Deepening Democracy within Ireland’s Social Partnership

Abstract

Ireland’s social partnership process, now under attack from a number of quarters, has repeatedly been charged with being ‘undemocratic’ in that it undermines the sovereign position of elected political representatives, with key policy formulation and decision‐making taking place in forums outside the institutions of representative democracy. These critiques echo those against new forms of networked governance more globally. A key question therefore is how (and if) democracy may be deepened within social partnership or its potential successor(s). This article addresses this question by employing a post‐liberal democratic framework to examine social partnership in practice, and by drawing lessons from another partnership process, Malawi’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Process (PRSP). Drawing from Malawi’s experience, it is argued that democracy can be deepened within social partnership when governance deliberations and negotiations are conducted under conditions of vibrant public debate and genuine perspective‐based representation, and when the communicative and discursive norms are widened to allow for such representation.

Notes

1. http://www.finegael.ie/news/documents/NEWDEPARTURE%20FGLAB%20DOC1.pdf (accessed 5 September 2008).

2. Originally introduced by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in 1999 as a condition of debt relief under the Highly Indebted Poor Country Initiative (HIPC), the elaboration and implementation of PRSP national development programmes are now a condition of all World Bank and IMF funding.

3. Aggregative theories of democracy define equality in terms of equal access to political channels of influence and view regular elections, open and uncensored public debate, and transparency within the policy process as key in this, while integrative theories define equality in terms of the influence citizens possess in concrete decision‐making processes, thereby focusing on political empowerment (for a fuller discussion of these two strands within liberal democratic theory see Berlin, 1991).

4. Habermas’s contributions in this area have been criticised in the respect that they appear to assume all actors are able to participate equally and ignore issues of differential power and capacity.

5. A number of member organisations of the CV pillar refused to sign up to the 2003 strategy, Sustaining Progress. They subsequently lost their ‘Social Partner’ status and were excluded from a range of policy fora associated (either directly or indirectly) with Social Partnership.

6. Malawi had 28 districts. One of these was recently split into two to make 29. MEJN has set up Chapters in all except the districts of N’neno and Likoma.