The Irish Response to Austerity

From the beginning, the Irish policy regime was essentially fiscal liberal (Kirby, 2007; Jacobsen, 1994; O’Connell and Rottman, 1992) and the primary ambition of senior state officials was to ensure that it remained so (Lee, 1989). Added to this, partition of the island left an unusual cleavage structure of support for emerging Irish political parties – one where a single dominant and populist party, Fianna Fail, was able to win almost equal shares of support from all classes and maintain political hegemony for years to come. It is in this context that ‘acquiescence’ to contemporary austerity should be understood. Austerity is not new in Ireland: according to Drudy and Collins (2011: 351) ‘the first four decades after independence could, by any standards, be regarded as a period of austerity’. The outcome of the 2011 general elections suggest a potential for change, where a space for left politics is now more clearly evident. The purpose of this paper is to examine that space and those actors within it, in an attempt to map out the wider institutional ramifications of the Euro crisis and austerity politics in Ireland. Oriented in historical institutionalism, the study will avail of primary interview data with left parties, politicians and activists in an attempt to better understand whether and where we may mark a new critical juncture in our understanding of the Irish party system in particular and Irish political culture more broadly.