Search

Ireland is among a small group of countries which make increasing use of referendums. The state has an extensive written constitution which can only be changed by a national referendum vote. In its original draft, the constitution contained detailed clauses on the legal and political architecture of the state, social policies informed by conservative Catholic social thinking, a notional claim to the territory of Northern Ireland and an expansive interpretation of sovereignty. As elements of the constitution became outdated, referendums were necessitated to modernise the document; in addition, Ireland’s membership of the European Union is especially noteworthy in requiring a large number of referendums since 1973 (see chapters by Svensson, Laffan and Mendez and Mendez elsewhere in this volume). The focus of this chapter is on constitutional referendums dealing with aspects of social policy. It utilises two recent referendums to highlight key issues and implications in the conduct of referendum votes. The marriage referendum introduced marriage equality in 2015 and in 2018 the abortion referendum liberalised the provision of abortion services.

Documenting the coverage of the campaign in traditional and social media, this chapter provides a particular focus on Sinn Fein, which ran a vigorous social media campaign and provided the narrative of ‘change’ that dominated election messaging. This chapter demonstrates that Fine Gael received a disproportionate share of coverage in the traditional media relative to its vote share, a finding explained by the party’s central role in the outgoing government. Sinn Fein was the dominant actor in social media, with the party and its senior politicians generating a much more significant footprint on Twitter and Facebook than its rivals. Electioneering—which includes party politics, election strategy and campaigning—accounted for 51 per cent of all articles in news media, while housing and the pension age were the issues covered most prominently.

The 2007 financial crisis and consequent programme of austerity brought deep disruption to Irish politics and exasperated public hostility towards mainstream politics and so-called elites. As the 2016 Irish General Election marked a historic low in support for established parties, this chapter examines the extent to which Irish news media inflamed populist and anti-political sentiment. Within the context of intensified mediatization (Mazzoleni, Mediatization of Politics. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2014) and widespread disaffection with political institutions, we expect to find that particular types of media, specifically tabloid and new digital media, enable anti-elite populist messaging by reflecting a higher tendency towards strategic game frames and personalization. However, we find that although the strategic game frame dominates coverage, only 2 per cent of stories reference any form of elitism and only 12 per cent manifest a definite populist rhetoric. These findings are discussed in terms of the prevailing values of professional journalism norms in Irish media.

This chapter describes how the election outcome marks an historic low in the fortunes of the traditional parties as the system has become very fragmented as all the traditional parties have recorded support close to or at low points in a historical context. The system is becoming ‘de-institutionalised’. The chapter goes on to consider the significance of the election result and governmental outcome for the balance of power between government and parliament, one that in a comparative context has historically been weighted very firmly against the parliament. Reforms promised or in place together with the new political realities could lead to more ‘consensual’ politics as defined by Lijphart, but that will depend on how all parties decided to operate this new system.