“The very way in which the ‘myth’ of representative democracy ‘legitimates’ state power in the name of the people can distract citizens from the realities of political power. It can suggest that since they all have the vote and use their votes with relatively equal weights, there must be in their society an equality in the distribution of power.”

But this is not to say that there is a better system, but the weaknesses inherent in representative democracy should be compensated for by adequate checks and balance, and for its citizens to do everything it can to avoid sectional interests dominating the policy dictated by Government. On the latter issue I think we’re failing at the moment, but certain something has to be done with regard to reform.

The reduction of the number of TDs has been suggested before and increasing regional autonomy would certainly allow us to escape the closed loop of parish pump politics. Its weird that a strong social democratic movement is almost completely absent in Ireland, and surely the way to develop it is through the reform of local government rather than trying, in the short term to cozy up to the bigger parties with the vain hope of somehow influencing their policy, when that policy is effective dictated solely by business interests ( business interests, I would add, that are not using an enlightened economic model that looks towards developing sustainable economic growth, but one – as we can see with property developers – that is interested only in making a quick buck).

I’m in two minds regarding the power of the media. Certainly it is influential, and when you see it so nakedly in the Sindo you have to admit that this onslaught of support for our anorak sporting Taoiseach is going to have some effect on the opinions of Sunday Mass goers, but it’s very nakedness means that it also easily dismissed even by those who read it regularly. On the media generally it seems that every one automatically presumes that various media outlets have an agenda, but this agenda, broadly speaking, is not coherent enough to be considered propagandist.

One can to easily presume that the majority of the population are minnows, just because we’re so smart, super-informed and copped on, but its more likely that when things are good they’re just not bothered with the details.

On the Kirby quote: virtually universal acquiescence in the present market-led orientation of the Irish state.. This is something that Labour failed to challenge and have paid the price for it. Why does it take a downturn to force politicians to admit that there is an alternative to the neo-liberal economic model that can produce sustainable economic growth?

WorldbyStorm, I almost vomited when I reread what I’d written about TDs in the Dail, but I thought if it produced such a reaction in me it has to stay in. Sorry about having it appear as a comment on CLR.

I think the EU is powerful in its ability to directly implement policy/action. The Services Directive is one example. The SSIA in Ireland was initiated because of EU had said that the Irish economy was overheating. But I’m getting most of my information about the EU – not that I’m against it, just wary of it – from the Perry Anderson article. This quote encapsulates the point I was trying to make:

“Since the Treaty of Maastricht, the Union has not by any means been confined to regulatory issues of scant interest to the population at large. It now has a Central Bank, without even the commitment of the Federal Reserve to sustain employment, let alone its duties to report to Congress, that sets interest rates for the whole Eurozone, backed by a Stability Pact that requires national governments to meet hard budgetary targets. In other words, determination of macroeconomic policy at the highest level has shifted upwards from national capitals to Frankfurt and Brussels. What this means is that just those issues that voters usually feel most strongly about – jobs, taxes and social services – fall squarely under the guillotines of the Bank and the Commission. The history of the past years has shown that this is not an academic matter. It was pressure from Brussels to cut public spending which led Juppé’s government to introduce the fiscal package that detonated the great French strike-wave of the winter of 1995, and brought him down. It was the corset of the Stability Pact that forced Portugal into slashing social benefits and plunging the country into a steep recession in 2003. The government in Lisbon did not survive either. The notion that today’s EU comprises little more than a set of innocuous technical rules, as value-neutral as traffic lights, is a fatuity.”

Add to that the neo-liberal thinking that is at the core of EU economic thinking, the appointment of Barroso as President of the European Commission, the most powerful arm of EU government and the almost complete acquiesce to US foreign policy and you have plenty for the Left to worry about.

But there’s no point in being paranoid about it.

I only saw one or two of those Century of Self documentaries but they were excellent. The problem with theories that everyone is being manipulated is that no one thinks of the alternative: not being manipulated. What would life be like if you had to think about every element of your life before you did it? Vapid consumerism has a plus side you know

Bill Hicks also hit the nail on the head, “Go back to your homes people, watch american gladiators, there’s nothing out here for you to worry about”. The masses have very few burning issues, so keep em entertained and fed and supplied with iPods and they will keep toeing the line. Unfortunately this is not what great civilisations or economies are built of. The system is being manipulated and going to seed.

Basically putting economy first meant putting business first, which was never going to sit well with the left. Nevertheless I personally think that Globalisation would have happened one way or another and co-operation at an EU level is critical for small members in order to stand a chance in the game of big players.

But the big difficulty is as discussed above the democratic deficit. This will be a difficult problem to fix because any solution necessarily means more centralisation of EU power (what good electing an EU foreign minsiter for example if she has nothing to do!), i.e deeper integration. And more integration will be a difficult sell to among national peoples whose attitude to Europe ranges from indifference to paranoia! The enthusiasm of our Eastern neighbours is already wearing off!.

