Twenty-First Century Populism: The Spectre of Western European ...

Table 13.1 General elections in the Republic of Ireland, 1982–2002
The Republic of Ireland 203
Party 1982 (ii)* 1987 1989 1992 1997 2002
% S % S % S % S % S % S
FF 45.2 75 44.1 81 44.1 77 39.1 68 39.3 77 41.5 81
FG 39.2 70 27.1 51 29.3 55 24.5 45 28.0 54 22.5 31
Lab. 9.4 16 6.4 12 9.5 15 19.3 33 10.4 17 10.8 21
PD N/A N/A 11.8 14 5.5 6 4.7 10 4.7 4 4.0 8
Green N/A N/A 0.4 0 1.5 1 1.4 1 2.8 2 3.8 6
SF N/A N/A 1.9 0 1.2 0 1.6 0 2.6 1 6.5 5
WP/
DL**
3.1 2 3.8 4 5.0 7 2.8 4 2.5 4 N/A N/A
Ind. +
others
3.1 3 4.5 4 3.9 5 5.9 5 9.4 7 11 14
Notes: The left-hand columns for each year refer to the percentage of first preference votes obtained, the
right-hand columns to the number of seats gained. * Two general elections were held in 1982. The data here
refers to the second one, in November of that year. ** WP refers to the Workers’ Party. All of its deputies bar one
left in 1992 to form Democratic Left (DL). DL then merged with the Labour Party at the end of 1998.
Source: Elaboration of electoral data from the appendix in John Coakley and Michael Gallagher (2004), (eds),
Politics in the Republic of Ireland (Fourth edition), London: Routledge.
in 1981 to 62.6 per cent in 2002 − a figure which placed Ireland at the bottom
of the ‘turnout league’ among the fifteen members of the EU at the
time (Lyons and Sinnott, 2003: 143). The potential effects of partisan
dealign ment are notoriously complex and diverse, but among them are the
opening up of voters to new offers and the possibility that the electorate will
become susceptible to demagogic appeals by charismatic populist leaders as
happened, for example, in Austria and France (Dalton, McAllister, and
Wattenberg, 2002: 60−61).
Certainly, an increasing section of the electorate has shown itself willing
to vote for new opposition parties rather than those of the ‘old opposition’
(see Table 13.1). Indeed, if the decline of the FF vote has been moderate since
the 1980s, that of FG has been dramatic, with the party securing just 31
seats compared to FF’s 81 at the 2002 election. Furthermore, despite being
the party which might have expected to benefit most from secularization,
Labour has seen its vote stagnate − barring the false dawns of Mary Robinson’s
election as President in 1990 and the party’s excellent result at the 1992
election. Furthermore, its chronic weakness in large swathes of the West, as
noted by Tom Garvin (1974: 313) over thirty years ago, has remained intact
and its merger in 1998 with a smaller party to its left − Democratic Left −
appears to have brought no significant rise in its vote. Rather, the beneficiaries
of dealignment and disillusionment with FF and FG have been a series of
new entries into the Dáil (Irish Parliament): the PDs, the Greens, SF and
various Independent Teachtaí Dála (TDs – deputies).