Independents in Irish party democracy

Liam Weeks

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780719099601
• eBook ISBN: 9781526116383
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Politique

This book examines the phenomenon of the independent politician, believed to be extinct in most political systems. It is very much alive and well in Ireland, and has experienced a considerable resurgence in recent years. Independents won a record number of seats in 2016 and had three ministers appointed to cabinet. This presence is very unusual from a comparative perspective, and there are more independents in the Irish parliament than the combined total in all other industrial democracies. The aim of this book is to explain this anomaly, how and why independents can endure in a democracy that is one of the oldest surviving in Europe and has historically had one of the most stable party systems.

1

Introduction

Independents

This is a study of mavericks, of the independent politicians who go it alone. They are the metaphorical equivalent of sheep who stray from the flock, who would rather discover fresh pastures than graze on their own. In most political systems, there are very few incentives to take such a deviant path. The few sheep that wander tend to be quickly picked off by the preying wolf that is the party system. In Ireland things are a bit different, however, as the maverick path does not imply political termination. Life outside of the flock can bring its rewards, and for some can be the rational path to pursue. This study is a detailed analysis of these independents, primarily of the factors that explain their presence and survival in the midst of one of the longest enduring party democracies in the world.

With this in mind, the result of the electoral count for the rural constituency of Kerry at the February 2016 Dáil (lower house of parliament) elections in Ireland would have seemed highly unusual to an international observer. Michael Healy-Rae, an independent candidate first elected to the Dáil in 2011, comfortably won a seat again with 20,378 first-preference votes, almost 26 per cent of the total valid constituency poll. This was the largest vote won by any of the 551 candidates in all of the forty constituencies at that Dáil election, and the fifth largest first-preference vote ever won at a general election in post-independence Ireland. That an independent was elected to national parliament was unusual enough from a comparative perspective; that he received the largest vote in the country was even more unusual; but perhaps the most unusual event of the night was the unprecedented election of his brother, Danny Healy-Rae, as an independent in the same constituency. Between them, these two brothers won almost two and a half electoral quotas in first preferences alone, a vote total that suggested had another member of the family run, he or she could also have been elected. Michael and Danny Healy-Rae continue a family tradition in politics, as their father, Jackie, also held a seat as an independent in the Dáil between 1997 and 2011. A third generation of this family entered politics in 2014, when Danny’s son, Johnny, was elected to the local council. Danny’s daughter, Maura, was later co-opted to the same council to take the seat her father had to vacate on his election to the Dáil in 2016. To many, the election of the Healy-Raes symbolises the enduring importance of localism and parish-pump politics in Ireland, where politicians are elected to deal with issues in their respective constituencies, and not because of their ideology, policy platforms or representation of social groups, as can be the practice in other countries. While some question the value of having a national parliament comprising such local politicians, Danny Healy-Rae made no bones on election night about where his or his brother’s priorities lay: ‘There’s been a lot of talk of representing the nation and that we’re not good for the nation, but the people of Kerry are part of the nation. And we’ll have to fight for those people and we make no apologies for that’ (Daly 2016).

Independents’ electoral success was not restricted to the Healy-Raes that February weekend. Of the 157 contested seats in the 2016 Dáil election, twenty-three were won by independents. Occupying almost one in six seats in the new Dáil, this was proportionally the highest level of elected independent representation in the national parliament of any established democracy since 1950. Aside from this electoral performance, what would have seemed additionally unusual to an international observer was the role many of these independents went on to play in the formation of the next government, a process which took over two months. With there being no clear winner of the election, these independent deputies were courted by the two largest parties: Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. This culminated in an unprecedented partnership minority government involving Fine Gael and a number of independents, supported from the outside by Fianna Fáil. Three independent TDs were appointed to cabinet, another made a ‘super-junior’ minister who could sit – but not vote – at cabinet, and two others were appointed junior ministers. Although non-party technocrats have participated in government in some Mediterranean democracies, it is highly unusual from an international perspective for an independent MP to be a member of cabinet. Independents also had unprecedented success at the Seanad (upper house of parliament) elections in April 2016, winning four seats on the vocational panels and five seats on the university panels. With the Taoiseach (prime minister) appointing another five independents to the Seanad, this meant they occupied fourteen of sixty seats, the largest ever number of independent senators in the house.

