Social Backgrounds and Local Orientations of Members of the Irish Dail

Social Backgrounds and Local Orientations of Members of the Irish DailAuthor(s): Michael GallagherSource: Legislative Studies Quarterly, Vol. 10, No. 3 (Aug., 1985), pp. 373-394Published by: Comparative Legislative Research CenterStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/440037 .

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MICHAEL GALLAGHER Trinity College, Dublin

Social Backgrounds And Local Orientations

Of Members of the Irish Dail

The legislature in Ireland, as in other countries, is not a mirror image of the electorate. It differs from other legislatures in that it contains a high proportion of small businessmen and a low proportion of university graduates. The development of female representation in the parliament resembles the U.S. pattern. Incumbents fare well at elections, and the Dail contains a low proportion of first-termers. Local roots (as mea- sured by birthplace, residence, and local authority membership) are very strong, and many deputies have a mainly local orientation, leading to a heavy concentration on casework and consequent underemphasis on oversight of the executive.

Virtually all research into the composition of legislatures shows that parliamentary representatives collectively do not have the same sociodemo- graphic characteristics as the population which elects them. In the words of Eliassen and Pedersen (1978, p. 286), '"Microcosm and macrocosm are never identical; the legislature never mirrors the population at large. This is a universal generalisation." While a fresh demonstration of this maxim for any specific country would be otiose, it can nevertheless be of interest to ask precisely how a given group of legislators differs from its electorate and whether microcosm-macrocosm differences in one country resemble those in others.

This article will examine the backgrounds of the 166 members of Dail Eireann (the lower house of the parliament of the Republic of Ireland) elected in November 1982. It will argue that although in many respects Dail deputies resemble legislators elsewhere, certain factors peculiar to Ireland produce a set of deputies rather different in some respects from most parliamentarians. In particular, the nature of the electoral system, some central features of Irish political culture, and the high ratio of deputies to population combine to ensure that the groups securing overrepresentation are not quite the same as the groups which dominate other legislatures. The impact of these factors on the recruitment process produces a legislature which has always been not only feeble vis-i-vis the executive but, for the most part, indifferent to its feebleness.

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The Context: Electoral System and Political Culture

The Irish electoral system, the single transferable vote in multimember constituencies, is almost unique to the country (Malta is the only other state to employ it for elections to the lower house of parliament) and is distinctive in its consequences. Unlike nonpreferential electoral systems, it creates intense rivalry between candidates of the same party. Voters in each constituency can arrange all the candidates in order of their preference, on the basis of whatever criterion is most important to them (for an explanation of the electoral system see Chubb, 1982, pp. 350-353). Most voters have a party identification, and consequently give their highest preferences to all the candidates of their favoured party, but the party is powerless to persuade them to give their first preference to any specific candidate. There is no party "list" as such (all the names appear on the ballot paper in alphabetical order), and any attempt by the national leadership to lay hands on one particular candidate would be perceived as "head office interference" and would probably prove counterproductive. Thus, aspiring TDs (Dail deputies) need to mobilise their own resources to stay ahead of fellow party candidates in the fight for the limited pool of votes the party will win. Whereas in theory they might do this by cultivating an image of being more articulate, more ideologically committed, or more competent as potential legislators, in practice the nature of Irish political culture means that these are not the qualities relied upon.

The relevant aspects of Irish political culture are the related phenomena of localism and personalism, both of which are strongest in, though by no means confined to, rural areas (for general accounts of Irish political culture see Chubb, 1982, pp. 3-39; Gallagher, 1982, pp. 8-23; Fogarty, Ryan, and Lee, 1984). Studying "machine politics" in a part of the country furthest from Dublin, Sacks notes that

Donegal countrymen remain in many ways citizens of their villages.... The attachment to townland, village and town society bears vestiges of a day when these communities were more isolated from the world outside.... Features of geography and transporta- tion encourage the persistence of parochial loyalties.... A local man running for office has a strong claim on his village's vote (1976, p. 145).

Personalism, too, has frequently been identified as a central component of Irish life in general. Schmitt (1973, pp. 55, 62), defining it as "a pattern of social relations in which people are valued for who they are and whom they know," refers to "the pronounced tendency of the Irish toward a personalistic approach to politics." Chubb (1982, p. 157) describes Ireland's rural population as one which "values face-to-face contacts [and] regards personal influ- ence as an important factor in the conduct of any business of importance." Sacks (1976, pp. 145-146) comments that "for the countryman personal

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acquaintance is fundamental to the political process, both in obtaining what one wants from government, and in determining why one chooses certain politicians over others."

While there might be disagreement among writers on Irish politics as to whether the country's political culture is better regarded as a dependent or an independent variable, and, if the former, whether it is shaped primarily by political or by socioeconomic factors (see Garvin, 1982), few would dis- pute that both personalism and localism are among its key features. Conse- quently, many voters expect their political representative to be known to them personally (or at least known to someone who is known to them personally) and thus to possess local roots and connections. Such close personal links between deputies and constituents are possible given the small scale of the country and the high ratio of deputies to population: at the November 1982 general election, one deputy was elected for each 10,173 valid votes cast. Thus, given the intraparty competition generated by the electoral system, aspiring parliamentarians feel obliged to cultivate an image of familiarity with the problems of the constituency, as demonstrated by assiduous attention to casework, rather than potential parliamentary ability.

