Fiona Buckley

Ballot Paper Photographs and Low-Information Elections in Ireland

In an attempt to facilitate greater voting participation in the Republic of Ireland, photographs of candidates have been placed on the ballot paper for local, national and European elections. Limited research undertaken in advance of the implementation of the photograph policy advised that the measure would assist people with literacy problems. However, social psychology research has long demonstrated that people are willing to make considerable judgements about a person when shown a photograph. The advent of ballot paper photographs allows candidates to be evaluated on the basis of their appearance. This article will explore how photographs could have become a factor in voter decision-making. Providing additional knowledge to encourage greater participation and engagement has introduced a possible new level of superficiality into the voter decision-making process.

Women and Politics in Ireland: The Road to Sex Quotas

This article tells the story of how and why legislative candidate sex quotas, more commonly known as gender quotas, were adopted by the Irish Parliament in July 2012. In so doing, it reviews both internal party equality strategies and external party influences. Tracing party data over a two-decade period, the article shows that parties have adopted a range of strategies, in line with their ideological orientation, to address womens political under-representation. For the most part, however, these strategies have been rhetorical and promotional in nature, and have not resulted in significant gains for women in electoral politics. To understand how support for gender quotas was secured, Krooks analytical framework for the adoption of gender quotas is employed, and the conditions favouring the introduction of quotas in Ireland are identified. The article finds that the coming together of a constellation of pressures, notably a political reform discourse, the mobilisation of civic society groups and elite support, facilitated the adoption of legislative candidate sex quotas in 2012, a legislative outcome that could not have been predicted some years earlier.

Women and the Election

As the results of the 2011 general election flooded in on count day, it quickly transpired that significant changes to the Irish political landscape were afoot. Excited commentators could not resist using words such as ‘historic’, ‘transformative’ and ‘revolution’ to describe the unfolding drama. The Irish electorate had unleashed vengeance on its political masters and in the process had ensured that the composition of the 31st Dail would be very different from that of its predecessors. However, one constant remained — the low number of women elected to Dail Eireann.

Is Local Office a Springboard for Women to Dáil Éireann

Previous research has found the single transferable vote electoral system is relatively friendly to women candidates. Despite this, female representation in the Irish Parliament remains substantially lower than in most other democracies. Drawing on pipeline theory and localism, we assess the impact of local officeholding on the success of male and female major party candidates in the 2007 and 2011 Irish general elections. We find previous experience in local office is a key springboard to higher office for men and women, and when women serve in local government, the likelihood of election increases significantly.

Politics and Gender on the Island of Ireland: The Quest for Political Agency

Women’s political agency is not a recent phenomenon in Ireland. As a decade of historical commemorations on the island gets underway, we are reminded of the efforts of women’s rights campaigners during that time. ‘For men and women equally the rights of citizenship; from men and women equally the duties of citizenship’ declared Isabella Tod, unionist and feminist, in 1875. Tod’s words were an inspiration and a guiding principle for feminist activists in Ireland in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The power of female collective agency at that time brought about votes for women. Tod and her compatriots believed that this fundamental citizenship right would enable women to take their rightful place alongside men in public affairs. A century on, the quest for formal and substantive gender equality continues. ‘Politics and Gender on the Island of Ireland: The Quest for Political Agency’ brings together a collection of articles concerned with uncovering the marginalised experiences of women in modern politics on the island of Ireland and details recent efforts to challenge the masculinised status quo. The term ‘political agency’ refers to the extent to which women feel enabled to make claims upon democratic politics, the state and political institutions and, in doing so, shape political outcomes. There are a number of areas in which women as institutional and extra-institutional actors today search for greater recognition of their claims to representation, equality and human rights, notably political parties, parliament, executives, courts and civil society. In exploring the relationship between women, the state and democratic politics on the island of Ireland today, ‘gender’ is treated as a category of analysis and a process of change. Understanding gender as a category recognises that organisations institutionalise definitions of masculinity, constructing gender cultures and defining gender-

Women and the Election: Assessing the Impact of Gender Quotas

This chapter analyses the impact of gender quotas on the selection and election of women in the 2016 general election. It begins by reviewing the gendered recruitment and candidate selection plans of political parties as they implemented gender quotas. This is followed by a review of women’s candidate selection, identifying the challenges and controversies that emerged as parties set about reaching the 30 per cent gender threshold. Attention is given to the election campaign to identify the presence, if any, of a gendered dimension to campaign issues. Looking at women’s electoral performance indicates that gender quotas were successful in enhancing women’s electoral prospects. The chapter concludes by profiling the women elected and suggesting there is still room for improvement.

