FROM SCEPTICISM TO ENGAGEMENT Europeanization of the Green Party and Sinn Féin in Ireland in election campaigns 2009–2020
Mari-Helen Kula
Master thesis, 30 hp Master’s program in political science, 120 hp Spring term 2021
Abstract
This study examines the impact of the European Union and the programmatic and policy changes in two Irish political parties, the Green Party and Sinn Féin. The Europeanization concept is the theoretical basis of the study and it is operationalized by the use of EU salience. The study is carried out by content analysis of national and European election manifestos prepared by the parties during the 2009–2020 time period.
The findings showed an increased salience on the European Union in national election campaigns by both parties, and in the European Parliament elections by Sinn Féin. A process of Europeanization has taken place in both parties regarding foreign policy and issues related to external relations. The Green Party showed an increased emphasis on the European Union regarding environmental issues.
This study contributes to the research on the European impact on national political parties and the increased importance of European level politics in the national systems.
Keywords: Europeanization, european integration, programmatic changes, political parties, EU salience, Irish party politics
List of abbreviations
CAP Common Agricultural Policy CMP Comparative Manifestos Project CFSP Common Foreign and Security Policy CSDP Common Security and Defence Policy EC European Commission ECB European Central Bank EEC European Economic Community EMP Euromanifestos Project EMU European Monetary Union ESDP European Security and Defence Policy EU European Union IMF International Monetary Fund MARPOR Manifesto Research on Political Representation NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization NEDG Non-Economic Demographic Groups UMG Underprivileged Minority Groups Table of contents
1. INTRODUCTION ...... 3
1.1 BACKGROUND ...... 3 1.2 PURPOSE AND AIM ...... 4 1.2.1 Research problem ...... 4 1.2.2 Limitations ...... 5 1.2.3 Outline ...... 6 1.3 POLITICAL PARTIES IN IRELAND ...... 7 1.3.1 The Irish party system...... 7 1.3.2 Sinn Féin ...... 8 1.3.3 The Green Party ...... 10
2. LITERATURE REVIEW ...... 11
2.1 POLITICAL PARTIES AND THE EU ...... 11 2.2 EUROPEANIZATION IN THE IRISH PARTY SYSTEM ...... 14
3. THEORY ...... 15
3.1 EUROPEANIZATION ...... 16 3.2 THEORIES ON EUROPEAN INTEGRATION ...... 17 3.3 OPERATIONALIZATION AND RELEVANCE ...... 19
4. METHOD AND RESEARCH DESIGN ...... 22
4.1 CASE STUDIES ...... 22 4.1.1 Case selection ...... 22 4.1.2 Timeframe of the study ...... 23 4.2 EMPIRICAL MATERIAL ...... 24 4.2.1 Election manifestos ...... 24 4.3 METHOD ...... 26 4.3.1 Content analysis ...... 26 4.3.2 Coding procedure ...... 27 4.3.3 Reliability problems and validity ...... 29
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5. FINDINGS ...... 30
5.1 BACKGROUND ...... 30 5.1.1 Policy domains ...... 30 5.2 EUROPEAN ELECTIONS ...... 32 5.2.1 Programmatic changes in the Green Party ...... 33 5.2.2 Programmatic changes in Sinn Féin ...... 38 5.2.3 Summary ...... 42 5.3 GENERAL ELECTIONS 2011–2020 ...... 44 5.3.1 Programmatic changes in the Green Party ...... 45 5.3.2 Programmatic changes in Sinn Féin ...... 46 5.3.3 Summary ...... 46
6. ANALYSIS ...... 47
6.1 IRELAND, FOREIGN POLICY AND THE EU...... 48 6.2 ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES AND AGRICULTURE ...... 49 6.3 REFORMING THE SYSTEM ...... 50 6.4 GENERAL ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE EU ...... 50 6.5 THE EUROPEANIZATION PROCESS ...... 51
7. CONCLUSION ...... 51
7.1 DISCUSSION OF RESEARCH QUESTIONS...... 52 7.2 FINAL REFLECTIONS ...... 53
BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 54
2 1. Introduction
1.1 Background “Surely it is self-evident that if we were to remain outside the Community we would be conferring on the Border the status of a frontier, both economic and political, between ourselves and the rest of Europe.”– Jack Lynch, Taoiseach (Dáil Éireann debates 1972)
At the time of entry (in 1973) into the European Economic Community (EEC), Ireland’s economy was in dire straits. The unemployment rate was high, the productivity and incomes were low, and economic growth through access to the inner market was much needed. The consensus then among Irish state elites and society (Laffan 2018, 248) was that membership would be a positive-sum game for the country, and an opportunity to catch up economically with mainland Europe. The vitality of the Irish economy in the 2010s has likewise been largely credited to the benefits of Europeanization and integration (Hayward 2010, 95). Although the United Kingdom opted out of joining the European Monetary Union (EMU), Ireland was a founding member (Donovan & Murphy 2013, 20–21).