Occupation

Across the world, parliamentarians, and indeed political elites as a whole, are drawn disproportionately from high-status and high-income occupations (for a discussion of the general pattern see Putnam, 1976, pp. 22-24). Mellors (1978, p. 58) comments that politics, in Britain and elsewhere, "attracts the communicating professions-lawyers, lecturers, teachers and journalists." Of the 1,758 individuals to be MPs between 1945 and 1974, 41 percent were professionals, 25 percent were in business, and only 10 percent could be categorised as workers (1978, pp. 61-62). In Britain, as in West Germany, the number of workers in parliament has been in decline since the 1950s (Guttsman, 1974, p. 108). This picture is not confined to western legislatures. Studies of parliamentarians in Singapore, Bangladesh, Zambia, and Tanzania have found a predominance of professionals, business people, and/or state and party employees, and an underrepresentation of workers and peasants (Chan, 1976, p. 429; Barua, 1978, p. 191; Jahan, 1976, pp. 359-360; Tordoff, 1977, pp. 236-237). Even legislatures thrown up by noncompetitive elections, where it is possible for a "guiding hand" to ensure that microcosm does reflect macrocosm, rarely represent genuine workers in proportion to their nationwide strength (Seroka, 1979, pp. 105-108; Vanneman, 1977, pp. 64-66).

The Irish pattern of underrepresentation has a familiar look to it, but the Dail may be unique with regard to the groups which are overrepre- sented (for analysis of interparty differences in the Dail, see Gallagher, 1984).

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Analysis of its personnel shows the same conspicuous absence of manual workers and strong presence of professionals as has been observed in other countries.

Occupations of Deputies Elected in November 1982a Number Percentage

Manual Employees 4 2.4 Nonmanual Employees 23 13.9 Commercial 45 27.1 Farmers 21 12.7 Professionals 69 41.6 Others 4 2.4 Total 166 100.0

aFor the sources and the classification scheme used, see note 1.

Not many of the professionals are lawyers: in the November 1982 Dail, there were only 16 (10 percent of all deputies), a proportion which is fairly low by European, let alone U.S. standards (see Czudnowski, 1975, p. 204; Loewenberg and Patterson, 1979, p. 71; Mezey, 1979, pp. 240-241). Civil servants, prominent in many European legislatures, are absent from the Dail, being debarred by law from standing for election; those above a certain level are not permitted to be party members or to indulge in any kind of party political activity. The proportion of farmers has declined almost monotonically since 1961 (when it was 24 percent), a fall which reflects in somewhat exaggerated form the decline in the proportion of the workforce engaged in agriculture. In the U.S., too, the number of farmers in state legislatures seems to be in decline, even in agricultural states, and there are very few in Congress (Jewell and Patterson, 1973, pp. 73-74).

The distinctive feature of the Dail is the high proportion of deputies, 45 out of 166, who fall into the "commercial" category.2 In most countries, small business people comprise such an insignificant proportion of members of the legislature that analyses of deputies do not provide a separate category for them, but in Ireland they almost match the combined strength of lawyers, lecturers, teachers, and journalists. No legislature among a large number sur- veyed by Loewenberg and Patterson (1979, p. 70) has as high a proportion of business people of all varieties as Ireland's does of small business people, while Blondel (1973, pp. 160-161) suggests that only Thailand and Lebanon have comparably high proportions. It is significant that Mellors's (1978, p. 79) analysis of members of the House of Commons found that only among the MPs returned from Northern Ireland was there a sizeable percentage of small businessmen.

The explanation for this lies not in any profusion of small-scale entrepreneurs in Ireland (they make up fewer than 5 percent of the population) but in the political resources with which, in the Irish context, their occupations

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endow them. The localism and personalism already discussed naturally confer an advantage upon individuals whose occupations bring them into daily contact with a wide spread of people in their communities. Czudnowski's obser- vation (1975, p. 231) that "candidacies originate in central linkage positions in a communications network" seems particularly apposite for Ireland. Publi- cans, shopkeepers, and other small traders occupy such positions. Other small businessmen, especially auctioneers, occupy key positions in a different kind of communications network; their work involves a good deal of travelling around the constituency, and thereby the opportunity to establish contacts with party members, whose support will be vital at the nomination stage (for a case study of the process of building up contacts in a rural constituency see Bax, 1976, pp. 93-97). Of course, all self-employed people (including professionals) have the additional advantage that, unlike most employees, they can take time off for political purposes whenever they wish. Gibbon and Higgins (1974, pp. 34-36) suggest that the strength of small businessmen in the Dail may reflect the persistence of debt-bondage, especially in the less urbanised west of Ireland, along with other more recently developed means whereby publicans, shopkeepers, and small businessmen are able to create a clientele economically dependent on them and then to convert these economic resources into political ones, but there is little hard evidence to substantiate such a hypothesis.

Education

Education tends to be even more consistently correlated with membership of political elites than occupation is. Putnam (1976, pp. 26-28, 35-36, 205) shows it to be of high (and increasing) importance in many different types of political system. Just over half of British MPs over the 1945-1974 period had attended a university, with the gap between the major parties narrowing steadily (Mellors, 1978, pp. 40, 48; cf. Butler and Kavanagh, 1980, p. 286). The proportion of deputies with a degree has shown an upward trend in both the Polish Sejm and the Supreme Soviet; in the latter body, those of highest education are most likely to secure reelection (Simon and Olson, 1980, p. 215; Vanneman, 1977, p. 67; Hill, 1972, pp. 52-53). The explanation is partly functional, as high education probably increases an individual's competence as a potential legislator in a way that no specific occupation does. In addition, of course, education is related to the standard set of factors making for political success, such as a high-status occupation, high income, and an ability to grasp political issues and discuss them articu- lately. Almond and Verba (1963, pp. 205-208, 176-177) found that education was strongly related to an indivudal's "subjective political competence" and to favourable attitudes toward the idea of political participation.

