Ireland's PR-STV electoral system:

a need for reform?

Page on 2020 general election in Ireland.

The Irish electoral system: since independence in 1922 members (TDs) of the Irish parliament, Dáil Eireann, have been elected by the system of PR-STV (proportional representation by the single transferable vote). This system is enshrined in the 1937 constitution, which can be amended only by referendum. In both 1959 and 1968 a referendum took place on a proposal to replace PR-STV by the single-member plurality system ('first past the post'); on each occasion the proposal was defeated.

For an explanation of how PR-STV works, and a specimen ballot paper, click here. Since voters may rank order all of the candidates listed on the ballot paper, PR-STV offers voters a choice of candidate between parties, within parties, and without regard to party. Consequently, there is both inter-party and intra-party electoral competition.

For results of the 2007 general election click here; for results of the 2009 EP election click here; for the 2011 election see here; for the 2014 EP election click here; for the 2016 election click here; for results of elections 1948-2007 click here.

From time to time the question is raised in Irish politics as to whether PR-STV is dysfunctional in its effects and should be replaced by something different, perhaps a mixed system along German lines. The electoral reform debate tends to be impressionistic rather than evidence-based and usually lacks a comparative perspective. In the two referendums of 1959 and 1968, the central issue was the alleged tendency of any kind of PR to produce unstable and internally divided coalition governments, and perhaps to lead to the collapse of democracy, compared with the supposedly 'strong, effective, single-party governments' produced by the single-member plurality system. This line of argument is no longer taken seriously and the merit of the principle of proportional representation is now generally accepted in Ireland. The issue of contention is whether STV is the best method of realising this principle.

Among the points made AGAINST retaining PR-STV as the Irish electoral system (best read in conjunction with the points for) are:

• PR-STV generates intra-party electoral competition, which cannot take place on policy grounds and hence is fought on the terrain of constituency service. Incumbent TDs must, with good reason, fear losing their seat to a running mate from their own party; for Ireland's largest party, Fianna Fáil, 56 per cent of incumbent defeats between 1927 and 1997 inclusive came at the hands of another Fianna Fáil candidate, and for Fine Gael deputies too a significant number of incumbent defeats came at the hands of running mates. (Of course, most TDs of all parties were re-elected.) Consequently, TDs must spend much of their working time focused on serving the individual and collective needs and demands of their constituents in order to fend off the threat posed by running mates instead of being able to concentrate on national political issues
• Ministers (in Ireland, unusually in comparative terms, virtually all ministers are simultaneously TDs) are not immune from the threat of intra-party defeat, as there are cases of cabinet ministers being ousted by non-incumbent running mates (Paddy O'Toole in 1987, Mary O'Rourke in 2002) or losing their seat while a backbench running mate is re-elected (Brian Lenihan in 1973, Patrick Cooney in 1977, James Reilly in 2016). Hence even ministers cannot focus entirely on national politics but must maintain their local profile: attending funerals, and spending their evenings at local functions instead of working on national political matters. PR-STV encourages, perhaps indeed compels, TDs to 'think locally' rather than 'think nationally'
• Because so much of a TD's time is spent on this 'unproductive drudgery', as it has been termed by former minister Gemma Hussey, politics is perceived as an unattractive career option by able and nationally-oriented men and women and so the brightest and best tend not to go into politics
• If the brightest and best do enter politics, they may discover that any existing local public representatives, especially TDs, of their own party regard them with hostility rather than enthusiasm
• Incumbent TDs have a vested interest in retaining control of their local party organisation in order to try to ensure that the candidate selection process produces weak running mates (who will not threaten their seats) rather than able and attractive candidates (who might be an electoral threat to them), so they need to spend time on internal party in-fighting that could be better spent on national political issues
• Intra-party electoral competition is inherent in PR-STV and this internal rivalry within parties has a corrosive and corrupting effect upon the entire political system
• As a result, TDs are pressured by their constituents, and in turn pressure governments, to deliver 'pork' locally regardless of the national interest - with the result that the country has too many hospitals, too many airports, and too many third-level colleges, because every county wants one. There is a 'tragedy of the commons', with everyone recognising that constantly pandering to local interests produces nationally sub-optimal outcomes but no-one seeing any incentive to volunteer to be the one to forego some tranche of national spending. Under an electoral system that did not incorporate intra-party electoral competition, TDs could prioritise the national interest
• The parties' candidate selectors are the best judges of who is best able to realise the ideas and goals of the parties, not voters, many of whom may have only a lukewarm attachment to a party, and this is an argument for an electoral system under which the voters do not have the power to choose among candidates of the same party. Getting rid of intra-party electoral competition might increase parties' willingness to prioritise policy when they appeal for votes, leading to a more programmatic, less personality-based, style of politics in which voters are given real policy choices at elections
• Research (for example, the Irish National Election Study) shows that the most important criterion for Irish voters when deciding whom to vote for is the ability of candidates to look after the needs of the local constituency; the lesson to be drawn from this is that it is best if the power to choose among candidates of the same party is removed from Irish voters, because the voters are liable to use this power to reward candidates who will be active locally but may well not have the ability to play a role in politics at national level. Even if they do elect candidates with that ability, those individuals, once elected, will find they do not have the time to contribute to national-level politics. Hence there is a strong case for adopting an electoral system that removes from voters the power to choose among candidates of the same party, such as a closed list system (as in Portugal or Spain), a mixed system (as in Germany or Hungary, where some of the MPs are elected from single-member constituencies while the others are elected from closed lists), or one based on single-member constituencies (as in France and the UK) where each party has only one standard-bearer
• The Irish constitution makes no mention of constituency work; a TD's job is, or should be, to legislate and to scrutinise the government. Much of the constituency work undertaken by TDs serves no useful purpose as many of those contacting TDs are either chancers (trying to obtain something to which they are not entitled) or time-wasters, but because of the risk of losing a seat to an internal party rival a TD dare not appear dismissive of even the most pointless or ill-founded requests for assistance
• In most other countries it is surely the case that MPs are able to devote themselves to their national parliamentary role and do not have to immerse themselves in the minutiae of constituency work, which plays only a minor role in the work of MPs in most countries. Ireland must be virtually unique in the constituency involvement and workload expected of its national parliamentarians
• Malta is the only other country in the world to use PR-STV to elect its national parliament; if PR-STV really was such a great system as its proponents claim, why would it not be more widely used?
• PR-STV facilitates the election of Independents; there are usually more Independent TDs in the Dáil than in all other western European parliaments put together. If Independents hold the balance of power, as sometimes happens (eg 1997-2002, 2007-11), they can extract particularistic benefits for their own constituencies, contrary to the wider national interest
• Because PR-STV is a candidate-centred system of election, it does not guarantee proportionality as between party votes and party seats, and therefore parties with similar levels of votes, or the same party with much the same support level at two different elections, can end up with quite different numbers of seats. The three elections of 2002, 2007 and 2011 were the most disproportional ever in Ireland
• While it is true that twice in referendums the Irish people have voted to retain PR-STV, the more recent of these referendums took place over fifty years ago and the Irish people of today can hardly be seen as still bound by that decision, in which no-one born since 1947 could have voted. Besides, the only alternative on offer then was the single-member plurality ('first-past-the-post') system, which today no-one would seriously advocate as a replacement for PR-STV. The people should be given the option of choosing a different system, retaining the principle of PR but doing away with intra-party electoral competition, as a replacement for PR-STV.

