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Abstract
The process of constituency boundary revision in Ireland, designed to satisfy what is perceived as a rigid requirement that a uniform deputy-population ratio be maintained across constituencies, has traditionally consumed a great deal of the time of politicians and officials. For almost two decades after a High Court ruling in 1961, the process was a political one, was highly contentious, and was marked by serious allegations of ministerial gerrymandering. The introduction in 1979 of constituency commissions made up of officials neutralised, for the most part, charges that the system had become too politicised, but it continued the process of micro-management of constituency boundaries. This article suggests that the continuing problems caused by this system – notably, the permanently changing nature of constituency boundaries and resulting difficulties of geographical identification – could be resolved by reversion to the procedure that is normal in proportional representation systems: periodic post-census allocation of seats to constituencies whose boundaries are based on those of recognised local government units and which are stable over time. This reform, replacing the principle of redistricting by the principle of reapportionment, would result in more recognisable constituencies, more predictable boundary trajectories over time, and a more efficient, fairer, and speedier process of revision.
Acknowledgement
I would like to acknowledge the assistance of Colin Rallings for background on the index of change, and the helpful comments of two anonymous referees.
Notes
1. For further elaboration of points made in this article, see Coakley, Citation2013: 171–216, on which this article draws extensively; this is based also on Coakley, Citation2007, Citation2008a, Citation2008b.
2. ‘John O'Donovan, Plaintiff v. The Attorney General, Defendant’, Irish Reports 1961, pp. 114–56.
3. For discussion of the complexities of sub-county territorial units, see Coakley, Citation1979. Ireland's single-tier local government system is unique, with the closest parallel to be found in the UK, where Northern Ireland has had a single local government tier since 1973; the Scottish and English local government systems allow for a low tier of community and parish councils, respectively. The continental European norm is at least a two-tier arrangement, with a small number of counties, provinces or equivalent, and a very large number of municipalities or communes.
4. Computation by Rallings and Thrasher (Citation2007a: 126) of the percentage of constituencies whose boundaries were changed shows that the mean over six revisions, 1983–2005, was only 35 per cent; the corresponding mean in the Irish case over six revisions, 1983–2007, was 49 per cent, ranging from 10 per cent in 1983 to 65 per cent in 2005.
5. The pursuit of mathematical parity has helped to provide a cover for a revision process that is normally driven by considerations of electoral advantage, and the courts have shown little interest in such gerrymandering. The redistricting process in the USA has thus been perceived in a poor light, and has attracted such negative descriptions over the decades as ‘disturbing’, ‘notorious and shameful’ or ‘invidious’ (Hacker, Citation1963: 2, 20, 120), ‘murky’, ‘crass’ or ‘seedy’ (Cain, Citation1984: xi, 1, 189), ‘outrageous’, ‘contorted’ or ‘scandalous’ (Monmonier, Citation2001: 150, 154, 156), ‘one of the most conflictive political activities in the United States’ (Engstrom, Citation2002: 51) and ‘often synonymous with gerrymandering’ (Altman, Magar, McDonald, &Trelles, Citation2014: 1).
6. The electoral systems discussed here include the plurality system in the UK and Canada, the alternative vote system in Australia and the two-ballot system in France, all of which are based on single-member districts. New Zealand and Germany use mixed systems, but the discussion here refers only to the single-member districts.
7. ‘O'Donovan v. Attorney General’ (1961), pp. 155, 132.
8. See judgement by Chief Justice Maguire, ‘In re Art. 26 of the Constitution and the Electoral (Amendment) Bill,1961’, Irish Reports 1961, pp. 169–183, at p. 183. This view was echoed by the constituency boundary commission in 1980 (Ireland, Citation1980: 13). In the 1988 report a more specific conclusion was reached: ‘the Commission considered that a departure from the mathematical average of 8 per cent or over would be unacceptable and, in all probability, contrary to the provisions of the Constitution relating to equality of representation’ (Ireland, Citation1988: 28).
9. This judgement rested on a presumption that the 1961 figure was arrived at by expressing 1,000, the average population of a district electoral division, as a percentage of 20,000, the average deputy-population ratio at the time. Mr Justice Clarke argued, however, that the figure of 1,000 needs to be expressed as a percentage of total population, which ranged at the time from about 100,000 in a five-seat to 60,000 in a three-seat constituency, giving a ‘tolerance’ level of somewhere between 1.0 per cent and 1.7 per cent. See ‘Murphy and another v. Minister for Environment and others’, Irish Reports 2008 (3), pp. 438–475, at pp. 448–449.
10. The High Court ruled in 2007 that the commission is required to use final rather than preliminary census data. See ‘Murphy v. Minister for Environment’, pp. 465–466, 469, where Mr Justice Clarke asked ‘whether measures can be put in place to minimise the gap between the availability of census figures and the enactment of legislation’.
11. The 2007 High Court judgement fired a warning shot regarding the overriding need to defend proportionality; see ‘Murphy v. Minister for Environment’, pp. 467–468.
12. This point is also made in respect of Irish elections by Engstrom (Citation1987), but is disputed in the case of the 2002 election by White (Citation2006).
13. The Irish system seems to have achieved a relatively high degree of proportionality initially (Laver and Mair, Citation1975; Gallagher, Citation1975; O'Leary, Citation1979: 107–110), with constituency size apparently having relatively little impact (see also Gallagher, Citation1986: 258–260). But, whatever the actual outcome, the intention to gerrymander has also been alleged (Carstairs, Citation1980: 217).