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Compared with most parliamentarians, Irish deputies are poorly educated. In November 1982, only 63 (38 percent) had a university degree. Reliable data for earlier periods are hard to come by, but the available evidence suggests that even this low proportion of graduates in 1982 marks the continuation of a very gradual upward trend, from a starting point of 26 percent in 1922 (Chubb, 1982, p. 225). The explanations for this deviation from the norm lie in the same factors which accounted for the unusual pattern of TDs' occupational backgrounds. Whereas the great majority of professional TDs (52 out of 69, or 75 percent) have a degree, only 11 of the other 97 (11 percent) do. A recruitment process which stresses community involve- ment and local roots will inevitably produce a parliament with fewer graduates than are produced when parliamentary abilities count for more. In Dublin, where, in middle-class districts at least, voters are probably more concerned with their deputies' parliamentary talents than with their track records in purely local affairs, 27 out of 48 deputies (56 percent) are graduates, but in the rest of Ireland only 31 percent have a degree. In this the Irish pattern differs from that reported in Italy, where the percentage of graduates "is much higher among deputies from the ascriptive, status-conscious South than among deputies from Northern and Central Italy" (Zariski, 1972, p. 249).

Local Government Experience

Putnam (1976, p. 51) observes that "prior experience in lower elective office is among the most widely shared characteristics of national legislators," although practice varies from country to country. It is taken to greatest extremes in France. Michel Debrd once commented that "it is an almost unbearable mark of inferiority for a Member of Parliament not to hold a local elective office at the same time," and at times about three-quarters of French parliamentarians have been current or former local office-holders (Pierce, 1973, pp. 256-257). In Sweden and Finland the proportions are at about the same level (Hancock, 1972, pp. 94-95; Nousianinen, 1971, p. 184). In the U.S., too, most new members of Congress have previously held an elected office in their state, and the same is true of the West German Bundestag (Gertzog, 1979, pp. 435,444; Guttsman, 1974, p. '110). In Britain, only about a third of MPs have local authority membership in their backgrounds; in many cases these are Labour stalwarts who are eventually given a parliamentary nomination as a reward for many years of local service to the party (Mellors, 1978, pp. 90, 94).

In view of what has already been said about the necessity for deputies in Ireland to establish a high local profile, it is no surprise to find that 110 of the TDs elected in November 1982 (66 percent) had been local councillors before entering the Dail, and 19 others (1 I percent) had reversed the sequence,

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leaving only 37 (22 percent) who had never served locally. It is usual for deputies to retain their local authority membership; at the time of the election 101 (61 percent) belonged to a local council. Retaining the local authority seat not only keeps the deputy in touch with local affairs, it also blocks an avenue of advancement which might otherwise be used by a potential rival. However, it is a convention in Ireland, in contrast to the French practice, that deputies who become ministers should resign their local authority positions, although in recent years some ministers have become tardy in complying with it. As far as can be told, given the incompleteness of data for earlier periods, the proportion of TDs with local government backgrounds has varied within the range of about 60 to 80 percent since the 1930s (McCracken, 1958, pp. 88-89; Whyte, 1966, pp. 30-31; Farrell, 1971, p. 320).

Local government experience as a channel of political recruitment has particular importance in Ireland. Deputies and local government members both spend much of their time on brokerage work, and the former are some- times seen, even by themselves, as little more than glorified county councillors. Since real power lies not with councillors but with the centrally-appointed county manager, deputies' time as county councillors may help to socialise them into acceptance of a passive role in policy making and "collusion in illusory accountability" (Higgins, 1982, p. 137). Local government experience has special salience since there is no party apparatus through which aspiring parliamentarians can rise. In countries where the parties have large organisations, such as West Germany, a position such as regional party chair- person can be a useful base for upward mobility, but in Ireland the parties simply do not have such a structure, consisting as they do only of organisations in each constituency and a relatively weak head office in Dublin.

Local authority membership is strongly linked to other factors. There is a clear regional pattern: of Dublin deputies, 54 percent belonged to a local authority before entering the Dail, whereas outside Dublin the figure rises to 71 percent. This is in line with the assumption that the demand for locally-grown candidates with a proven record of dealing with people's problems is lower in the most urbanised part of the country. It is also related to occupation. Deputies with professional backgrounds are much more likely never to have been county councillors (this applies to 38 percent of them) than are deputies in other occupations (11 percent). Similarly, the TDs without a local authority background are better educated (59 percent have a degree) than those with such a background (32 percent). There is also reason to believe that the former are more likely to become ministers (see below).