Among the points made FOR retaining PR-STV as the Irish electoral system (best read in conjunction with the points against) are:

• Irish voters expect their parliamentary representatives to be responsive to their individual and collective demands, and the causes of this expectation run much deeper than the electoral system. TDs would come under pressure to undertake constituency work whatever the electoral system. As early as the 19th century Irish voters expected their MPs to engage in constituency work. In addition, Ireland has one of the weakest systems of local government in Europe and no sub-national levels of government, so contacts that would go to local councillors or provincial MPs in most other countries come to national TDs in Ireland
• Besides, it should not automatically be assumed that constituency work is a bad thing. While a well-educated and articulate commentariat who can sort out their own problems might imagine that much of a TD's constituency work is a waste of time, in reality there are many people for whom trying to deal with the state is a complicated business and for whom a TD's assistance is vital. TDs' constituency work should not be contemptuously dismissed as being just about 'fixing potholes' but also involves resolving genuine problems for individuals and for communities. Constituency work also brings TDs into constant contact with ordinary people and reduces the risk of their becoming an out-of-touch political class as can happen in some countries. Constituency work as carried out by TDs in Ireland is not 'clientelism' in any meaningful sense of that term and is more accurately described as 'brokerage'
• Far from a heavy constituency role being unusual, it characterises the life of MPs in many countries, regardless of the electoral system, and is usually said by MPs in these parliaments to be the most important part of their job bar none. In Canada, for example, with a first-past-the-post electoral system plus provincial parliaments, constituency work looms so large in the life of national MPs that parliament simply does not sit for one week in every month so that MPs can remain based in their constituencies all week! Evidence from Germany, New Zealand, Scotland and Wales shows that under German-type mixed systems there is in practice very little difference between the local constituency orientations of constituency MPs and list MPs. Doing one's best for the local area, and helping individuals to sort out their problems, is part of the job description for MPs virtually everywhere. MPs in most countries see this as an inherent part of their job, not as a distraction from a narrowly-defined 'real job' of working within parliament
• MPs everywhere, regardless of the electoral system, seek to ensure that their geographical constituency gets its 'fair share' from central government spending - it is difficult to envisage any genuinely representative system of government in which this will not be the case. If it were somehow possible to devise a political system in which MPs could ignore the demands of their constituents without fear of electoral retribution, the entire political system would understandably be perceived by many people as remote and unresponsive
• While it is pleasant to imagine that if TDs were completely insulated from local electoral pressure experience they would then make decisions in 'the national interest', the absence of any mechanism of accountability to lead to this outcome means that it is perfectly possible that instead that they might become more responsive to private interests. Political systems have to be designed on the assumption that MPs are rational actors who respond to electoral incentives, and institutional designers should aim to devise a way of harnessing these motivations for the common good; it is naive to design institutions on the assumption that MPs do not have their own goals and motivations. If we want MPs to think only of the national interest (even assuming that this could be unproblematically defined) then we need to think about mechanisms of accountability that would achieve this – to whom should MPs be primarily accountable, and how can this accountability be achieved? – rather than reducing the accountability of MPs and hoping that this will have the desired effect
• The Irish constitution may not mention constituency work, but it also makes no mention of political parties, yet no-one suggests that this means that political life should be conducted without the involvement of parties
• PR-STV maximises the power of the voters; it enables them to convey a wealth of information about their evaluations of the parties and candidates on option instead of merely being able to say 'Yes' to one option and 'No' to the rest as under other electoral systems
• Intra-party competition is inherent in every party. If it cannot express itself in the competition for votes, it will express itself through the candidate selection process; the competition would remain but would simply shift to a different battleground. In a closed list system the battle is to be selected for as high a place on the list as possible, so aspiring TDs would need to secure the support of the candidate selectors, who might be either the party's central bodies or local members. If the parties' central bodies selected candidates, the ability of TDs and parties to link citizens to the state would be weakened. If the party's local members selected candidates, TDs and aspiring TDs would need to cultivate the grass roots very actively. If there was only one TD per constituency, rivals within their party would know that the only way of being elected would be to secure the party candidacy at the expense of the incumbent, so TDs would have to keep a close eye on the local organisation to ensure that this did not happen
