Out of Ireland

Ireland has an election on Friday. LGM commenter MacK provides an overview of the Irish electoral system:

The system was devised at independence because of the existence of a sizeable minority – unionist, many protestant who in a straightforward first-past-the-post electoral system would be very unlikely to get an members elected to the Dáil.  It does mean that if there is a sizeable minority, 20-30% in any constituency, they will likely get representation – it also allows minority parties to exist, but limits fragmentation, you need to be able to get 20% plus or so.

The basic system is ranked choice voting (as it is known in the US) with multi-seat constituencies and a single transferable vote. A constituency has between 3 and 5 elected members or Teachta Dáil (TDs) and when you vote, you number candidates in order of preference 1, 2, 3, 4 … until you decide not to continue.  

At the count after voting a quota is set based on the number of valid ballots cast – so it it is 100,000 in a five seat constituency, a quota of 20,000 would result (quota = number of votes/number of seats.) If on the first count any particularly popular candidate (say a long service and effective TD) has exceeded the quota (people never nearly get the exact quota) that candidate’s surplus votes are redistributed to the voters’ second preferences – so say he got 25,000 – five thousand ballots are redistributed according to the next preference, and another count is made announced – maybe another candidate is elected. Once redistributing surplus votes has taken place, the lowest vote-getter is eliminated and their votes are redistributed again according to preference.  If someone is elected at this point – surplus votes are redistributed – and so-on and so-on.  It can take a lot of counts until you are down to 5 candidates, whereupon the last, even if he/she didn’t make the quota is deemed elected – it can take a day or two.

This system has a lot of impacts. First, most large parties will run more than one candidate per constituency, seeking to get a second seat. But this means that candidates of the same party are also in competition with one another. It eliminates the idea of a safe-seat for a candidate based on their party – they need to be the voters’ preferred candidate from their party. Parachuting a candidate into a safe seat by party central office works badly because the local alternative will usually win out. It also hurts extremists of any party, since much of the time there is a choice between candidates of the same party, plus, they want transfers from voters whose first preference was another candidate. It also creates a sort of voter-veto, i.e., not giving a party or a candidate any preferences at all – this happened historically to Sinn Féin who were not “transfer friendly” – so they might get 20-30% first preferences, but because they got few transfers, not get a second seat and not get past say 20-25% of the members in the Dáil. A final impact is that once elected, TDs from the same constituency or nearby constituencies form a sort of tacit coalition of those who want to be re-elected – they need to be seen to support positive things for their constituents, regardless of party, because they need to win the intra-party contest too.

Ireland has experienced an astonishing rate of social and economic change over the past 60 years, i.e. approximately the lifetime of the always interesting Fintan O’Toole, whose recent book on Irish history over those years is a fascinating study of that process.

Envious readers might wonder why Ireland needs to have an election at all. Can’t the politicians who have delivered these wonders simply be returned to office by acclamation? But the truth is that Ireland does not feel like a very happy place. Part of this is the frustration of fulfilled desires. Ireland has the two things its patriots dreamed of for centuries: political independence and economic prosperity. For a long time, we were an “if only” society — if only the English had not colonized us, if only we were not so poor, if only the church had not become so overweeningly powerful. Those six little letters covered a multitude of failings. They don’t anymore. Ireland’s problems today stem from the collective choices it has freely made for itself.

For just as the country acts as a showpiece for the upsides of extreme globalization, it also demonstrates the downsides. Ireland’s public services and infrastructure significantly lag its warp-speed economy, creating a place that feels somehow both overdeveloped and underdeveloped. And on its own, the globalized market economy does not produce the public goods necessary for a decent quality of life. Ireland may be awash with money, but its young people can no longer afford to buy homes; sky-high rents are making it impossible for many to live in the main cities of Dublin, Cork and Galway; homelessness and child poverty have risen; access to health care is uneven and uncertain; public transport and public schools are often overcrowded; physical infrastructure is seriously inadequate; and the pace of transition to a carbon-free economy has been painfully slow.

Contemporary Ireland seems, in economic terms, to represent a particularly striking example of the kind of situation that JK Galbraith described in the USA 65 years ago: a nation in which an explosion of private affluence sits uneasily with instances of public under-investment, and the squalor this can create as wealth inequality skyrockets.

And the growth of the Irish economy has been mind-boggling: real per capita GDP has increased more than ten-fold since 1960, meaning that Ireland has gone from a country that was then poorer than India is now, to one that is, measured in these terms, actually wealthier than the United States today.

Another statistic that amazed me when I read O’Toole’s book is that, despite a doubling of the population since 1960, much of this driven by immigration/globalization, Ireland still has a smaller population than it did in 1840. People toss the word genocide around rather loosely these days, but what the English did to the Irish in the 19th century certainly fits that term a lot more closely than many other purported examples.

As O’Toole points out, Ireland’s ability to finally overcome the depredations of both English colonialism and the particularly awful version of Catholicism that tormented that long-suffering people has brought with it it’s own set of very contemporary problems.

Out of Ireland have we come.
Great hatred, little room,
Maimed us at the start.
I carry from my mother’s womb
A fanatic heart.

Yeats, “Remorse For Intemperate Speech”