Residence and Kinship

Experience in local government is simply one (albeit probably the most useful) way of demonstrating the almost mandatory local roots. Ireland,

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unlike the U.S. (at state level) and pre-1970 Sweden, has no equivalent of the old Norwegian bostadbdnd embodying a residence requirement, but cultural norms are so powerful that such a requirement would be superfluous. Practically every member of the Dail lives in his or her constituency, and even the handful of exceptions mostly live just over the constituency boundary. This is not a matter of deputies moving to a constituency after having been elected to represent it. On the contrary, most have impeccable local roots. Of the 166 TDs elected in November 1982, 143 (86 percent) were born in the constituency they now represent, and several of the exceptions grew up there.3 Most have lived in their constituencies all their lives. Aspiring TDs would never consider seeking a Dail nomination in a part of the country where they had no connections; any such attempt would produce a reaction of incredulity among the local selectorate, who are at least as reluctant as the voters to accept "outsiders" as potential deputies (Gallagher, 1980).

This corresponds to a pattern found in Germany, Italy, India, France (Loewenberg and Patterson, 1979, pp. 74-75), and, of course, the United States. Most members of the U.S. Congress are born in the state they represent, and in the state legislatures localism is even more pronounced; for example, of Pennsylvania legislators studied in 1958, nearly three-quarters had been born in the county they represented, and over two-thirds had lived all their lives in the county of their birth. As in Ireland, "long residence in the community [tends] to confer representative legitimacy upon aspirants to legislative office" (Jewell and Patterson, 1973, p. 71). It is also true of Japan, where the overwhelming majority of candidates are locally born and where the political culture is characterised by mijika and jimoto, terms which correspond closely to the personalism and localism discussed earlier for Ireland (Youn, 1981, p. 112; Stockwin, 1982, p. 121; Yanagihashi, 1981, p. 133).

Would-be Dail candidates who are not members of local government must usually supply alternative credentials-credentials, that is, not of potential parliamentary ability but of being well-known in the local community. One useful attribute is a record in sporting activities, which also helps aspirants to the Eduskunta in Finland and to Japan's House of Councillors (Sairlvik, 1983, p. 135; Stockwin, 1982, p. 103). To have represented one's county at Gaelic football or hurling is certainly a boost to a political career, though it is more likely to earn one a local authority seat than, of itself, a place in the Dail. About a quarter of Dail deputies have some type of sporting record, although it was not necessarily a significant political asset for all of them.

The easiest way of acquiring a political base in Ireland is to inherit it. Forty-one of the 166 deputies (25 percent) elected in November 1982 were related to one or more present or former deputies who had preceded them into the Dail. This number comprised 25 sons, 6 nephews, 4 daughters, 3 brothers, 2 widows, and a son-in-law. About three-quarters of these can

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reasonably be said to owe their initial election largely to their family connections; the others, while perhaps finding it easier to win a local authority seat or a Dail nomination than they otherwise would, had nonetheless established some kind of independent personal base by the time they were first elected to the Dail.

The Dail appears to be almost unique among modern legislatures in the strength of its "kinship index," though in Japan the phenomenon of second-generation politicians who have inherited their father's political base is significant enough to warrant a special term, nisei (Pha, 1982, p. 38). In the U.S., Clubok, Wilensky, and Berghorn (1969) report that the index, while remaining high in state legislatures, had dwindled in Congress from an earlier level of almost 25 percent to a mere 5 percent by 1960. They attribute this to industrialisation and technological change and suggest (p. 1062) that "the rate of decline can be used as a measure of the rate of political moderi- sation," although it may be doubted whether socioeconomic change, political modernisation, and kinship patterns among legislators are quite so determinis- tically related.

In all countries, offspring of legislators inevitably undergo a familial political socialisation process which gives them a far above-average exposure to political phenomena; spouses of legislators undergo the same process in adulthood. In many cases, legislators' spouses and children become involved in some of their work (especially the constituency duties), and are thereby qualified in purely instrumental terms to succeed them upon their retirement or death. Why, then, has kinship been identified as an important route of recruitment in only a few countries?

When the importance of "who you are" rivals that of "what party label you carry," the kinship index can be expected to be high. In the U.S., Ireland, and Japan, an individual needs a base of purely personal support both to be selected as a candidate and to win election. In the U.S., this springs from the need to win a primary and from the candidate-centred nature of campaigns. In Ireland and Japan, candidate selection is mainly in the hands of local branches, which are often in effect the personal machines of the deputies, and it is not surprising that a machine should throw its weight behind a relative of its former chief upon the latter's death or retirement. These two countries' electoral systems pit candidates of the same party against each other (in a sense collapsing into one the two stages which in America are fought separately), and in this confrontation a respected political pedigree may give a candidate an edge over his or her rivals.4 Under electoral systems which provide (as in Ireland) for byelections in the case of vacancies arising in the legislature, a party may hope to capitalise on the reputation of the deceased member by nominating a close relative, and indeed under any electoral system a well-known name is probably worth a few votes. Nominating

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a member of the family of a deceased or retiring legislator may also, in some circumstances, help avert a damaging intraparty conflict over the nomination.

Sex

The underrepresentation of women in legislatures is a universal phenomenon (for the general pattern see Lovenduski and Hills, 1981 ;Randall, 1982, pp. 69-84). Even in noncompetitive systems, women constitute mark- edly fewer than half of deputies, albeit usually a higher proportion than in the west (Seroka, 1979, p. 107; Simon and Olson, 1980, p. 215; Tai, 1977, p. 434; Vanneman, 1977, pp. 68-69). Moreover, in the Soviet Union at least, women seem to have "an inferior status" as legislators, since few serve more than one term (Hill, 1972, p. 51). Among competitive systems, only in Scandinavia does the proportion of women among deputies approach even a quarter. Ireland is no exception to the general picture; only 14 (8 percent) of the November 1982 deputies were women. Indeed, surveying Ireland's entire political history since independence, only 110 of the 3,363 Dail seats (3 percent) filled at general elections and by-elections between 1922 and December 1984 inclusive were won by women, and only 37 women have become TDs.