This influence wielded by independents both at the elections and in government would have seemed unusual to external observers because in most countries political competition at the national level is all about parties. Few politicians wander from the party path and, for those that do, there is rarely life outside the party. For example, at the same time as twenty-three independents were elected to the Dáil, across the other thirty-six industrial democracies there were only eighteen elected independents in total, sitting in just six parliaments.¹

This presence of independents in the Irish parliament as an unusual international outlier is not unique to the 2010s. Between 1945 and 2016, 3,130 TDs were elected to the Dáil, of whom 137 were independent (i.e. 4.4 per cent). This represents fifty-nine times the proportion that were elected during this period in Britain, thirty-two times the proportion that were elected in the United States, ten times the proportion that were elected in Canada, six times the proportion that were elected in Australia and seventy-seven times the proportion elected in New Zealand. These are a select range of democracies that have also had independent members of parliament in the same time period. There are not too many of these jurisdictions, as is detailed in Figure 1.1 which indicates the total number of elected independent parliamentarians across all industrial democracies since 1950. It is only in Japan that independents have experienced similar levels of electoral success as in Ireland. Even then, as is discussed in Chapter 3, the Japanese case is somewhat different because the genuine independence of these independents is questionable, since most of them originate in parties and join them again following their election.

Figure 1.1 Independents elected at general elections, 1950–2016.

Note: This chart indicates the total number of independents elected at general elections in each democracy since 1950. It does not include by-election victories. Only those democracies with independent MPs are included.

Figure 1.1 includes only those countries where independents have been elected to the lower house of national parliament, so what is evident from the inclusion of just twelve countries is that independents are a rare breed. In most democracies, independent candidacies are either not possible (because of the operation of closed list electoral systems that restricts elections to parties) or, where they are, support for them is negligible and they have never been elected (Brancati 2008). This comparative weakness of independents makes their significance in Ireland all the more puzzling. Coakley describes this presence as ‘the most distinctive phenomenon on the Irish electoral landscape’ (2010b, 28), and the aim of this book is to explain this puzzle – why are there independents in Ireland?

The political systems where independents are usually successful are those where party organisations are very weak or they are prohibited (Norris 2006, 91). Examples of the former are in some post-communist polities – for example, Kazakhstan and Ukraine – and small island states, particularly in the south Pacific, while examples of the latter are prevalent in the Arabian Gulf, where parties are seen as an unnecessary intermediary between the rulers and the ruled. The presence of independents in these systems, however, is more to do with their respective stages of development. They are not party democracies, and so by implication most politicians in these systems are not necessarily independents by positive choice; simply, in the absence of parties this is their de facto status. What makes the Irish case unusual is that it is one of the longest surviving continuous democracies with a stable party system, and yet independent parliamentarians have persisted as relevant political actors. The process whereby parties monopolise political representation was never completed in Ireland. This anomaly is the subject of this book.

This chapter comprises a general introduction to the topic of independents. It begins with a discussion as to the meaning of the concept, and what is understood by an independent for the purposes of this study. There then follows a rationale for a book on this topic, before the international and Irish experience of independents is briefly examined. The final section outlines the central premise of this study and its structure, detailing how the question of an independent presence can be explained. Before delving any further into this topic, the first issue to consider is: what is meant by an independent?

What is an independent?

The term ‘independent’ is itself an essentially contested concept whose meaning can vary across time, context and jurisdiction. This lack of uniformity does not help systematic and comparative analysis. While it is easy to describe what an independent is not – that is, not a party – a positive definition is a little bit more difficult. A necessary first step before defining an independent is to trace its evolution.