I wanted to make a comment about the resistance to reform in Ireland. There is another factor - the influence business elites. Surely oh surely the last thing they want is a vigorous, robust democracy with people deeply engaged at all levels. For they know that the result would be beefed up redisributive measures. The entire political class have been co-opted. Their ideology is deeply pro-business, which is good if proportionate and not all consuming, but bad when it is an end in itself. Such is the buy-in to this creed that the first criterion that all policy must pass is will this hurt business. Since more and better democracy probably would fail, it is a non-starter.

Here is a quote I thought rang true, from Peader Kirby’s “Celtic Tiger in Distress:

The Irish State tends to institutional and policy problems by simply adding new structures and policies to the old while avoiding the underlying need for coherent reform. Despite much talk, the Irish state still faces the tests of fundamentally reforming local government, modernising the political system, and developing a more coherent policy to address social inequality and disadvantage. The attenuation of politics under the Celtic Tiger and the severe limitations of the partnership process have had the effect of demobilisting dissident sectors of Irish society and have created the impression of virtually universal acquisescence in the present market-led orientation of the Irish state.

On the post I’m particularly struck by your thoughts on the nature of the EU. I’m less convinced that the EU is powerful in direct implementation of policy/action. But I think that it has managed to operate as a grand narrative which because of its seeming banality allows it to shape national discourses to a much greater degree than is often thought. That can be a good thing, as seen by the helter skelter enthusiasm of former Eastern Bloc nations to join. But it can also be a very worrying thing since it can push agendas (and I’m thinking here of quite bizarre attempts to engender competitive markets in various areas) that are highly dubious to those of us on the left.

“Le tableau que présente la société américaine est couvert d’une couche démocratique, sous laquelle on voit de temps en temps percer les
anciennes couleurs de l’aristocratie” Alexis de Tocqueville De La Democratie en Amerique”

So according to Tocqueville “The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colours breaking through“. For Ireland, substitute vested interests for aristocracy. Voters go the poles, express their preference, the percentages tip up and down, but nothing changes. (In Ireland, not even the government changes - our opposition haven’t won an election now in a quarter of a century). But even if the government changes - nothing else does. The same vested interests retain their position of privelege and all major decisions go in their favour - tax breaks, closed profressions, or at a more mundane level, non-performance wage rises for public servants.

That local issue are the determining factor in getting TDs elected is no surprise. In my view there are at least two parts to the problem. First, as you say, there is really no local democracy. Therefore the TD is the de facto local councillor who deals with trivial issues from roadside kerbs to college grant applications. If there were councillors with real power this would not be necessary. But even if councillors had the power to deal with all local issues, the TD would continue to cover the same ground because he or she is more powerful and would want to protect their support base by seeming to take local action. So the second necessary change is breaking or diluting the link between the TD and the constituency. A modest proposal would simply be to vastly increase constituency size, say triple it, so that TDs simply counldn’t get an electoral return on time invested in local issues. This would entail reducing the number of TDs or, if roughly current numbers were required for effective committees etc, then we could have a party list system to add to the constituency TDs. But never mind the details, the essence of effective national politics is to sever, or at least cut back, the links between the national parliamentarians and the parish pump.

Regarding local government itself, some would argue it cannot work in Ireland because we have no tradition of real local government. That argument doesn’t stand up. Irish participation in voluntary organisations is very high. People run schools, volunteer for charities, run tidy town committees, etc. In short, people doget involved. Why then would they not be willing to get involved, as paid and voluntary local officials with real power. And if they had tax raising powers there would at least be a link between voter choices and the quality of local service.

Another issue is democratic deficit and sovereignty creep to other institutions outside government. The EU was mentioned in the post. But there are of course more destinations for the power which has leaked from democracy. First, the media. Without doubt the media now has massive power. We’ve all heard the phrase ‘power without responsibility’. It rings true. Who elected the shameless pro-FF Sunday Indo? Or remember the 1997 pre-election day editorial in the Indo ‘payback time’? Not to mention the importance of editorial lines in RTE or other TV channels.

Furthermore there is that growing, diverse, unquantifiable, and controversial thing called corporate power. Whether we agree or disagree, governments have been removed from the centre of many institutions or corporations which enjoy considierable power. From Airlines to postal service to, in future probably all utilities and in Ireland increasingly provision of health and education. This has seen a huge transfer of power to agents outside the reach of electoral control. And we should not be deluded into thinking that the consumer has won the power over these institutions that voters once had (or should have had)!

People often throw their hands up and say that with Globalisation power is sucked out of our control anyway. But this argument can be turned on its head. The best shield against Globalisation, the best way to shape our adaption to it, must come through enhanced democracy - at national and EU level. To share the pain and gain of globalisation what better mechanism than a political system based on a concept of democracy that is both broad and deep, flexible yet robust, and which is fair and inlcusive.