The underrepresentation of women in Ireland is largely explicable in terms of the factors which account for their underrepresentation every- where. Welch (1977) categorises these explanations under the headings of socialisation, situation ("women have been kept busy in the home taking care of husband and children"), and structure ("women are less likely to be found in those sectors of society with structural characteristics that enhance political participation"). In Ireland, two factors may make socialisation account for more than in many other countries: the central position in Irish society of the Catholic Church, a male-dominated institution traditionally ascribing a passive role to women, and the church-dominated and largely single-sex education system.

Before the general election of June 1981, both the number and backgrounds of women in the Dail reflected a male-dominated society in which a woman's status was determined by that of her husband (or another close male relative). Up to the eve of the 1981 general election, only 26 women had won Dail seats, and 21 of these were related to male deputies or prominent figures in the independence struggle: 13 were widows, 4 were daughters, 3 were sisters, and 1 was a granddaughter. Many of these women, especially the widows, were simply filling the respective male's seat, and they were not prominent in parliament. The first woman to become a junior minister was appointed to that position in July 1977; in December 1979 she became Ireland's first female cabinet minister.

The June 1981 general election and its two successors (February 1982 and November 1982) changed the picture significantly. Of the 14 women

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elected in November 1982, 8 had no predecessors in the Dail, a greater number of self-made female politicians than had emerged during the whole 1922-1980 period. The women TDs elected in November 1982 bear more resemblance to the average male TD than to the archetypal pre-1981 political widow. Most of them (64 percent) were members of a local authority before entering the Dail (the figure for male TDs was 66 percent). They were better educated than male TDs, exactly half of them having a university degree, were younger when first elected (37 years compared with 38 for men), and were younger at the time of the November 1982 election (40 years compared with 46). Since the first government appointment in 1977, four other women have become full or junior ministers.

In all of this the Irish pattern corresponds closely to that observed in the U.S. House of Representatives. The proportion of political widows there has declined steadily over time, and congresswomen are increasingly likely to be lawyers and to have previously held a state or county public office, like their male counterparts (Gertzog, 1979). This suggests a common explanation, such as the less unequal position of women in society and particularly their easier access to higher education and highincome jobs, along with a reduction in the level of prejudice among electors and selectors toward the idea of women as politicians. In many countries, women's representation tends to be higher in rural areas (Randall, 1982, p. 100). But in Ireland the regional distribution of the female deputies is different and suggests that a breakdown in traditional attitudes has been a major factor, for of the 13 entirely self-made women deputies elected since 1922, 9 have been elected in Dublin, 1 was returned by the graduates of the National University (graduates elected 6 deputies before the constitution was changed in 1937), and only 3 have come from the rest of the country.

Age and Experience

The current Dail seems to be a fairly young parliament by interna- tional standards, though this is not true of all its predecessors (for figures for some earlier Dala see Farrell, 1975, p. 410; Chubb, 1982, p. 225). The deputies elected in November 1982 had a mean age at the time of the election of 45 years (see Table 1). About a third were younger than 40, though few were below 30. Deputies' average age is below that of the members of any of the competitively elected parliaments in the developed world for which Blondel (1973, pp. 160-161) was able to find data. At the other end of the scale come members of Japan's House of Representatives elected in 1980, who on average aged 56 years and had been elected on 4.1 previous occasions (calculated from tables in Stockwin, 1982, pp. 120, 188-192). In contrast, Dail deputies had been elected on average only 3.2 times previously. They

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Table 1 Age Background of Deputies Elected in November 1982a

(in percentages)

At November When First At First Age 1982 Election Elected Candidacy

Less than 30 5.4 17.5 22.3 30-39 27.1 42.8 48.8 4049 36.7 34.9 27.1 50-59 25.3 4.2 1.8 60 or above 5.4 0.6 0

Average age (in years) 45.1 37.7 35.6

aN=166.

had first won election on average about seven years earlier. Fifty deputies (30 percent) first entered the Dail before 1973, 44 (27 percent) between 1973 and 1980 inclusive, and the other 72 (43 percent) in 1981 or 1982.

The age of TDs at first election, 38 years, also seems relatively low, when compared with figures of about 45 years for Japanese Liberal Demo- cratic Dietmen in 1980 and 42 for British MPs and new members of Congress in 1976 (Stockwin, 1982, p. 121; Mellors, 1978, p. 34; Gertzog, 1979, pp. 437438). Nearly one-fifth of the TDs were younger than 30 when first elected, while very few were over 50, the oldest being 63 (Table 1). Irish deputies are elected younger partly because they start out early. On average they were aged 36 when they first stood for the Dail, and only 16(10 percent) were 45 years or over. Aspiring parliamentarians are not expected, as some are in Britain, to "pay their dues" by carrying the party banner in a hopeless constituency before being given a safe one. Nor is there any question of gradually working one's way up a party list, as in West Germany, or progess- ing from alternate to candidate, a not uncommon route of advancement in France. The necessity of local roots means that very few candidates switch constituencies, so that young aspirants for candidacies do not face competition from experienced politicians who have lost a seat in another constituency. In addition, in recent years both major parties have made conscious efforts to encourage the selection of relatively young candidates.