For some, a key question as to the meaning of ‘independent’ is: ‘independent’ of what (Sharman 2002, 53)? When a former independent candidate in Ireland took a court case in 2005 because he was not allowed to describe his political affiliation as ‘independent’ on the ballot paper (the choice is between ‘non-party’ or simply no description at all), the presiding judge struck down his claim on the grounds that ‘if a candidate became entitled to describe himself as “independent” I have no doubt the next step would be a claim to set forth, no doubt at some length, what he was “independent” of’ (Irish Times, 24 February 2005, 7). Typically, ‘independent’ has implied that a political candidate or politician is independent of parties. However, this has not always been the case. Before the evolution of parties in Britain into their current form in the nineteenth century, independence meant independent of the monarch and of the great families, and later, in the eighteenth century, independent of the government. In that pre-nineteenth century era, independence therefore implied that a politician had a sufficient level of financial resources, which meant that he neither had to kowtow to the aristocracy nor leave himself open to the corrupting influences of parliament (King-Hall 1951, 104). For this reason, before the emergence of the party as the principal organisational unit in the nineteenth century, independents had a laudable role in the House of Commons. While many professing independence ultimately supported either the Whigs or the Conservatives, this was an era when party was still little more than an ideological label; consequently, these MPs were independent both in terms of organisation and what motivated their stance in parliament.

The contemporary understanding of an independent is only as old as that of parties as a concept, because without parties it can be difficult to see of what such individuals are independent. It is therefore only with the emergence of parties that independence took on a clear identity. In the early years of parties, independence was seen as a virtue, primarily because the former – or more accurately their precursor, factions – were much reviled. The source of this animosity stemmed from the tendency of factions as mobilised groups to promote sectional interests to the detriment of national welfare (Sartori 2005, 3–5), a sentiment echoed in many political texts including, famously, by James Madison in The Federalist number ten (Hamilton et al. 2003, 46–51). As Belloni and Beller note, ‘party spirit was viewed as the antithesis of public spirit’ (1978, 4). In such a climate the ‘private’ members of parliament – the independents – were celebrated (Beales 1967, 3), because being independent was more than just a label; it was heralded as the highest state of being for any true political representative. It implied that an MP could make a decision based on his or her own personal judgement, which would be free of pressure from any external influence such as parties or interest groups.

When parliamentarians lacked the resources to remain independent of external influences (most notably party influences), and once they realised the advantages of working in unison on a more permanent basis, the modern, disciplined political party was born. With an acceptance that they were not detrimental to society, parties had taken a stranglehold upon political power in all Western democracies by the end of the nineteenth century, resulting in the rapid decline of the independent politician. With the emergence of the complexities associated with modern government, it became an accepted premise that parliamentary democracy could not survive without parties. The esteem with which independents were held took a steep nosedive as a result; they were seen as irresponsible fence-sitters, who avoided making the key political decisions. They became equated with a similar type of fictional independents – ‘the neutrals’ in Dante’s Inferno, who were the most hated creatures in hell because they refused to take a side in the battle between Lucifer and God (Alighieri 1996). It was only in candidate-centred systems that independents persisted, primarily in the Anglo-Saxon democracies. Even then, the vast majority attracted few votes and, as has been stated, independent electoral victories would become infrequent occurrences.

Today, an independent usually refers to someone who is neither a member of, nor affiliated to, any political party. However, this is not a sufficiently specific definition because there remains something intangible regarding the independence of such politicians (Ehin et al. 2013, 11). In many European countries, independents can run on lists and can form their own lists. There are also parties or movements of independents, and MPs who have been expelled from parties but have never contested an election as an independent. Aside from these institutional differences regarding the nature of independents, independence can also be thought of as a qualitative term that assesses the extent to which individual MPs follow the directives of an affiliate organisation, be it a political party or an interest group. For example, there are many cases in the US of party mavericks with their own personal machine who do and say what they want, largely independent of their party executive. These can be more independent in the qualitative sense than some independents nominated to run by interest groups, who may be little more than the latter’s mouthpiece. For this reason, some party MPs resent the label adopted by independents because it implies that they are somehow more virtuous. In a Dáil debate in the 1960s over whether independents could describe themselves as such on the ballot, Fine Gael TD Anthony Barry said: ‘the word independent always had for me a conn...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgments
• List of abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 A typology of independents
• 3 Independents’ electoral history
• 4 Independent parliamentarians
• 5 The independent voter
• 6 Independents and the electoral system
• 7 Independents and government
• 8 Why are there independents in Ireland?
• 9 Conclusion
• Appendix
• References
• Index