Towards a Second Republic: options for Ireland's future development
During the 1990s and 2000s, the Irish Celtic Tiger model of development was hailed as a model for other European countries, but the global economic crisis has completely removed the credibility of Ireland’s approach. So where does the country go now? By Peader Kirby and Mary P. Murphy. [Event details below]
While the 2011 general election was full of the promise of reform, what has been delivered by the Fine Gael/Labour coalition has been rather piecemeal and incremental. We still await the constitutional convention, promised for this autumn and now postponed until the spring of 2012. In the meantime, energies dissipate and expectations decline.
Yet, the need for radical change remains. While the focus of public attention has been on fixing the banks and getting the economy moving again, there is the danger that the deeper challenges of constructing a more democratic and effective political system, of delivering quality public services accessible by all, of reducing inequalities, of weaning ourselves off dependence on fossil fuels and moving to a carbon-neutral society, and of raising the quality of public deliberation and engagement will be seen as less pressing.
In this context, it is important to hold to ambitious agendas for change. Foremost among these over the period of the general election was mention of the need for a second republic to re-found the institutions of the state and of the economy, embodying new values and a new vision of the sort of society we aspire to.
Our book, ‘Towards a Second Republic’, published by Pluto Press, will be launched in the Mansion House, Dublin, on 3 November. It is the first book-length treatment of what a second republic would entail.
While a new republic inevitably requires major reforms to our electoral and party political systems, to the way the state’s bureaucracy functions, and to relations between the executive and the legislature, we believe that the reform agenda has been too limited to these types of reform. Indeed, we worry that we could reform our systems of governance without equally thorough reforms to our economy and society. No reforms would be complete, for example, without addressing the issue of gender equality. Furthermore, we raise the possibility of whether a second Irish Republic would embrace the whole island, the nationalist and unionist traditions, and the sectors of Irish society that identify with neither.
We see a reformed political system as a means to a more egalitarian and sustainable society, with an economy that serves the good of society rather than giving priority to the needs of global capital and its allies within Ireland. Achieving such an Ireland will require a decisive move to a new model of development, the need for which has been largely missing in the reform debate so far.
We map out the options facing Irish society around three models, or ways in which the state and the market interact. The first is the current model, inherited from Celtic Tiger Ireland, which is a radical free-market and neoliberal model in which the state sees its role as being to service the needs of global capital in the first place and only weakly attend to the needs of the most vulnerable in society thereafter. While this model has bankrupted the state, ruined the banking system and led the economy into its most severe recession since independence, there are few signs of any decisive move away from it.
However, a second model is emerging from civil society, particularly from the trade union and other social movements, as well as from sectors of the political left. This is labelled in the book as a developmental social democratic model under which the state would set more robust social goals and seek to develop an economic system to achieve these goals, particularly through investment in strengthening Irish enterprises across a broad range of activities. Such a model will require a more broadly based and just taxation system from which quality public services could be funded.
The contours of a third model are also visible on the horizon of some sectors of civil society which seek to respond to the twin challenges of greenhouse gas emissions, which are causing global warming; and of peak oil which is going to see the price of oil and oil-based products climb steadily. These are leading society into a time of huge uncertainty which will require a transition to a steady-state economy based not on economic growth but on the redistribution of goods and services. Achieving this may well make necessary a very different model, what we call an ethical or ecological socialism, as incentives dramatically change for all of society.
Yet, outlining ideal-type models is the easy part. More difficult is to identify as clearly as possible the social forces that support these different models and that can help to make the transition to a new model. In this regard, the relationship between ideas, interests and institutions becomes crucial. Clearly, the economic and banking collapse has opened up new spaces in which to debate ideas - spaces that had been largely closed down during the Celtic Tiger.
But ideas on their own don’t being about change. Change requires that wider sectors of society begin to identify their interests with the change agenda, and begin to see that the sorts of changes being promoted would best serve their needs. This is beginning to happen but needs to go much further. Only when broader sectors of society support the need for the fundamental changes outlined here can institutions be built that give a more permanent expression to these changes. A crucial part of the institutions that might build a new Irish society relate to developments in the European Union and the book examines how out of the present crisis in the EU may emerge institutions that better facilitate an alternative model, effectively moving us closer to Berlin and farther from Boston.
Towards a Second Republic therefore maps out an agenda for long-term and radical change at this crucial moment in our history. We see it as a tool to aid debate and guide activism rather than simply as an analysis of where we are at now. As such its value will lie in the extent to which it clarifies options and encourages action to achieve them.
The book will be launched at a special event on 3 November at the Mansion House in Dublin to discus the central question, 'Where does - and where should - the country go now?'. The event will feature Fintan O’Toole, Professor Kathleen Lynch, David Begg, Catherine Murphy TD and Lord Mayor Andrew Montague in discussion on themes and proposals raised by the book.