Age at first election is related to some of the factors already discussed. Deputies with a university education were younger on average when they entered the Dail (36 years) than other TDs (39 years). As in Britain, deputies with prior membership of a local authority tend to be slightly older (39 years) when first elected than other deputies (36 years). Of the main occupational

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groupings, professionals were youngest (36 years) and manual workers oldest (46 years) at first election.

With an average wait of just over two years between first contest and first success, most TDs were elected on their first candidacy. Only two deputies needed more than four attempts, one of them finally being elected twenty-seven years after he first stood.

Defeats Sustained Number before First Election of Deputies Percentage

None 92 55.4 One 42 25.3 Two 24 14.5 Three 6 3.6 Four 0 0 Five 0 0 Six 2 1.2 Total 166 100.0 Average (.72)

The British pattern seems to be similar to the Irish one. Of the individuals elected to the House of Commons between 1918 and 1974, about three-fifths were elected the first time they stood, and on average each experienced 0.6 unsuccessful candidacies before being first elected (Buck, 1963, p. 104; Mellors, 1978, p. 18). In Denmark, though, only about 40 percent of Folketing members of the 1920-1968 period were successful on their first candidacy (Pedersen, 1975, p. 14).

Incumbents are outstandingly successful at Irish elections. Of the 160 outgoing deputies who stood in November 1982, only 21 (13 percent) were defeated. The proportion of first-term deputies returned was only 11 percent (another 5 percent were previous deputies). This is somewhat below average by Irish standards, but even the post-war mean of 19.8 percent new- comers per parliament is relatively low in a comparative context (Mezey, 1979, pp. 250-251; Loewenberg and Patterson, 1979, pp. 106-113). So, too, is the proportion of outgoing deputies seeking reelection who are defeated: this has averaged 15.9 percent over the post-war period. Only in Japan's House of Representatives does there seem to be as low a percentage of first- termers as in the November 1982 Dail (Stockwin, 1982, pp. 120, 188-192). Irish deputies, once elected, have proved hard to dislodge. Leaving aside the 18 first elected in November 1982, only 19 (13 percent) have suffered a defeat since their initial election, the other 129 (87 percent) having an unbroken Dail membership, which bears out Marsh's conclusion (1981, p. 68) as to the significant advantages enjoyed at elections by incumbents.

The low turnover of deputies in Ireland and Japan is at first sight surprising, given that, as already noted, both countries employ electoral systems under which candidates of one party are in direct competition with

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each other. Such systems could be expected to make incumbents more vulnerable than would be the case in a system where they had no challengers for the party vote. In both Ireland and Japan, though, incumbents take steps to minimise any internal threat. In each country they dominate the local party machinery (which selects the candidates) and can thus not only ensure their own reselection, but can also, in most cases, ensure that the party ticket contains no one who might seriously threaten their own position (Carty, 1981, p. 136; Stockwin, 1982, p. 123). In addition, electoral volatility is relatively low in both countries. In Ireland, only 14 of the 166 seats passed from one party to another at the November 1982 election, while Stockwin (1982, p. 97) comments of Japan that "electoral behaviour has shown a degree of stability for which it is difficult to find parallels in other advanced countries."

The Attainment of Ministerial Rank

A full analysis of the determinants of career advancement for Irish politicians would require data covering a longer time span, but the large number of present or former ministers among the 166 deputies elected in November 1982 permits some exploration of the topic. As in most parliamentary systems, all Irish ministers belong to the governing party (or parties); as in several others, they must be members of parliament, and in practice almost all are members of the Dail.5 Of the 166 deputies, 44 were present or former full (cabinet) ministers, 35 were present or former junior ministers, and the other 87 had never held any appointment.6

Predictably, given the tasks of office, high education is related in many countries to becoming a minister. In Britain, for example, public school and Oxbridge products form an even higher proportion of Conservative ministers than of MPs, and graduates are more strongly represented in Labour cabinets than in the parliamentary group (Punnett, 1980, pp. 96-97). In Ireland, education is strongly related to promotion; almost twice as high a proportion of graduates (37 percent) as of nongraduates (20 percent) have entered the cabinet. Twenty-three of the 44 TDs (52 percent) to have been full ministers possessed degrees, against 33 percent of other deputies.

Occupation is less powerfully related to promotion, with the overrepresentation of professionals being smaller than might be expected. A third of the deputies with a professional background have become cabinet ministers, a proportion not dramatically higher than that for other deputies (22 percent). The proportion of professionals never to have received preferment even to junior ministerial level (49 percent) is actually higher than for other deputies (46 percent). Commercial TDs fare as well as professionals, but very few farmers reach the cabinet. A control for seniority affects the relationship, for whereas professionals do no better than other deputies among TDs entering the Dail since 1972, those among the pre-1973 intake

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have an outstanding record. Thirteen of the 17 professionals (76 percent) in this cohort have reached the cabinet, compared with only 36 percent of the other 33 deputies. It has been estimated that 60 percent of ministers between 1922 and 1979 were professionals, while a study of the Irish "political elite" (using a broad definition of the term) over the period 1922-1969 concluded that 53 percent were professionals (Chubb, 1982, p. 189; Cohan, 1972, p. 35).

