Foreign, Security, and Defence Policy

This chapter explores the roots of Irish foreign, security, and defence policy, placing them in the context of a deeply pragmatic approach to public policy. Those roots are defined in terms of nationalism, solidarity, and global justice, which are themselves deep markers within Irish political culture. Ireland’s pragmatic approach is then grounded in a meticulously crafted rhetoric surrounding key foreign policy priorities but an associated reluctance to devote substantial resources towards these foreign policy and defence goals. Together, this gives rise to an assessment that the interests of smaller and less powerful states such as Ireland are best defended within legitimate, strong, and effective multilateral institutions such as the UN—even as the state continues to face adaptation challenges arising from a deepening foreign, security, and defence policy engagement within the EU.

Bicameralism in a Unitary State

This chapter describes, explains, and analyses the Irish Senate (officially Seanad Éireann). It details the birth and evolution of the bicameral principle in Ireland and provides an account of its key features, including its vocational character and complex electoral arrangements. The chapter also outlines the role, powers, and functions of Seanad Éireann and identifies the key criticisms of this body. These include the institution’s subservience to the lower house, the complex manner in which members are elected and appointed, and the limited nature of vocational representation in the Seanad. Campaigns for reform and the 2013 abolition referendum are discussed with reference to the several reform proposals of varying depth and substance that appeared over the decades.

Human Rights and Gender

What explains the disconnect between two images of the Irish state: the champion for gender human rights in matters of foreign affairs, and laggard on these rights internally? Is there a disconnect, or are these two sides of the same coin? Hailed internationally for its progressive promotion of the women, peace and security framework, policymaking at the national level reinforces multidimensional experiences of inequality for those most powerless in Irish society. A more nuanced, intersectional understanding of human rights and equality is central to understanding this ambivalent approach of the Irish state. This chapter explores the roots of Ireland’s position on gender rights and assesses Ireland’s role as champion for gendered human rights in the international sphere. Reviewing existing contrasts and contradictions, it provides a discussion of reasons and possible remedies for addressing these, and an explanation of what this may indicate about the Irish polity and its global self-perception.

The Changing Nature of Irish International Development Policy

Ireland’s involvement in international development has become a significant aspect of its foreign economic policy. Its engagement has moved from priorities that were largely domestically determined in the early 1970s and based on bilateral relationships between Ireland as donor and the recipient programme countries, toward priorities and involvements within a multilateral policy framework. This has come about through Ireland’s increasing engagement with international organizations, particularly the UN and the EU. However as the boundaries blur between Overseas Development Aid (ODA) policy and shared global goals, such as addressing climate breakdown and mitigating the scale of international distributive inequality, this can lead to tensions within countries about the implications of international commitments for the priorities at play in domestic politics. This is evident where Ireland’s ODA-driven commitments in the international field are in tension with domestic policy priorities, but also where tension arises in the area of national economic development policy.

The Politics of Referendums

Ireland has become one of the world’s biggest users of referendums, which are an important part of the system of governance. The use of the referendum is tightly related to constitutional change, and partly as a result, referendums have not been held on classic left–right tax and spend issues. Rather, the main issues that have generated referendums have been moral (particularly divorce and abortion) and the ratification of EU treaties. The chapter analyses the factors influencing referendum voting behaviour: the impact of party allegiance has been weakening, while social class and age are both strongly related to referendum voting behaviour, though the pattern varies depending on the issue. Referendums are sometimes accused of facilitating the suppression of minority rights, but that has not been the Irish experience. On the whole, the referendum experience in Ireland can be seen as an enhancement of, rather than a threat to, representative government.

What Kind of Ireland?

Modern Ireland is a relatively wealthy and politically stable democracy, but it bears the deep marks of its route to this point. This introductory chapter draws together some key themes that run through this volume and profiles the core contributions of each of its chapters. The overall story is one of contradictory influences. The political institutions of the state, notwithstanding much innovation over time, retain a bias toward a remarkably strong executive. The long-standing weaknesses of social democratic electoral mobilization both reflect and reinforce a conservative and market-oriented tilt in policy priorities. The ideas that animate public discourse show a creative but sometimes problematic tension between republican and communitarian ideals on the one hand, and liberal ideas and values on the other. Ireland has assumed a confident role on the world stage and especially within the European Union (EU), but relations with its nearest neighbour, the United Kingdom, can often be problematic, not least because of the complexity of the politics of Northern Ireland. And while on many measures Ireland is among the wealthiest of the EU member states, this is not the lived reality for a great many of its citizens, and the nuances of why this is so need to be carefully assessed. Overall, this introductory chapter offers an overview of the whole Handbook while also making an original contribution in its own right.

The Political Economy of Work and Welfare

The political economy of Irish work and welfare has dramatically changed over recent decades. Since the 1980s, Ireland has experienced two periods of high unemployment followed by two periods of full employment. Alongside this, we see considerable shifts in both the sectoral composition of the workforce and in the institutional architecture underpinning the labour market. Focusing on the last decade, this chapter contextualizes the Irish labour market in the Irish growth model, highlighting issues including occupational upgrading, low pay, gender composition, and migration. The chapter then explores links between this employment structure and Ireland’s changing welfare regime. It considers recent institutional changes, as the welfare regime shifted to a work-first form of activation, and the long-term sustainability of the social protection system. The chapter concludes by highlighting what we see as the core challenges for the political economy of work and welfare in Ireland.

The Irish–British Dimension

Power, scale, and wealth have moulded relations between Ireland and Britain historically and will continue to do so in future. Political relations between them have been determined by these asymmetric factors, giving much greater strength to the larger and richer island. Nevertheless, both islands exist within a larger European and transatlantic setting, a geopolitical fact that can mitigate or counteract Britain’s ability to act exclusively in its own interests. The chapter first explores this history and structure of the Irish–British relationship and then examines current political relations between the two islands, as seen in the intense joint efforts to bring peace to Northern Ireland and to regularize their interstate relations. Brexit rudely interrupts that new more normal relationship, as the third section argues, opening up several scenarios for changing constitutional futures within and between the two islands explored in the final one.

Ireland’s Deliberative Mini-Publics

Democratic crisis is a hot topic in political science at present, and for understandable reasons. But what is often missed in much of the commentary about democracies in peril is the fact that democracies can and do innovate. This chapter deals with one important case of such democratic innovation—the Irish deliberative mini-publics. We start with a discussion of the origins and design of the Irish cases. We then employ the Suiter and Reuchamps (2016) framework to analyse their democratic legitimacy in terms of input (the recruitment process), throughput, (the quality of the deliberative process), and output (the mini-public’s impact in terms of the uptake of its recommendations and acceptance of the process). The Irish processes are powerful real-world examples of the potential systemization of deliberation, showing how deliberative mini-publics can successfully supplement representative and direct forms of democracy.

Judges and the Political Organs of State

This chapter considers the record of the Irish Supreme Court in its constitutional policing of the two political ‘organs of State’. It outlines the basis upon which the judicial organ enjoys the authority to determine the limits of the powers of the Oireachtas and Government. It explores the various approaches taken by judges and courts in a selection of the main cases in the period 1970–2020. On the powers of Government—and the power of the judicial organ with respect to those powers—it considers the case of Crotty v An Taoiseach. As for the powers of the Oireachtas—and the judicial power in that context—the chapter looks at In re Haughey, Abbeylara and Angela Kerins. Overall, the analysis suggests that Irish judges have not been meek in their constitutional regulation of the political organs, although they have sought to limit their interventions to particular cases and contexts.