Politics in Ireland: Convergence and Divergence in a Two-Polity Island

A Review Article by Eoin O'Malley

Issue 392, vol.98, Winter 2009

The decision to provide a book which brings together Northern Ireland and the Republic in one place appears, on the face of it, a sensible one. The two polities share an island and a history. And they are both moving to what might internationally be recognised as normal politics – the Republic is rejecting the clerical dominance of many aspects of society, and, perhaps, moving towards a more normal, ideologically-based, party system. Meanwhile, Northern Ireland, though still suffering from an institutionally reinforced sectarian party politics, now has a degree of self- government that allows some room for debate on policy issues not related to its constitutional position. But the two places are also so different that one wonders what advantage is gained by comparing them.

The political systems are so different that not much can be learnt by comparing the two. One has normal parliamentary government; the other is a strange hybrid of federalism, consociationalism and, in some areas of government, dictatorship (direct rule). They hardly share a culture (political or otherwise), despite both places being influenced by Westminster politics and British popular culture. Economically, where one was backward, the other was progressive. This was then reversed – though there has been some convergence. The Republic has (now limited) control over economic policy; whereas the North has virtually none. Even the nationalism of the North was different to that of the South. Where Sinn Féin triumphed in 1918 in what is now the Republic, Hibernian nationalists still dominated in the North. And nationalism in Northern Ireland developed into defenderism. The differences between Northern Ireland and the Republic emerged from ancient settlements. The settlers in the north-east of Ireland were different in type and number to those in the south. Partition has meant that people growing up in Donegal possibly have more in common with those from Kerry than Derry.

And after eighty or so years of growing apart, it seems unlikely that the two places will come together very soon. Sinn Féin’s failure to make its predicted gains in the 2007 general election in the Republic was explained, by some, as due to its dominance by a Northern-based leadership. This contrasts with the party’s success in the North. This does not mean that this could not be a pair of places ripe for comparison. Comparative politics usually works on the basis that, by comparing a number of similar or different phenomena, we can discover the causes or consequences of those phenomena by looking for those features that, say, two countries have in common and that we might theoretically expect to cause the phenomena they have in common. As a methodology it has been superseded by statistical analysis, which relies on much larger numbers of cases, but it is still valid and useful for comparing phenomena not so easily given to quantitative measurement.

In truth, there is no comparison in this book. And the authors acknowledge this. This is a textbook and the logic of putting the two parts of the island together is to appeal to those university courses where Ireland, north and south, is studied together. And it is as a textbook, giving an overview of the academic literature, that it succeeds. Adshead and Tonge have read widely and distilled a large literature not just on politics directly, but also on areas of social and economic policy, culture, civil society and the judiciary. It is more broad-ranging than other books on Irish politics, yet retains an admirable depth in its treatment of each subject. Given that Northern Ireland is one of the most researched places in the world, and that political research on the Republic has grown apace in the last 20 years, this is no mean feat. But the research on Northern Ireland has related almost exclusively to the Troubles, so we find here one of the first books where we see Northern Irish politics treated as ‘normal’ politics (Jon Tonge has been at the forefront of attempts to do this).

It also highlights how little we know about so many areas of southern Irish politics. Although we know a great deal about voters and their declared intentions, a good deal about how the Dáil operates and what TDs do, and we know a bit about the party system, many areas of Irish politics have escaped the attention of serious social science. Often, this is because the important questions are hard to answer and the data are not easily defined or measured. As a result we steer clear of these areas. But often these are the most important questions, which relate to citizens’ everyday lives.

So why southern Ireland’s growth after independence was so retarded is a question that is only recently addressed in any serious, non-polemical way. Though there are a number of books written on Ireland’s recent growth, some are so focused on certain micro-factors that they miss the forest for the leaves on the trees. There are not any sustained, vigorous and broad-ranging attempts to study the nature of Ireland’s growth (for what it was), and I suspect we will wait some time before we get to look beyond the most proximate causes of the inevitable subsequent downturn. The poverty of scholarship on these important questions is one that is reflected in the absence of serious research on government policy.

Adshead and Tonge highlight the secretive nature of government, which lends itself to an absence of oversight of policy by academics and policy experts. Too often, the only contributions to debates on policy come from interested parties lobbying to gain or maintain special privileges. Much of the scholarship on social policy is not ambitious enough or is often tendentious. That we do not know why, despite increasing spending on health by 200 percent in real terms over ten years, our health system does not appear to have improved, shows not just a major failure in public policy, but also a lack of imagination and an unfortunate disinterest in policy by us all.

There are many other gaps in our knowledge, evident when reading the text of Politics in Ireland. Little is known about how the judicial system works. Legal scholars look at the judgements made, and give us a decent overview of the system, but they are not social scientists interested in why judgements have been made. The small amount of social scientific research Adshead and Tonge can rely on in the chapter on the judiciary shows this. No one has ever (as far as I can tell) studied the nature of the jury system, and how it works; what (if any) biases it introduces to the judicial process. We do not know if it really delivers twelve independent opinions or provides a more likely route to the truth and justice. Yet we cling to the jury system as if it were core to our freedom and denounce anyone who questions its worth as illiberal. A country serious about producing effective public policy would not allow this.

An area that has received a good deal of attention is social partnership. But much (not all) of this work approaches the subject in a hagiographic manner, imposing on this bargaining process all sorts of achievements that it is unlikely to have actually delivered. Had we been more critical in our study of social partnership and the secretive and exclusive way in which it operated, we may have not been surprised when it completely failed to deliver a united response to the first serious crisis it faced in late 2008. Indeed, it now seems obvious that Social Partnership is or was a mechanism through which Fianna Fáil-led governments could buy themselves short-term industrial and public sector peace at the taxpayers’ expense.

It is probable that politics is the key driver to the wealth, health and happiness of the people in a country. Understanding the political system, what drives it, its effects and how it can be improved is obviously worthwhile. If Ireland is serious in its attempts to emerge from its economic crisis quickly and in a sustainable manner, it will need to be more serious in its approach to social research. If policy continues to be made on the hoof, with fallacious post hoc rationalisations offered for decisions taken for other purposes, a citizenship that does not really mind, civil society whose interest extends only to its own interests, and a disinterested and disengaged academy, it is likely that Ireland will relegate itself to being a poor man of Europe once again.

Eoin O’Malley, Dublin City University