In Britain, MPs with a background of local authority membership rarely achieve national prominence; they tend, especially in the Labour party, to be the archetypal permanent backbenchers, spending more time than other MPs on constituency work (Mellors, 1978, p. 94; Judge, 1974, pp. 182-183). The Irish pattern is similar. The deputies who have never been local authority members have the most successful record when it comes to promotion (41 percent have entered the cabinet), and those who were local councillors before being elected to parliament are the least successful (20 percent have entered the cabinet). This relationship becomes even more pronounced when a control for seniority is introduced.

As in other countries where ministers are drawn from parliament, seniority plays an important part in recruitment to the ministerial elite. In Britain, the average minister does not enter the cabinet until about 10 to 15 years after becoming an MP (Rose, 1975, pp. 14-15; Headey, 1974, p. 88). In both Britain and West Germany, length of parliamentary service is the best predictor of whether an MP achieves a "top position" (Frankland, 1977, pp. 144-147). In Ireland, the cabinet is limited by the Constitution (Article 28.1) to 15 members, and since these must be selected from among the 90 or fewer government deputies, TDs naturally do not have to wait as long for promotion as deputies in countries with much larger parliaments. The 44 present or former ministers joined the cabinet on average 6.9 years after entering the Dail. Education and occupation are both significantly related to the length of time involved. Ministers with a degree, and those with a professional background, both had to wait only about five years, compared with nine years for ministers without these characteristics. The mean age at entry to the cabinet was 42 years, probably younger than in most countries. However, this is not to suggest that seniority is unimportant in Ireland: since 1922, only four individuals have been made cabinet ministers immediately upon entering the Dail.

In some countries, MPs' chances of advancement seem to be inversely related to their age upon entry into parliament. Headey (1974, p. 88) suggests that British ministers first achieve election at a younger age than MPs as a whole (cf. the figures in Mellors, 1978, p. 34). Frankland (1977, pp. 144-147) goes further and argues that in both Britain and West Germany age at first election is a better predictor of whether an MP achieves an elite position than

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are all the conventionally suggested factors-such as education, occupation, and sex-put together. Among MPs who have served more than four years, it is an even better predictor than length of parliamentary service. In Ireland, too, this factor is related to preferment. The 44 deputies to attain cabinet status were aged on average 34 years when they first stood for election and 36 years when they entered the Dail; the other deputies averaged 36 at first candidacy and 38 at first election. This relationship is unaffected by a control for seniority. More of the full ministers than of the other deputies were elected on their first candidacy (68 percent compared with 51 percent), and they suffered fewer defeats on average before their initial election (0.6 compared with 0.8).

Conclusion

The Irish legislature resembles many others in that most of its members are male and middle-aged and few are manual workers. Most deputies were born in their constituencies and were members of a local authority before progressing to national politics, both quite common characteristics of parliaments. Dail members, though, seem to enter parliament at a younger age than their counterparts elsewhere, and relatively few of them are university graduates. The Dail also differs from most developed legislatures in that it contains high proportions of small businessmen, such as auctioneers and publicans, and of relatives of former deputies; it also operates in what seems to be a distinctive fashion.

As a legislative institution, Dail Eireann has always been an outstandingly weak parliament, even by the standards of an era when little is expected of parliaments. Not only does it not wield effective control over, or bring down, governments (this is true of most parliaments); it does not even compel governments to give an account of their behaviour. This role of scrutinising the government, which most parliaments conduct by means of a committee system, has been virtually ignored by the Dail, whose feebleness in this regard has been much remarked upon. Ward (1974, pp. 241, 222), describing it as "supine," observes that the Dail is excluded "from any but the most nominal role in the formulation of public policy and the manage- ment of the state" and "acts essentially as a rubber stamp." Chubb (1982, p. 205) describes it as "a puny parliament peopled by members who have a modest view of their functions and a poor capacity to carry them out." He adds (pp. 222, 214) that it is "badly organised and equipped and poorly informed," and that "its procedures and techniques are archaic and ineffec- tive," and explains this in terms of deputies' backgrounds. It is due, he argues, to "the preoccupation of many members with their own local positions" and to the fact that "the education and experience of many members and the

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view that they have of their job ill equip them to make the kinds of enquiries that are necessary."

All studies of Irish deputies' behaviour have stressed the link between the large amount of constituency work they do and the neglect of their putative legislative duties (see, for example, Chubb, 1982, pp. 206-229). A recent survey concludes that every week the average deputy holds three to four "clinics" (meetings where the deputy listens to individual constituents' problems) and receives 140 representations, suggesting that "TDs in toto process close on a million representations per year in a country of 3.25 million citizens" (Roche, 1982, p. 100). Irish deputies are certainly communi- cators, but not in the sense that Mellors uses the term about British MPs. Since deputies do not have personal staffs to deal with this work, it occupies most of their time. The electoral system, which pits candidates of the same party against each other, bears much of the responsibility for deputies' frenetic efforts to stave off threats from within the party by rivals who appear more successful at dealing with grievances. Irish experience, then, contradicts the conclusion of Loewenberg and Patterson (1979, pp. 4546) that "the local focus of legislators is strongest where one representative is elected in each district" and that proportional representation systems weaken "the tie between legislators and their geographic constituents." Clearly, there is a crucial difference between PR systems which allow voters to express choices between a party's candidates and those which do not.