WILL LEGISLATIVE GENDER QUOTAS INCREASE FEMALE REPRESENTATION IN IRELAND? A FEMINIST INSTITUTIONALISM ANALYSIS

Informed by insights from feminist institutionalism, this article considers the effect of various aspects of the Irish political system on womens candidate selection and election, and discusses the extent to which the new gender quota law will be facilitated by these processes. In studying Ireland the article highlights a relatively under-studied case in the comparative literature on gender and politics. It also contributes to the burgeoning field of feminist institutionalism research by examining the mechanisms surrounding female candidate recruitment, selection and election to assess the likely impact of gender quotas on womens political representation in Ireland. Taking Irelands relatively unique PR-STV electoral system as the primary institutional context, we argue that the electoral system interacts with cultural factors to determine female candidacy opportunities and suggest that the biggest challenge to the effective implementation of legislative gender quotas in Ireland are informal mechanisms such as masculinised party cultures, societal gendered legacies and pre-existing informal rules surrounding incumbency and localism. However, we advise if party leaders and selectorates are willing to fully embrace gender quotas and integrate them into their candidate nomination processes, there is evidence to suggest that this will have a positive effect on increasing womens political representation in Ireland.

The Irish legislative gender quota: The first election

Abstract In 2012 legislative gender quotas were introduced as part of the Fine Gael/Labour coalition government’s political reform agenda. The legislation specifies that payments to political parties ‘shall be reduced by 50 per cent, unless at least 30 per cent of the candidates whose candidatures were authenticated by the qualified party at the preceding general election were women and at least 30 per cent were men’. The 30 per cent gender threshold came into effect at the 2016 general election. Research demonstrates that gender quotas work to increase women’s political descriptive representation, but to do so, political parties must engage with them in ‘goodwill’, be ‘wellintentioned’ or place women in ‘winnable seats’. This article examines if this was the case at the 2016 general election. Using statistics, as well as drawing from interviews with party strategists, the article assesses the impact of gender quotas on women’s candidate selection and election. We conclude that parties did embrace the spirit of the gender quota law but resistance remains.

Ballot Paper Design: Evidence from an Experimental Study at the 2009 Local Elections

Abstract The overriding principle of ballot design is that it should not confer any a priori advantage to one candidate over another. Ballot format should not determine or condition an election outcome. Yet, there is a sizeable body of evidence which demonstrates that in many circumstances the design of ballot papers and voting machines contravenes the normative assumption of electoral neutrality. In this article, we look at the impact of ballot paper design at local elections in the Republic of Ireland (hereafter Ireland). The article uses data from an experimental election study conducted at the local elections in Ireland in 2009. Overall the study finds some evidence of a primacy effect and it also demonstrates that candidates located in the middle of the ballot face a challenge as they receive the lowest vote shares of all candidates across the four replica ballots. This mid-table obscurity remains even when party affiliation is known. Thus, it can be argued that candidates placed in such positions incur a disadvantage. To neutralise this effect, the article concludes with a recommendation that a system of random ordering of ballot positions across ballot papers should be implemented so as to ensure that each candidate appears at each ballot position on an equal number of times.

Democratic revolution? Evaluating the political and administrative reform landscape after the economic crisis

Upon winning the general election in February 2011, Taoiseach elect Enda Kenny spoke of a ‘democratic revolution’. Within weeks, a programme for government was agreed between Fine Gael and Labour, promising to ‘radically reform an out-dated system of administration’ and determining to ‘change’ and ‘renew’ the political system. Much was made of the new government’s political and administrative reform plans. But how many of these reform plans were delivered? How effective were these plans in bringing about change and renewal to a political and administrative system found seriously wanting as the financial crash unfolded? And as Ireland emerges from recession, has anything really changed? These are the questions that guide this collection of articles. This special issue brings together contributions from some of the most eminent scholars of Irish politics to assess the extent to which the promises of political and administrative reform were delivered in the