“Disconnected” is a common way to describe the democratic discontents in Irish society and politics after recent fuel price protests and other complaints about the Republic’s highly centralised governance and many infrastructure gaps. That links us to a wider international discourse on democratic decay and how populism fills the void. These issues need urgent attention amid the State’s undoubtedly real wealth and wellbeing.
The three youngest Fianna Fáil TDs said their party leadership was disconnected during the protests, complaining about its centralised and arrogant management style. Protesters made similar criticisms about unrepresentative farm and haulage organisations.
These problems are linked to wider structural questions and infrastructure gaps in Ireland and associated governance shortcomings.
The agriculture and food economy empowers richer producers, processors, exporters and established organisations and loads fuel price risk on to more vulnerable freelance suppliers of on-farm services. The agri-food sector represents about 8 per cent of the Republic’s GDP and 6 per cent of its workforce; the 12 per cent of dairy farms, maybe 18,000 in all, are the most capital intensive and highest earning, while the far more numerous beef sector adds no net value after EU subsidies, is owned by older men – many working off-farm – and faces long-term decline. Ninety per cent of the State’s food output is exported and 85 per cent of our food imported.
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But the demographic, social and historical weight of rural Ireland in a comparatively highly dispersed but now largely urbanised population ensures it a large if disproportionate voice in a political system that combines a localist political culture with a very globalised society and economy. These contrasts are disguised and distorted by the two-tier economy divided between the highly productive and profitable multinational high-tech sector and much more numerous and less well capitalised home-owned ones, despite their numerous linkages.
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Comparative analysis shows up major infrastructure gaps in housing, health, rail and climate services. Sinéad O’Sullivan attributes them to an extractive economy without enough accountability and too much outsourcing, putting the Republic way out of line. That includes a culpable failure to plan for the immigration of more than one million people over the last generation, many with work permits issued by a political and bureaucratic system that lacked the will and foresight tools to provide the extra public goods required.
It was assumed the markets would look after that, but they didn’t and couldn’t. Why is the Department of Finance’s recent Future Forty scenario paper the first of its kind? Why was it not done 10 years ago? Would that not have helped focus attention on these gaps, acted upon now only after corporate interests complained? The existing centralised power system between political and bureaucratic leaders at the heart of government is demonstrably poor at initiating and managing large-scale projects.
This disconnect between political power, economic growth and public goods feeds democratic discontent, particularly among those who are thereby locked out of prosperity and wellbeing in rural and urban parts.
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It shows up in Irish politics. Political scientists such as Peter Mair and Ken Carty have charted fragmentation of the Irish party system, the declining proportion of votes for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael and the growth of independents.
Mair opened his now classic posthumous book Ruling the Void: The Hollowing of Western Democracy by saying: “The age of party democracy has passed. Although the parties themselves remain, they have become so disconnected from the wider society, and pursue a form of competition that is so lacking in meaning, that they no longer seem capable of sustaining democracy in its present form.”
Mair paid close attention to Ireland. In his last contribution to the MacGill summer school in 2011 he said that for historical reasons we don’t respect our state or feel we belong to it. Our stagnant politics are unaccountable through the Oireachtas and the gap is filled by special interests – churches, corporates, stakeholders. An “amoral localism” suffuses the political system, which disaggregates rather than unifies.
He proposed three reforms: change the electoral system; empower TDs and senators in the Oireachtas against a too dominant executive; and radically reform local government, as Denmark did so successfully.
In that clear light one progressive initiative of this Government deserves much more public and media attention: the report of the Local Democracy Taskforce and the forthcoming Government response to it. Set up last year, the taskforce consulted stakeholders widely on the structures, funding, functions and governance of local authorities. The replies are published, including those from political parties, along with a good thematic analysis and positive recommendations.
The proposals for reform go in the right direction to relocalise and redemocratise one of the most highly centralised states in Europe. That would certainly help reconnect Irish democracy to its now more complex society.
