Determinants of support for directly-elected mayors in Ireland

ABSTRACT

In May 2019, three Irish local authorities ran plebiscites alongside their local elections: Cork City Council, Limerick City and County Council, and Waterford City and County Council. The plebiscites were run to judge support for Government proposals to introduce a reformed, directly-elected mayoral office. The results were, in some ways, the worst possible from a Government perspective: a mix. While voters in Limerick backed the plan by a slight majority, it was marginally rejected in both Cork and Waterford. Faced with disappointing a large group of voters no matter the course of action taken, the Government shelved the plans for Cork and Waterford indefinitely, though the plan for Limerick may proceed. Despite the 2019 rejections, the 2020 UCD Online Election Poll (INES 1) found indications of high levels of support for these reforms: four-in-five respondents agreed that mayors should be directly elected, which is a significantly higher proportion than the Yes vote in any of the three plebiscite areas. This research uses further data from the online poll to establish correlates of support for these reforms, and tentatively suggests that partisan dynamics in turnout are why this support wasn’t reflected in the plebiscite results.

KEYWORDS:

• Direct democracy
• local government
• political reform
• public opinion

Acknowledgements

An early version of this paper was presented at the Political Studies Association of Ireland Annual Conference in October 2020, and I am very grateful for the participants’ engagement and feedback. I would also like to thank the editors of this special issue (David Farrell and Jos Elkink), as well as Mike Lewis-Beck and two anonymous reviewers provided by Irish Political Studies, for invaluable feedback that greatly strengthened the final version of the paper. Finally, I must thank Kathy D’Arcy for her always-patient proofreading of my work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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Luke Field

Luke Field is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Iceland’s Social Science Research Institute and Faculty of Political Science, working on NordForsk-funded research into public opinion on terrorism in the Nordic countries. His primary research interests include democracy and representation, campaigns, political parties, democratic innovations, and emotions in politics. He has previously worked at University College Dublin and University College Cork.