• Part of the argument against allowing voters to make choices among candidates of the same party seems to rest on the unspoken assumption that it is a power greater than the Irish electorate should be trusted with, because voters will tend to 'misuse' it by preferring the candidates who are best at getting potholes fixed rather than candidates with ministerial ability. This could be seen as betokening a rather patronising or even insulting attitude towards the electorate. Given that voters in 15 other EU member states have this power (see below), why should the Irish electorate be deemed uniquely incapable of wielding the power in a responsible manner?
• While ministerial-calibre TDs have lost to running mates, voters' power to choose among candidates of the same party can also be a way into parliament for ministerial-calibre TDs. Four Taoisigh (Jack Lynch 1948, Charles J Haughey 1957, John Bruton 1969, Micheál Martin 1989) first entered parliament by ousting running mates who were incumbent TDs. It is not true that voters will always simply favour the most active local candidate and will disregard national political ability
• Because party identification is weakening, the hard-core through-thick-and-thin party vote is lower than in the past, as has been demonstrated by the decline in support for the traditional three main parties. Hence, in a single-member constituency (should these be employed), an incumbent TD could not concentrate on parliamentary business and rely on the party vote to see him or her re-elected but would have to build and maintain personal popularity among the voters, most likely by establishing a reputation as a hard-working constituency TD, just as TDs representing smaller parties (who are not at risk of losing to a running mate as they are usually their party's sole candidate) do at present
• Research (for example, the Irish National Election Study) shows that the most important criterion for Irish voters when deciding whom to vote for is the ability of candidates to look after the needs of the local constituency; the lesson to be drawn from this is that the electoral system should attempt to accommodate voters' preferences, not to thwart these. TDs are there to do what the people want them to do
• While Malta is the only other country to use PR-STV to elect its national parliament, many European countries, especially the smaller ones, use 'open list' systems under which the voters choose which of a party's list of candidates to vote for, and these preference votes determine which individual candidates get into parliament. As in Ireland the voters, not the candidate selectors, pick the MPs from a list put forward by the candidate selectors. In these countries, candidates of one party are competing with each other for, in effect, 'first preference votes' just as much as in Ireland. This applies in Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark (click here for an illustration of how this works), Estonia, Finland, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland ... yet no-one suggests that the whole political process in those countries is corroded as a result. 'Multi-seat PR with competition among candidates of the same party', the bugbear of critics of PR-STV in Ireland, is in fact the norm for smaller European democracies, not an example of Irish exceptionalism. This suggests, at the very least, that allowing voters a choice among candidates of the same party is not inherently an eccentric idea. The provision of intra-party electoral competition should be seen as an enhancement of participatory democracy; inherently a 'good thing' rather than a 'bad thing'
• The level of disproportionality in any country is caused mainly by district magnitude (the number of MPs per constituency). Ireland's current average of only 3.9 MPs per constituency is exceptionally small for a country using any kind of PR electoral system, and that rather than the use of STV is what causes such disproportionality as exists. Even at that, the levels of disproportionality are not out of line with European PR norms
• In the current debate over electoral reform in Britain the claim is frequently made that the link between MPs and constituents is fostered by the single-member constituency system and that introducing any kind of PR system with multi-member constituencies would destroy this close connection. In the light of Irish experience, this can be seen as a misguided and insular argument that simply emphasises the importance of gathering cross-national evidence so as to be sure that what at first sight look like causal relationships really are causal. As the All-Party Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution put it in 2002: 'The committee is not convinced that the weaknesses of PR-STV are as considerable as might be claimed, or, put otherwise, that PR-STV is itself responsible for all of the failings that have been laid at its door'
• Critics of PR-STV do not seem to agree on what it should be replaced by; only when they do will a meaningful debate between specific options become possible. Any alternative option that does not suffer from the alleged shortcomings of PR-STV may well possess other and perhaps greater shortcomings of its own.

