Abstract
If the 2011 Irish general election was indeed the earthquake described in the sub-title of Gallagher and Marsh’s book, the damage to the Fianna Fáil party – and the country – had been felt through a series of foreshocks in the preceding year. The election had been called early as the Fianna Fáil–Green coalition government imploded in the spiralling national economic crisis. Gary Murphy’s introductory chapter manages to encapsulate the GUBU moments (‘grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented’ – a phrase coined in response to Irish political scandal) that fuelled the government’s collapse. It also chronicles the errors and anecdotes that will be overlooked by history but which almost certainly affected people’s decisions in the polling booth. The Green Party leader and minister woken from his sleep by Gardaí (police) to be alerted to the impending bank guarantee decision, the former minister falling asleep during his party’s manifesto launch, the sound of shuffling paper over the airwaves as Gerry Adams searches his briefing notes to respond to a radio interview question on the economy.…The coverage of such incidents in Murphy’s chapter and the book as a whole enriches its analysis. It also helps ensure that the book depicts a memorably entertaining election by being an appropriately engaging read from start to finish.
As well as detailed accounts of the record-breaking (see p. 142) election itself, the book provides expert and accessibly written analysis of the intricate web of political and sociological threads that made it such. Leahy’s chapter reminds us of the enormously low levels of trust that Irish voters had come to have in their politicians (on a par with Romania and Nigeria) (p. 75) and enlightens us as to the various strategies employed by the parties to reinvigorate interest and engagement against a background of disillusion and, to no small degree, disgust. One such cause is encapsulated in Reidy’s point (in her chapter on candidate selection) regarding the sense of entitlement that some candidates had towards the party as well as towards the voters in a long-held constituency. Fianna Fáil was, she argues, particularly prone to such attitudes.
Leahy also highlights the role played by American political consultants in advising Fine Gael strategists, which illustrates just one of the ways in which national politics in Ireland is not quite as locally grounded as it used to be. Also, taking a new significance in the 2011 election was the role of online campaigning. Wall and Sudulich’s chapter summarizes the implications of this well. Through forms of digital propaganda, party leaders were made into ‘automatons’ whose slick messages could be personalized by supporters and shared with friends, or which could, should the whim so take a voter, be moved around a 2D platform game on the party’s website.
Notwithstanding the new media elements of the election, other chapters serve to remind the reader just how crucial the material and physical elements of campaigning remain: the leaflets, the posters, and the hands to knock on doors. The candidates’ own reports particularly emphasize the role played by family, friends and local networks, not to mention pamphleteering at the church gates. These reports from candidates – successful and unsuccessful, (in)famous and relatively unknown – are a welcome inclusion. Located halfway through the book, their reminiscences of key moments and experiences of their campaigns form a perfect intermission between the chapters addressing the lead-up to the election and its conduct, and those which analyse its fallout.
Such analyses are expert and comprehensive. Gallagher’s chapter provides detailed breakdown of the results and what they meant for party fortunes, while Sinnott and McBride bring to the fore the importance of the PR-STV system for shaping patterns of party choice. Marsh and Cunningham consider the importance of the ‘anything but Fianna Fáil’ vote for the success of Fine Gael and Labour and conclude that, although Fianna Fáil will be slow to recover, support for the coalition parties is far from secure.
As we know from the fate of the Fianna Fáil–Green government, the strength of the coalition depends heavily on its internal cohesion. Eoin O’Malley considers the dynamics behind the government formation to reveal a relatively smooth path towards common ground for Labour and Fine Gael. This was aided and necessitated by briefings from senior officials on the details of Ireland’s fiscal straits during inter-party negotiations. It was also helped by the fact that, according to Suiter and Farrell’s analysis of manifestos, the policies of Fine Gael and Labour had already become close, as they had moved perceptibly towards the centre (from opposite starting points), while Fianna Fáil had headed towards the right.
Concerning the coalition’s eventual ministerial line-up, O’Malley notes the relative absence of women and this is further elaborated by Buckley and McGing, who are careful to demonstrate the importance of women for the local health of Irish political parties despite enduring inequality in their share of power and representation. Some cause for hope may be found in Seanad Éireann, whose 30 percent female participation rate is twice that of the Dáil – an advance partly attributable, according to John Coakley (in his chapter on the Seanad election), to the response of party leaders to criticisms of male dominance in the cabinet.
The editing of the book has been done proficiently, with cross-references to other chapters throughout for further elaboration of related points or events. In addition, the meticulously detailed tables, figures and appendices will allow students to use the book as a further resource to stimulate their own analyses of the election and of Irish politics more generally. And well might they want to; this was an earthquake that not only saw the electoral collapse of Fianna Fáil but also shook the very foundations of Irish democracy. As the late lamented Peter Mair writes in the book’s masterly concluding chapter, the election encapsulates a real ‘failure of representation’. In the wider context of economic crisis and EU/IMF conditionalities, Irish political leaders have increasingly lost the capacity to either respond to voters’ demands or to meet their interests. The Irish people may have thrown out the governing party ‘in drama, sound and fury’ (p. 296), but they still find themselves powerless to transform government policy.