Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Rise and Fall of Minor Parties in Ireland

2010; Routledge; Volume: 25; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/07907184.2010.518695

1743-9078

John Coakley,

Migration, Refugees, and Integration

Abstract Minor parties (defined as those outside the three‐party core of the party system) have been a distinctive feature of Irish political life since independence in 1922. Of the approximately 50 such parties to appear since then, though, only a few have become politically relevant, and even these parties have tended to go through a short life cycle. This paper describes the profile of parties of this kind, seeking to place Irish minor parties in categories that have emerged in the comparative literature, and classifying them in respect of origin, electoral performance, strategic self‐placement, and ideological orientation. The paper concludes with an effort to explain the rise and fall of minor parties in Ireland in the light of generalisations in the comparative literature, where institutional factors (including, but not confined to, the electoral system) and social psychological considerations (including in particular the issues of declining party identification and disillusionment with existing parties) have played a particular role. Keywords: minor partiesthird partiesparty systemselectionsIreland Notes 1. A yet more special subcategory is that of the 'extreme right' (Carter, Citation2002; Golder, Citation2003), a category equated with 'radical‐right' parties (van der Brug & Fennema, Citation2007) or with 'anti‐immigrant parties' (van der Brug et al., Citation2005). 2. Independents should not be regarded as an undifferentiated group whose members are equally remote from party organisation. One typology distinguished three categories: 'full' independents (devoid of organisation and of other links), 'conjoined' independents (who have links with other independent incumbents), and 'revealed party' independents (who describe themselves as independents but also point to sympathy with a particular party, such as 'Independent Labour'; Copus et al., Citation2009: 10–14). For a more elaborate classification of Irish independents which also identifies a 'quasi‐party' category, see Weeks (Citation2009: 7–20). 3. In the case of new parties registered for Dáil elections, the guidelines require (1) a certified record of the date and method of formation of the party, (2) the address of party headquarters, (3) a certified record showing at least 300 members of whom at least 50 per cent are registered electors, or certification that the party has at least one Dáil deputy, (4) evidence of organisation (including party constitution, date and venue of annual conference, membership of party executive, information on branches, and information on method of candidate selection), and (5) evidence regarding party finance, including names of trustees and bankers and method of raising funds (information supplied by the Registrar of Political Parties, June 2009). Similar provisions are made for parties registered to contest European elections, and slightly less demanding ones for parties contesting local elections, or elections in part of the state only. The appeal board is chaired by a judge of the High Court (nominated by the President of the High Court), with the chairs of the two houses of the Oireachtas as its other members. 4. This resembles a typology developed by Lucardie (Citation2000: 176–178), which distinguishes between four types of new parties: prolocutor parties, purifying (or challenging) parties, prophetic parties and personal vehicle (or idiosyncratic) parties. 5. See http://www.oireachtas.ie for the register of political parties in the Republic of Ireland, and registers.electoralcommission.org.uk for Great Britain and Northern Ireland. 6. Unlike other support groups for deputies who had parted company with their parties, such as that of Michael Lowry in Tipperary, the Independent Fianna Fáil organisation was more extensive and durable than would be needed simply to secure the re‐election of its founder, Neil Blaney. 7. These may be extravagant, as in the case of the words attributed to Oliver J. Flanagan of Monetary Reform in 1943: 'Let the printing presses be put into action and let the pound notes, and fivers, aye, and tenners, too, be churned out. Put me into the Dáil and I'll guarantee that there will be rivers of money for all'; letter to the editor of the Irish Times, 18 April 1969, from Ms Helen Long, who claimed to have heard this in Portlaoise during the 1943 election campaign. 8. The definitive study of populist radical right parties in Europe identified the Immigration Control Platform as the only Irish representative of this category, though that party had responded to an enquiry from the author of the study to the effect that 'since we are not a party and are strictly single issue I do not see how we can fall within your remit' (Mudde, Citation2007: xi). Founded in January 1998, the Immigration Control Platform put forward candidates at the 2002 and 2007 general elections, and supported other candidates. 9. Data are from the European Social Survey, third round, 2006 (see http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org). The question was: 'Using this card, please tell me on a score of 0–10 how much you personally trust each of the institutions I read out. 0 means you do not trust an institution at all, and 10 means you have complete trust.' 10. The collapse of Clann na Poblachta has been attributed to the theft of its policies by Fine Gael in 1948, among other factors such as poor organisation and weak leadership (MacDermott, Citation1998: 163–165). 11. This is not to accept the argument that Sinn Féin is really as old as it claims: it dates from 1970, not 1905.