“Free to those that can afford it, very expensive to those that can’t”* Creating the Luxury of Freedom of Information

The underpinning values in freedom of information are openness and transparency. They can be regarded separately as openness represents an individuals right to access information and transparency representing a persons ability to scrutinize the decision making process. The need for adequate freedom of information provisions was summed up the Australian Senate Standing Committee on Legislation…

Economic recession, democratic recession?

I am the co-director (with Dr Kristof Jacobs) of an ECPR workshop at the 2014 Joint Sessions in Salamanca (see here for details).  Academics from ECPR member institutions are welcome to apply. Deadline for proposals — December 1. The puzzling relationship between economic crisis and democracy   Recently, a lot of research efforts have been…

The progress of the Irish Constitutional Convention to date

Declaration of interest: The author is the research director of the Irish Constitutional Convention The Irish Constitutional Convention has almost completed its work.  At its most recent meeting it dealt with the last of the eight topics assigned to it by the Government. All that remains is for the Convention to use its remaining time…

Seanad Referendum in Perspective

By Michael Marsh Another weekend of referendums is now over and the debate is well under way as to what the result means: what did the people say when they spoke? We have various evidence to go on: the polls, anecdotal evidence, and the nature of the campaign itself, but all these are flawed. The…