Following on from the questions I raised at the end of yesterday's post, there was a very useful op-ed in yesterday's Irish Times by Séamus Ó Cinnéide, Jean Monet Professor of Social Policy at NUI Maynooth. It raises some very pertinent questions on the relationship between partnership and democratic accountability. The view that partnership vitiates parliamentary democracy because it undermines parliament's role in the formation of public policy has been around for some time. Garret Fitzgerald has been one notable critic from this perspective.
Annoyingly, the article is behind the usual subscription firewall but here are a couple of key paragraphs:
Next year, during the second year of the new agreement, there will be a general election, which could lead to the formation of a new government. Would the new government be bound by the terms of the agreement now being drafted, ie, would new parties in government be bound by the political commitments made by the present, different, parties in government? There is an apparent conundrum here. On the one hand if a new government, democratically elected, could not change the policies agreed by its predecessors, the parties that had been rejected by the electorate, then what would be the point of having a general election at all? On the other hand, if a new government could and did change the policies agreed on in a national agreement, would the whole agreement fall apart?
[the] apparent solution is increasingly difficult to sustain in the light of certain developments. First of all, there has been a tendency since the process began 20 years ago for each succeeding national agreement to cover a wider and more diverse range of policies. Secondly, the partnership system and process have a rationale and dynamic of their own which are shaping more and more the overall process of policy-making, and the policies themselves, without regard for politics. Thirdly, far from the policies of parties all converging in the political centre, the differences across the spectrum are as significant as ever.
The last point Ó Cinnéide makes is highly debatable, especially as on key issues like taxation there is hardly a cigarette paper's width of a difference between most of them. It raises the question of just how policy-driven are Irish political parties? Michael McDowell of course argued in Waterford a month ago in his famous "meat in the sandwich" speech that it is the junior partner in a coalition that "defines the direction" of the government. But it just isn't particularly plausible and sounds like special pleading for the continuing relevance of small political parties.
Ó Cinnéide makes the interesting point that the negotiations surrounding national agreements are but one element in a "wider partnership system that involves, for instance, a congeries of three permanent specialised representative agencies under the Department of the Taoiseach". These are the National Economic and Social Council (NESC), the National Social and Economic Forum and the National Centre for Partnership and Performance. NESC in particular seems to have a highly influential role in setting the policy agenda and Ó Cinnéide laments the fact that important documents like the NESC Strategy 2006: People, Productivity and Purpose appear with hardly any discussion in political circles and in the Houses of the Oireachtas. Such documents are avidly consumed by partnership insiders and are intended to shape the direction of public policy for years to come.
Given that NESC is an important institution in Ireland's model of corporatism and appears particularly influential in setting the agenda for new directions in social policy, the silence from politicians is deafening. I will look more closely at the role of NESC in future posts. I have just started reading Negotiated Governance and Public Policy in Ireland by George Taylor, Lecturer in Politics at NUI Galway and it promises to provide further stimuli on these and related issues.
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