Fintan O’Toole: Can Sinn Féin bring the political system back into line with Irish society? (via IrishTimesOpEd)
split may have been a catastrophe, but it produced a convenient and effective duopoly of political power.
For historical reasons, many of them rooted in colonialism, Irish people with few resources looked to local operators who could mediate between themselves and power. They had little sense of entitlement and even less trust in the fairness and transparency of public institutions. The combination of these three mechanisms created one of the most stable political systems of any democracy. It survived mass emigration, the opening of the economy, huge social change, the challenge of the Troubles, the direness of the 1980s and the increasing level of conflict the role of religion in society and politics.There is still a great deal of unfinished business left behind by the rapid decline of political Catholicism. But the Church-State partnership has been dissolved.
And while clientelism is not gone, it is hugely diminished. Most Irish people are too well educated and assertive to feel grateful to a politician for “getting” them their rights. Clientelism thrives on poverty and ignorance, and most citizens are no longer either poor or ignorant. Objectively, the centre of gravity of Irish politics is Green, social democratic and pluralist. Ireland is a multicultural society, with an urgent imperative to decarbonise its economy and a crying need for an expansion of the State and public provision.
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