An earlier study of the Dail found that hardly any deputies, when interviewed about their perceptions of their role, mentioned policy making. Most shared the view that it was more important for the advancement of a deputy's political career "to get medical cards, agricultural grants, etc. than to research a particular legislative proposal or to examine governmental activity in detail" (Zimmerman, 1978, p. 29). Deputies themselves, debating their procedures in 1983, largely agreed with the consensus of opinion among com- mentators. One declared that "ninety-five per cent of deputies spend ninety- five per cent of their time working for their constituents"; another acknowl- edged that "the volume of constituency work for the average TD prevents his or her giving any worthwhile application to the job of legislator."7 Minis- ters' energies too are taken up by casework, since there is always the danger, under the electoral system, of a minister losing his or her seat to an internal party rival who is seen to work harder for their constituents.

The Irish picture seems remarkable by all known criteria. Constitu- ency service is, of course, a universal and necessary part of a legislator's work, and legislators in many countries complain that it occupies too much of their time (Mezey, 1979, pp. 159-193). It can be seen not as a problem but as an additional mechanism for providing parliamentary scrutiny, or "oversight," of the executive (Johannes, 1979). Nonetheless, it can be taken to excess;

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obsessive concentration on particularised grievances to the exclusion of all other activity does not make for a legislature which provides effective scrutiny of the full range of government activity. There is evidence that concentration on constituency work is usually a feature of third world legislatures rather than those in developed countries (Jewell, 1983, p. 321; Mezey, 1983, pp. 518-522). Irish deputies are subject to an exceptionally, if not uniquely, high level of demand to perform this work. Roche's figures, cited above, mean that each deputy can expect to process annually about two representations for every three votes he or she received at the last election. Recent estimates of casework burdens in the U.S. Congress suggest that Irish deputies, despite their far smaller electorates (and nonexistent staffs), have the same load, in absolute terms, as House members, and half the load of senators (Johannes, 1980, p. 519; cf. the figures for Britain and West Germany in Loewenberg and Patterson, 1979, p. 175). A survey of state legislators in Minnesota and Kentucky found that each had on average about 0.8 "casework contacts per week per 10,000 constituents" (Elling, 1979, p. 359); each Dail deputy has about 100 per week per 10,000 constituents.

There was no evidence until very recently that deputies resented this situation, for the Dail's committee system was extremely weak, and even policy-oriented deputies had little incentive to concentrate on parliamentary rather than brokerage work. The very existence of this type of brokerage-obsessed legislature has had a self-perpetuating effect on political recruitment patterns, leading both selectors and electors to look for constituency-oriented people from the local area rather than potential ministers from other parts of the country. As noted earlier, the local government background of most deputies may predispose them to accept a role as a mere servant of the constituency.

The consequence in Ireland has-been a parliament both unfitted and disinclined to perform the role of scrutinising the executive. Moreover, since it provides the pool from which the executive is drawn, it constricts the talent available when governments are being formed. Elections in Ireland, as in most parliamentary systems, recruit not just deputies but also ministers, and the characteristics appropriate to those two roles may be in conflict. This seems to be the case in Ireland, as is tacitly demonstrated by the way the selection of ministers stresses criteria most TDs do not possess, so that professional deputies with a university education who have never been local authority members stand the best chance of being appointed to the cabinet even though practically half (47 percent) of deputies have none of these characteristics. During 1983 the Dail took its first faltering steps toward reform of its antiquated procedures, introducing a genuine committee system. However, in the absence of a highly improbable reduction in the volume of deputies' casework, it remains to be seen whether this will significantly alter

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the nature of the Dail, or whether it will continue to be an exceptionally locally-oriented institution.

Michael Gallagher is Lecturer of Political Science, Trinity College, University of Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland.

NOTES

I should like to thank the referees for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

1. The main sources used for the backgrounds of deputies are Nealon (1983) and Trench (1982), along with newspapers. The classification scheme used is as follows. The manual employees comprise a sheet metal worker, a porter, a postman, and a shoeworker. The nonmanual employees include clerks, rate collectors, laboratory technicians, and trade union officials. The "commercial" category comprises business people, and in practice almost all are small businessmen;it consists of 12 auctioneers, 5 publicans, 3 engaged in import/export business, 14 others running small contracting firms or shops, 8 directors of small companies, and only 3 who could be regarded as "big businessmen." The professionals include lawyers, doctors, teachers, lecturers, and accountants. Some deputies combine more than one occupation, such as those of farmer, publican, and auctioneer. These deputies are categorised under what appears to be their main occupation. Full- time politicians are classified according to their previous occupation.

2. For details of the occupations of the deputies in this category, see note 1. 3. In this analysis, deputies representing Dublin constituencies are deemed to

be resident in (or born in) their constituencies if they live in (or were born in) any part of Dublin. The same treatment is applied to Cork City.

4. Whereas Ireland uses the single transferable vote in multimember constituencies, Japan has the single nontransferable vote in multimember constituencies.

5. The Constitution (Article 28.7) makes provision for two ministers per government to belong instead to the Seanad (the indirectly-elected upper house), but there have been only two such ministers since 1937.

6. "Present ministers" indicates those who became ministers in the government which took office after the November 1982 general election. Twenty-two of the 44 full ministers had been junior ministers before entering the cabinet; two others had also held both positions, but had acquired them in reverse order. As in Britain, the appointment of ministers is the sole prerogative of the Taoiseach (prime minister).

7. The comments of deputies of Bertie Ahern and Ted Nealon, reported in Dail Debates, Vol. 339, col. 432, 26 January 1983, and col. 919, 2 February 1983.

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Documents

Social Backgrounds and Local Orientations of Members of the Irish Dail