get frustrated with the ‘slow’ pace of government formation. Parties are setting out their positions, negotiations are being held and support sought to elect a Taoiseach…

Helping the government formation discussions along: time for an Irish informateur?

It’s almost four weeks since polling day and there’s still no sign of a government being formed any time soon. The current belief is that when the Dáil next votes on the matter (at its next meeting on April 6 – two weeks from now) we still won’t have a new government. We’re in uncharted…

The puzzle of the February 2016 election result

By Michael Gallagher In 2011, all the economic indicators had plummeted since the previous election in 2007, and it was no surprise that the government parties lost support heavily: their vote share declined by 29.7 percentage points and their seat total fell by 66 in a 166-member parliament. In 2016, by contrast, all the economic…

Understanding Election 2016: Perspectives from Eurobarometer 84

Guest Post by Dr. Stephen Quinlan, GESIS Leibniz Institute With the focus now firmly on government formation, academics and political number crunchers are also trying to discover why Irish people voted the way they did on 26 February 2016. The election resulted in one of the most diverse Dáils in the history of the State being…

Time To Elect First Woman Ceann Comhairle?

Guest Post by Anthony O’Halloran On Thursday, March 10th an important opportunity will arise to change the gender landscape of Irish politics for the better. The first important constitutional obligation of the 32nd Dáil will be to elect the Ceann Comhairle. Most of the public commentary to date has focused on how the next Ceann Comhairle…

The limited rules regarding government formation

When the new Dáil meets on March 10th its first job is to elect a Ceann Comhairle. Up to now this has been pre-ordained by the Executive and so took a little time. But now there will be an election by secret ballot. It hasn’t been done before, so this could take some time. Each…

Which government best reflects the ‘will of the people’?

By Rory Costello, University of Limerick Government formation is not just a numbers game. Political parties campaign to a large part on policy, and we must assume that people who vote for a party do so as an endorsement of those policies. If we view the new Dáil as representative of the spread of views…

Fianna Fáil’s comeback is no surprise

Guest post by Prof R. K. Carty, University of British Columbia Some seem surprised by Fianna Fáil’s success in the February election. They shouldn’t be. Indeed there are so many reasons that help explain it that untangling their relative contribution will take some time.

Why wasn’t corruption an election issue when it costs us so much?

John Devitt, 24 February 2016 The RTÉ Investigations Unit story on corruption in local government shocked the nation when it was broadcast way back in December 2015. It led Stephen Collins, political editor of the Irish Times to suggest that corruption would likely be an election issue. He couldn’t have been more wrong. With the…

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Irish Politics Forum

A PSAI blog for discussion of politics, policy and political reform