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…
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…
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…
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…
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.
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…
David Farrell (UCD), Eoin O’Malley (DCU), Theresa Reidy (UCC) and Jane Suiter (DCU) Smaointe (meaning ‘Ideas’) has been founded by a group of political scientists to promote an agenda of political reform in Ireland. As part of our strategy to promote political reform, we have undertaken an assessment of the political reform proposals included in…
As we approach polling day and without any sign (so far?) of a last minute surge for the coalition parties the most likely outcome is a hung Dáil. Of course another outcome is possible – Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil could once and for all bury their civil war differences and form a Grand Coalition.…
Only a few days before the election, polls continue to indicate that this might be the election of the independent candidates and smaller parties. The group of Independents and others has improved their total score from about 22% early this year to 25% in the latest Irish Polling Indicator, which combines all opinion polls into…
Betting markets have consistently supported the idea that a Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil (not-so) ‘Grand Coalition’ is the most likely outcome of the 2016 election. This might be in part because it seems the only ideologically-coherent majority government that can be formed. There is an assumption that an election result must yield a government, and our…
Irish Politics Forum 