Proportional Misrepresentation

There’s probably a regular cycle of denunciations of the Republic’s electoral system but that doesn’t mean we should shy away from another one. The basic symptoms are well known: despite a long-term downward trend in its voting support, Fianna Fail has been able to maintain a grip on power because of a splintered opposition and a more stable core vote than the big opposition parties. And the culprit is multi-seat constituencies with the single transferable vote. So while there’s not much new to say, it is interesting to consider a more academic perspective on the problem, recently offered by UCD economist Frank Barry in a paper accompanying the most recent Economic and Social Research Institute outlook for the economy. Barry discusses the problems under the heading of “governance” — though it will come as news to those used to Ireland’s high ranking in global governance indicators (such as from the Heritage Foundation) that the country has governance problems. But it does and the paper is useful in explaining why we should worry about it — because one sometimes gets a sense that the public views political scandal and buffoonery as mostly harmless entertainment, not something that imposes real economic costs. The paper explains Ireland’s growth prospects as those of a regional economy; economic booms usually run out when the country runs out of workers, but as a small country with a huge pool of potential workers abroad willing and able to return home, that’s not an issue for Ireland. But it has to be worth their while to come back, and this is where the cost of living in Ireland comes in, a big determinant of which is the cost of housing. Yet, have a pint everytime you hear an actual policy proposal to address housing costs in the election campaign — you’ll stay sober.

In fact, the perverse genius of Irish politics is to avoid debate on key determinants of how Irish people live. Barry runs through the problems. First, planning. You can see it as you drive around; Irish housing policy emphasises low-rise dispersed development, a jig-saw of housing estates and undeveloped private land and very much a seller’s market when new land or housing becomes available. One sobering statistic cited: the proportion of the price of a house that is accounted for by the cost of the site has risen from around 15 per cent (normal by international standards), to between 40 and 50 per cent today. A nice gift from home buyers to the previous owners of the land.

The underlying problem is a system that has studiously avoided restructuring the market for development land — even as the government makes regular use of compulsory purchase orders on land being used for other purposes (e.g. road building). Instead, the huge capital gains on rezoned land are viewed as a pot of money to be split between owners, developers, and every so often, the politicians. The obvious mystery is why a policy that imposes huge costs on so many to the benefit of so few is able to persist and should alert us that something is not right with a political system that fails to register such a bad outcome. It seems that an issue that clearly reflects a national policy choice gets squeezed out by, on the one hand a narrow focus of parties on taxation and spending policy, and on the other, the dominance of local issues in national election campaigns.

Thus the need to discuss electoral systems, contributing to what Barry calls “localism.” In the Irish system, a TD is keeping an eye on his supposed running mates as much as on the opposite bench; the result is an emphasis on protection of turf and generating the appearance of constituency work (e.g. letter writing) at the expense of any serious contribution to national political debates. And as we’ve ranted about before, the Cabinet is selected from a pool of people who have adapted to this environment, not people with any actual skill in running government departments. Because local issues dominate, the door is open for single-issue local candidates to attract votes from across the spectrum and so we see candidates elected on platforms of pothole filling and deflector dish protection, but not candidates questioning whether there is a better way to do things.

And perhaps the most important point: there is an alternative. Probably the one best suited to Ireland is a mixed list system; voters choose a party rather than individuals, with each party presenting lists of candidates who would get seats in proportion to how well the party gets votes. Under this system, parties could nominate people actually qualified for something other than parish pump politics. Note that the British system uses an imperfect form of this where parties place candidates that they want in parliament in safe seats; could you imagine Boris Johnson holding down a seat anywhere in the Republic? List systems can include some scope for direct votes for individuals, but could also require that a minimum national share of the vote must be obtained before seats can be taken in parliament. These are all things that could be adapted to the Irish context and need not be taken off the shelf from elsewhere.

The question is what it would take to drive the change — change would have to be implemented by incumbents, who are quite happy with the way things are. While it’s possible for there to be a Tallaght Strategy moment of consensus building within the current system, it’s more likely that such a radical change will require a popular groundswell of support to be initiated. But that would require more awareness amongst the public of the links between how they live and work and how they vote, and so far there’s not much sign of that.