Democratic Revolution: Evaluating Electoral Reform in an Old Democracy

This paper will assess the implementation and consequences of the electoral reform programme of the Irish government over the period 2011-2016. Electoral reform became a minor but important part of the discussion in the lead up to the 2011 general election in Ireland. All of the political parties included policy proposals in their party manifestoes and there was considerable mobilisation on the issue with civil society groups, business leaders and the media putting forward reform plans. Despite this apparent widespread activity, it must be acknowledged that the reform campaign remained at the level of an elite conversation. Distilling down the detail of the proposals, the shared goals were lofty and promised nothing less than a transformation of electoral politics. Gender quotas, new political finance regulations and an independent election management body were among the reform proposals. Ireland had few serious street protests or demonstrations over the crisis years and the 2011 election was described as its ballot box revolution, with the newly elected government promising a democratic revolution once in office. However, the revolution ran aground and electoral reform returned to the agenda in 2016 albeit with less prominence. The paper has three objectives. First, it will track the emergence and reasons for the electoral campaign drawing on opinion poll evidence, party manifestoes and data from the political reform civil society campaign. Second, it will review the electoral reform content of the Programme for Government and assess the implementation of the main commitments. Informed by Bowler and Donovan (2013), the third section of the paper will evaluate the extent to which the electoral reforms have delivered enhanced electoral integrity. Data from the 2011 and 2016 waves of the electoral integrity audit of Ireland will be used to provide insights into elite evaluations and data from the Irish National Election Studies of 2011 and 2016 will be used to determine the impact of electoral reforms on voter trust and confidence in the electoral process. At elite level, the debate around electoral reform is now marred by disappointment and disaffection and mindful of this, the paper will conclude with some tentative lessons for other established democracies engaging in wide ranging electoral reform.