Eoin O'Malley

The Power of Prime Ministers: Results of an Expert Survey

Prime ministers are self-evidently important actors in the politics of parliamentary democracies. While there has been an ongoing debate about prime ministerial power in the political science literature, progress has been slow in a debate dating from the 1960s. This lack of progress is because of two connected factors. One is the lack of a theoretical framework to study prime ministerial power. A framework is less likely to be developed because of the lack of data on which hypotheses could be tested. This article reports in detail the methodology and results of an expert survey that was conducted to measure prime ministerial power. These data will provide a significant resource for the future study of prime ministers, cabinets, and the core executive.

Politics with Hidden Bases: Unearthing the Deep Roots of Party Systems:

The research presented here uses a novel method to show that contemporary party systems may originate much further back than is usually assumed or might be expected—in reality many centuries. Using data on Ireland, a country with a political system that poses significant challenges to the universality of many political science theories, by identifying the ancestry of current party elites we find ethnic bases for the Irish party system arising from population movements that took place from the 12th century. Extensive Irish genealogical knowledge allows us to use surnames as a proxy for ethnic origin. Recent genetic analyses of Irish surnames corroborate Irish genealogical information. The results are particularly compelling given that Ireland is an extremely homogeneous society and therefore provides a tough case for our approach.

Religion and democratization in Northern Ireland: is religion actually ethnicity in disguise?

Few parts of Europe see as much religious observance as Northern Ireland, and fewer places in Europe have religion as one of the major cleavages on which politics seems to rest. In this article we argue that although religion is an important identifier, it acts as a reinforcer of ethno-national differences rather than as an intrinsically important difference itself. Religious differences while often symbolically important rarely emerge as points of real conflict in Northern Irish politics. It has had little impact on the ongoing process of democratization in Northern Ireland. We review an array of evidence which supports this conclusion. However, we find that religion still has a power to divide and so makes a political settlement less likely than an accommodation.

Chieftains Delivering: Testing Different Measures of “Pork” on an Irish Data Set of Discretionary Sports Grants

Abstract Distributive spending by a state is often thought to have an electoral connection, and the work on pork-barrel politics whereby spending is geographically targeted is extensive. However, there has been mixed empirical support for the two main hypotheses: (a) that it is targeted at marginal constituencies; or (b) that it goes to party strongholds. Using new data on discretionary sports grant spending in Ireland we offer and test a complementary hypothesis that focuses on the responsible minister as primary decision-maker. We find that the grants are targeted at the responsible ministers constituency. Moreover we test these using three measures of the dependent variable: euro value of the grants, success rate of grant applications and the number of grants allocated per constituency. Our hypothesis is supported in all three models, something we argue gives greater credence to the result.

Turn Out to Turf Out?: Effects of Changes in Election Participation Rates on Election Outcomes

Participation in elections varies throughout Europe, and while politicians frequently claim that high turnout suits them, it cannot be true for all parties. Some authors have claimed that there is a positive correlation between turnout and support for left-wing parties; others have said that increased turnout aids challengers. Both these hypotheses have received support using data on the US, but evidence from data on Europe is less convincing. This article assesses these hypotheses and tests them using different data. While there is some support for the challenger hypothesis using data on the UK, the partisan hypothesis receives no support, probably because it was mis-specified in earlier tests.

Explaining Media Framing of Election Coverage: Bringing in the Political Context

Media coverage of elections in Europe and North America has increasingly focused on the horse-race and the campaign as a game rather than a policy debate. This is often explained by the changes in media pressures. It may also reflect the narrowing of policy space between left and right and the comparative prosperity enjoyed in Europe and North America. But the relevance of politics varies. The global economic crisis might have led to an increased interest in policy among voters and focus on it by media. Ireland experienced both extremes of boom and crisis between the late 1990s and 2011. The Irish case allows us to test the impact of the crisis on media framing of elections. This article uses original data from Ireland’s last three elections, with a research design that holds other pertinent variables constant. We find empirical support for the theoretical expectation that the context of the election affects the relative focus on campaign or horserace versus substantive policy issues.

The impact of the economic crisis on media framing: evidence from three elections in Ireland

Media coverage of elections in Europe and North America has increasingly focused on the campaign as a game rather than a policy debate. This is often explained by the changes in media pressures. It may also reflect the narrowing of policy space between left and right and the comparative prosperity enjoyed in Europe and North America. But the relevance of politics varies. The global economic crisis might have led to an increased interest in policy among voters and focus on it by media. Ireland experienced both extremes of boom and crisis between the late 1990s and 2011. The Irish case allows us to test the impact of the crisis on media framing of elections. This article uses original data from the three most recent national elections in Ireland, with a research design that holds other pertinent variables constant. We find empirical support for the theoretical expectation that the context of the election affects the relative focus on campaign or horserace versus substantive policy issues.

What’s in a name? Using surnames as data for party research

We present a novel method which can be used to show that contemporary party systems may originate much further back than is usually assumed or might be expected – in reality many centuries. Using data on Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, jurisdictions with party systems that differ significantly, one of which poses significant challenges to the universality of many political science theories, we show how using surnames as markers can confirm the obvious explanation for the Northern Ireland party system and then propose a novel explanation for the Irish party system. We suggest that surnames could be an objective way of studying migration patterns and ethnic heritage which may be important in explaining party systems.

The Two Types of Ulster Unionism: Testing an Ethnic Explanation for the Unionist/Loyalist Divide

Whereas there is an obvious ethnic explanation for the deep divisions between the nationalist and unionist communities in Northern Ireland, Ulster Protestants are often treated as a uniform group. It has been noted that there are more than two ethnic traditions in Northern Ireland; academics have distinguished between British Unionists and Ulster Loyalists. This is also linked to a divide in party support within the Protestant community. These two groups, it has been suggested, may have ethnic or religious bases derived from different migrations to Ulster in the last 400 years. The proposition is tested on surname data that have been shown elsewhere to allow us to see through the ‘fog of history’. Evidence is found to support the ethnic explanation for divisions between the nationalist and unionist communities, but the ethnic explanation for the divisions within unionism is rejected. This leaves a continuing puzzle for scholars as to what explains the two traditions in Northern Irelands Protestant community.

Media and campaign effects on vote choice at national elections in Europe : a review of a multilingual research landscape

This article reviews the empirical research literature on campaign and media effects on vote choice at national elections in European countries for the post-World War II period. Particular efforts are undertaken to obtain a comprehensive picture by including publications in many different languages. With regard to the amount of research, but also the topics addressed, the survey reveals considerable differences between countries. Studies of campaign effects have focused on the temporal dynamics of campaigns, on the modes of campaign communications (such as personal contacts at the local level, advertising on TV and in the press or online social media) and on certain aspects of its content. Research on media effects has explored the role of partisan bias and certain topical categories of news (climate of opinion, issue and candidate coverage) as well as specific new media formats, notably televised candidate debates and vote advice applications (VAA). Overall, the review reveals that there is little in the way of an integrated and consolidated body of campaign and media effects research on national elections in Europe. While political communication research increasingly acknowledges the potential importance of news media and political parties’ electioneering for voting behaviour, there appears as of yet to be little convergence regarding approaches and research findings. Particularly striking is the degree to which research questions are guided by national institutional contexts.