From: dwilkins@maths.tcd.ie (David Wilkins)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: Rule Britannia
Date: 12 Nov 92 00:56:13 GMT
Organization: Dept. of Maths, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.

In article <1dpkq5INN633@fido.asd.sgi.com> livesey@solntze.wpd.sgi.com (Jon Livesey) writes:
>>    And is that what you want?   A permanent state of
>>    coalitions?  Have you taken a look at Israeli, or Belgian
>>    or Irish politics recently?   Or the sparkling record of
>>    our own lamented National Government back in the thirties?
[stuff deleted; hope I have got the attribution right above]
>Fallacy count:
[...]
>    4.	That Italy, Ireland, Israel, Belgium are a "weak little
>	subset".    In fact, these are countries where PR has
>	caused major trouble.    The real issue is "What would
>	PR do here?".

The history of Irish politics is not a permanent state of coalitions.
A Fianna Fail government has been in power, either as a majority
government, or as a minority government with the support of
sundry independents, most of the time since around 1933.  These
periods of FF government have alternated with occasional coalitions
made up of Fine Gael plus one or two smaller parties, such as Labour,
or Clann na Poblachta (defunct since the 1950s).  There were two
such coalitions in the 40s and 50s, one or two in the 70s, and
one in the early eighties, The most recent government was a
coalition of Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats (and
was the first time that FF went into coalition with any
other party).

An article in the Irish Times today pointed out that coalition
governments have in general been comparitively stable and durable,
far more so than minority governments.  The coalition that has
just collapsed lasted for three and a half years, and, for the
first two years or so, the party leaders gave every appearance
of working harmoniously together, in public at least, and it
is only in the past six months or so, since Reynolds replaced
Haughey as Taoiseach (or PM) that the cracks started to show
through.  Moreover the coalition survived severe strains,
notably over the sacking of Brian Lenihan from the cabinet
(forced on Haughey by the PDs) when he was a presidential
candidate.

Traditionally the Fianna Fail party had, until the last
government, rejected participation in coalitions: if they
could not form a majority or minority government, then they
preferred to go into opposition and let the other parties
form a coalition against them.  The latter option was not
available to them after the last election, so they had
to grit their teeth, swallow their `principles', and
go into coalition with the PDs.  Reynolds is currently
seeking an overall majority for FF.  However many people
here don't relish the prospect of a majority FF government,
and would rather see them in coalition with some other party,
if a coalition of the other parties against FF does not seem
feasable.

Okay, so the current government happens to have collapsed
just now.  But this is not symptomatic of perennial instability
due to P.R., as your posting seemed to suggest.  (And as we are
all aware, John Major's government is also going through a
choppy patch right now in Britain, though it is extremely
unlikely that that government will fall as a result.)

The Irish electorate is renowned for its ability to exploit
the PR system to the full, taking great care over 2nd, 3rd,
4th, 5th preferences etc. in an attempt to realise their
objectives.  In the past, Fianna Fail, under de Valera and
Lynch, made two attempts to change to a `first past the post'
system.  On both occasions the electorate rejected the
proposed constitutional amendments to achieve this, which,
if carried, might well have resulted in an almost permanent
FF administration.  I suspect that most people today, with
the objection of disgruntled FF stalwarts, would not wish
to see PR replaced by `first past the post', and majority
governments are not necessarily preferred to coalitions.

   The PR system is not regarded as having caused `major
trouble' over here.  Indeed it could be argued that the
last election produced what a substantial number of people
felt was the best option at the time: a predominantly
Fianna Fail administration (since the other parties were clearly
not in a position to form a coalition amongst themselves),
but not a majority FF administration, but one in which
they were constrained by the need to cooperate in a
coalition with some other party.

DRW
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british