UCD School of Politics & International Relations

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SPIRe’s week ten seminar will feature SPIRe’s Drs. Samuel Brazys and Niamh Hardiman presenting on their research on “From Tiger to PIIGS.  Ireland and the use of heuristics in comparative political economy.” from 12:00-13:00 Wednesday, April 17th  in G316 Newman Building, UCD Belfield.  All are welcome.

Abstract

“The PIIGS are…”  “The BRICS will…” “The LDCs can…”  Heuristics pervade the lexicon of international and comparative political economy.  Grouping actors based on perceived or observed characteristics can facilitate discussion and analysis.  However, an over-reliance on heuristics can also lead to sloppy or improper narratives where the heuristics help drive common observed outcomes.  In this paper we look at the narrative construction of the “PIIGS” (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain) group and trace how it was that Ireland became a member of this (in)famous grouping.  We examine the process by which the group came into being, and assess the merits for classifying the countries together.  We then perform simple empirical tests and find evidence of Granger causality that increased media usage of the term “PIIGS” precedes an increased similarity in interest rate correlations between Ireland and the other PIIGS compared to the interest rate correlations between Ireland and the “northern” euro-zone economies.  We conclude with more general thoughts and cautions on the use of heuristics in comparative political economy.

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SPIRe’s week ten seminar will feature SPIRe’s Dr. Paul Gillespie  presenting on his research “Crisis as choice: Comparing Typologies of Political Identity in the European Union” from 12:00-13:00 Wednesday, April 10th  in G316 Newman Building, UCD Belfield.  All are welcome.

ABSTRACT

How can a more politicised European Union combine the nation-states which are its members with the supranational structures and institutions required to hold such an emerging polity together legitimately? There is a widespread feeling that new approaches are needed and a new vocabulary to express them, straddling scholarly writing, political discourse and popular engagement as the financial and eurozone crises force political choices on all concerned, as events and political discourse daily confirm. The issue of the EU’s future political order is now formally inscribed in its political agenda by the Van Rompuy Report of 2012.

The phrase “multiple political identities” crops up in the theoretical and   empirical literatures on post-national democracy, comparative federalism, cosmopolitan democracy, multiculturalism, neo-medievalism and European constitutionalism, straddling political science, sociology, international relations, social psychology and anthropology. But more theorising of the subject is needed to clarify its difficulties and understand whether and how national and European identifications combine.

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SPIRe’s Week eight seminar will feature SPIRe’s Mr. Conor Little presenting on his research “When do coalitions eat their Greens? The electoral outcomes of Green parties in governing coalitions.” from 12:00-13:00 Wednesday, March 27th  in G316 Newman Building, UCD Belfield.  All are welcome.

ABSTRACT

As parties of opposition in the 1980s and 1990s, Green parties’ electoral support base grew, albeit slowly and to a modest size. Their mean vote share increased steadily from 2.1% in 1979 to 6.1% in 2003 (Spoon 2011, p.41)2; they gained votes more frequently than other parties (Buelens and Hino 2008, p.159); their growth was crossnationally consistent (Gallagher et al. 2011, p.251; see also Mair 2002, p.136); and once they had passed the threshold of representation, they tended not to go back over it (Müller-Rommel 2002, p.5). Individual parties experienced setbacks (see e.g., Jahn 1993) and the decline of Green parties was forecast from time to time (e.g., Mair 2001, p.103), but the broader story has been one of persistence, incremental growth and stabilisation in the electorate (Richardson 1992, p.20; Dolezal 2010).

Coalition at the national level has presented a new and challenging strategic context for these parties (Müller-Rommel 2002, pp.9-11). In stable democracies, Green parties have participated in coalition as cabinet parties or support parties on 24 occasions, in 23 coalitions, and in 13 countries To date, they have contested post-coalition general elections on 20 occasions. This paper aims to explain why these similar parties4 in similar strategic contexts (i.e., coalition) have experienced diverse post-coalition outcomes. Why do some Green parties in coalition gain votes while others lose? Do the attributes and strategies of these small, marginal parties matter for their outcomes? It draws on theory and existing findings on the cost of governing and electoral behaviour to explain this variation.