OVERALL: The impact of electoral systems on many aspects of politics in any given country is less strong than is sometimes assumed. While electoral systems do have an impact on, for example, the proportionality of electoral outcomes, and to a lesser degree on the shape of party systems, it is not realistic to expect a change in the electoral system to transform the style of politics in a country. For example, PR-STV cannot plausibly be seen as having been responsible for the economic boom in Ireland in the 2000s, nor for the post-2008 slump, nor for the subsequent recovery. Generally, political institutions that operate in one fashion in country A will not necessarily produce the same consequences if transplanted to country B. In their cross-national comparative study of the impact of a number of political reforms, including changes to the electoral system, Shaun Bowler and Todd Donovan (The Limits of Electoral Reform, Oxford University Press, 2013) strike a cautionary note, arguing that such reforms tend to have minimal or zero impact. All electoral institutions simply have less causal power than either some defenders of the status quo or some advocates of reform realise.

Considering the constituency role of MPs in particular, it is all too easy to exaggerate the influence of the electoral system. Comparative cross-national research suggests that the causal connection between the electoral system and the constituency role of MPs is much weaker than some people imagine, and it is very likely that the demand from voters for constituency service from their TDs, and TDs' readiness to respond to this, would be altered little by the adoption of a different electoral system in Ireland.

Compare, for example, these two examples of constituency campaigning. In Denmark – where, as explained above, candidates of each party seek personal preference votes in order to give themselves a better chance of election than the other candidates of their party – candidates may mention that they live or were born in the constituency, but in their personal literature (example1, example2, example3) they campaign mainly in terms of the national-level issues they will highlight if elected. In contrast, in the UK, where there is only one seat per constituency, and hence no intra-party rivalry, it is common for candidates to emphasise their local involvement in fighting the closure of local post offices or raising the issue of sewerage in a river, as in election material of Steve Gilbert, a successful Liberal Democrat candidate at the 2010 UK election.

In short, there is good reason to question the closeness of any link between electoral systems and the constituency orientation of MPs: when the voters want and expect their MPs to pay attention to local matters the MPs will more or less have to respond, regardless of the electoral system, while when voters do not then MPs will not engage significantly in such work.

For discussion of political reform in Ireland generally, including possible changes to the electoral system, click here.

More reading for those interested:

Michael Gallagher and Paul Mitchell (eds), The Politics of Electoral Systems, paperback edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). Chapters on a number of countries explore the relationship, if any, between electoral system and MPs' behaviour, and there is a chapter assessing the record of PR-STV in Ireland: 'Ireland: the discreet charm of PR-STV'

John Coakley and Michael Gallagher (eds), Politics in the Republic of Ireland, 7th edition (London: Routledge, 2024). Chapter 4 on 'The electoral system and its political consequences', and Chapter 8 on 'The constituency role of Dáil deputies', both discuss the issues, including assessment of whether there really is a causal relationship between PR-STV and some observed features of Irish politics, and consideration of whether TDs' constituency work can be considered to amount to 'clientelism'

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Last updated 26 January, 2024 3:31 PM