The Politics of Banking in Ireland

The chapter traces the historical development of banking and finance in Ireland. The financial system has historically been characterized by domestic economic weakness alongside significant activity by foreign firms, with state agencies filling the gap. Overall, the sector has been vulnerable to internationalization, and booms and risks. The chapter explores how, through the 1990s, it transformed from a sleepy backwater to one of the most financialized systems in Europe. This was driven by the transnational integration of the Irish banking system, linked to a shift towards market-based banking. In the 2000s, new technologies formed a disastrous combination with domestic conditions, ultimately leading to the banking crisis and the loading of banking debts onto the public purse. Finally, the chapter examines the politics of the Irish bailout. This was not simply a matter of domestic politics, nor of the bargaining power of banks, but involved EU interstate politics.

The Party System

This chapter focuses on the attributes and development of the Irish party system, describing its structure and where it sits in comparative perspective. As well as examining party size and ideology, the chapter applies Peter Mair’s conceptualization of the party system as the structure of competition for control of the executive to the Irish case. In doing so, it explores the relationship between electoral change and party system change, arguing that the systemic changes that have been emerging since the 2011 election are an extension of a longer-term trend in the opening up of the Irish party system. This incremental change was accelerated by the economic crisis that began in 2008 and its aftermath. The chapter suggests that the Irish party system is potentially at a critical juncture: a moment of uncertainty that provides opportunities for agency (by voters, party leaders, and others) to shape a durable future path.

Education for Citizenship in a Changing Country

This chapter discusses some questions regarding the political theory of education in Ireland: 1. Which value commitments and attitudes should be encouraged to prepare children for their roles in society? 2. Who should decide what children learn? How is the role of the state to be balanced against that of parents and educational institutions? 3. How should education respond to increasing diversity and value pluralism? 4. To what extent should public education promote equality of opportunities? It identifies the concerns relevant to policy choices on these issues. The first section presents the basic structure of the Irish educational system. The second discusses its implications for debates on the authority and responsibility to educate, the third debates dealing with diversity, the fourth value education. The final section considers the idea of equality of opportunity in view of the different resources available to different schools.

Open Government

Since Irish independence in 1922, governance structures have been excessively secretive. Political and civil service elites operated on a presumption of secrecy and a principle that the public did not need to know about decisions being taken in their name. In the last two decades, a number of policy innovations have gone some way towards providing for a more open polity. These include Ombudsman, regulation of lobbying, and freedom of information legislation, enacted over concerns about payments to politicians and a series of catastrophic public policy decisions that led to the bailout of the Irish economy by the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission, and the European Central Bank. This chapter assesses the importance of the principle of open government in modern Irish politics. It examines the nature of secrecy, assesses the tentative opening up of government since the 1980s, and analyses the open government proposals introduced since 2011.

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.