ABSTRACT
The announcement of a “bailout” for the Irish state by the IMF/EU/ECB in November 2010 marked a critical point in the fortunes of the Irish economy and the state’s fiscal problems which had been signalled to be in crisis two years earlier when the government felt it necessary to provide a blanket support to the Irish banks. Cuts had been made in many programmes and the pay of public sector workers had been reduced by an average of about 20%. Unemployment soared, from 4.5% at the time of the 2007 election to 14.5% in early 2011. Even as the Da´il (lower house of parliament) approved the terms of the loan, under which stern targets with relation to taxation and spending were set and public policy would be monitored closely until the money was repaid, the government was disintegrating and an election followed soon in February 2011. The result was certainly dramatic: the major party of government and dominant force in the party system, Fianna Fa´il (FF), was relegated to third place; the minor partner, the Green Party, lost all its seats; and Fine Gael (FG) became the largest party for the first time and formed a government with the Labour Party,
which had almost doubled its vote. Measured in terms of net electoral volatility (the Pedersen index) this was one of the most dramatic elections in European post-war history, and it provided the biggest turnaround in party fortunes that had been seen without the intervention of a significant new party (Mair, 2011). Yet it was arguably a conservative revolution, one in which the main players remained the same, and the switch in the major government party was merely one where one centre-right party replaced another. This can easily be interpreted as a classic case of economic voting, in which voters
punished those responsible for the obvious decline in their collective fortunes, with the added element of public anger at the degree of mismanagement that had taken place (Key, 1966; Powell & Whitten, 1993). We could also see it as further evidence that Ireland fits well into the modern characterization of political competition as “valence” politics (Clarke et al., 2009; Marsh et al., 2008; Stokes, 1963), centred on the economy. This argues that voters will choose the parties seen as most competent to deal with the main – typically economic – issues, and the voters had lost faith in FF as the crisis unfolded. Indeed, poll evidence shows FF support declining sharply as successive stages of the crisis seemed to demonstrate the ineptitude of the government before the more objective indicators were there to confirm economic decline (Marsh & Mikhaylov, 2012). Support went to the obvious alternative, FG and Labour, who had provided the (only) alternative government several times since 1948 but were untainted by responsibility, having been in opposition since 1997. Yet there were expectations in some quarters, and these have echoes internation-
ally, that the crisis might provide a change in the bases of electoral decisionmaking. This occasion could have been one in which “policy” choices – and by that we mean choices about how to deal with the crisis – could have been more prominent than they were in recent elections, when the issues around economic management were apparently less urgent and less discussed. The crisis arguably exposed the neo-liberal model of economic management, one that was followed by governments of both centre-left and centre-right across Europe for decades, as having fundamental weaknesses. In consequence there might have been some clear shift away from its tenets and at least a break-up of that consensus. Different groups might define the crisis in different ways – perhaps as a fiscal problem, or by highlighting unemployment – and they may also have different solutions, such as raising taxes on the rich, or cutting expenditure on social welfare. This could have encouraged a sharper leftright divide. Certainly parties of the “left” did unprecedentedly well, winning arguably 31% of the vote,1 but whether this signified that voters were making an explicit choice of a policy alternative, rather than simply running to anyone but FF, is far less obvious. While crises such as the Irish one might shake people and institutions out of tra-
ditional, almost habitual patterns of behaviour, it is important to acknowledge that such patterns may also be hard to dislodge. There are at least a couple of features of Irish politics that might constrain change. One is the “personal vote”, the following that candidates have which may be independent of party; more generally, this includes the importance of candidate relative to party (Carty, 1983; Komito &
A Conservative Revolution 161
Introduction
The announcement of a “bailout” for the Irish state by the IMF/EU/ECB in November 2010 marked a critical point in the fortunes of the Irish economy and the state’s fiscal problems which had been signalled to be in crisis two years earlier when the government felt it necessary to provide a blanket support to the Irish banks. Cuts had been made in many programmes and the pay of public sector workers had been reduced by an average of about 20%. Unemployment soared, from 4.5% at the time of the 2007 election to 14.5% in early 2011. Even as the Da´il (lower house of parliament) approved the terms of the loan, under which stern targets with relation to taxation and spending were set and public policy would be monitored closely until the money was repaid, the government was disintegrating and an election followed soon in February 2011. The result was certainly dramatic: the major party of government and dominant force in the party system, Fianna Fa´il (FF), was relegated to third place; the minor partner, the Green Party, lost all its seats; and Fine Gael (FG) became the largest party for the first time and formed a government with the Labour Party,
Gallagher, 2010; Marsh, 2007). While the appeal of particular candidates obviously did not save Fianna Fa´il from an electoral drubbing, it may still be the case that voters’ concerns to pick a candidate may inhibit a more ideological politics (e.g. Sacks, 1976). A second is the behaviour of the parties. Arguably, for voters to change, parties have to lead the way. In the past, parties have generally obscured rather than highlighted ideological differences. We will explore the extent to which this was different in 2011.