Since the creation of the union and Ireland’s entry, the EU has faced a set of challenges including a global recession in 2008 and the subsequent European debt crisis setting off in 2009, the European migrant crisis hitting its peak in 2015, and the United Kingdom’s decision to exit the union and the inner market. In 2021, the aftermath of Brexit continues to pose a challenge for Ireland’s relationships with the United Kingdom as well as with the EU. The Irish parties’ relationships with the EU and its integration has despite the several crises been relatively stable and slightly more positive over time, with Sinn Féin and the Green Party standing out as previously opposed to European integration – if not outright Eurosceptical – but currently holding significantly more positive views. In general, European parties have shown tendencies of becoming more pro-integrationist over time (Hellström 2008a).
The European debt crisis in 2009, occurring a mere decade after the introduction of the Euro currency and rooted in a balance-of-payments crisis, combined with a number of contributing factors (Copelovitch, Frieden & Walter 2016, 10), was the EU’s most severe economic crisis to-date and was a particularly devastating one for Ireland (and for the Eurozone members in southern Europe as well). Despite the financial crisis of 2007–2008, that originated in the
3 United States and sparked a global recession, it was a situation that the country did not foresee, and the EU was fundamentally unequipped to deal with. During the years leading up to this crisis that would soon lead to the country entering bailout negotiations, the Celtic Tiger economy – dubbed so for the transformation from Ireland being one of the poorest countries in the EU to a fast-growing economy within two decades (International Monetary Foundation [IMF] 2018) – was prospering. Confidence was still high, and the previous fiscal years had shown promising numbers (Donovan & Murphy 2013, 2). This shock that the EU was essentially unprepared for revealed an asymmetry among members in the Eurozone when Greece was on the brink of bankruptcy (Hooghe & Marks 2019) and Ireland, among others, was in dire need of financial assistance. In 2010, the Irish government began negotiations with the troika – consisting of the IMF, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European Commission (EC) – to enter a bailout program in order to stabilize the banking system and restore the credit flow (IMF 2018). As of March 2021, the final repayment on the 3,7-billion- euro loan has been completed (Curran 2021).
Ireland’s relationship with the EU is indisputably a special one and the benefits of membership, especially in getting the economy back on its feet, cannot be overstated. However, as has been indicated, the political parties have had very different stances on what the Irish relationship with the EU should be. The aim of this thesis is to trace back the recent shifts in Sinn Féin and the Green Party’s attitudes towards the EU to a Europeanization process. This is done by examination of national and European election manifestos prepared by each party for a selected time period, 2009–2020. A content analysis was carried out on the empirical material.
1.2 Purpose and aim
1.2.1 Research problem The purpose of this thesis is to examine and explain the shifts in two Irish political parties’, namely the Green Party and Sinn Féin, policy changes through a Europeanization process. These parties have both historically been on the more Eurosceptical side, but the recent decade has shown a shift in both party’s EU attitudes (Bakker et al. 2020), approaching the views of the centre-right parties. As for the popular opinion in the country, support for remaining in the EU is high (84%) in Ireland and there is a general view that membership has benefitted the country in various way (European Movement Ireland 2020). While a discussion of Europeanization of Irish parties and changes in party attitudes towards European integration
4 certainly has taken place between scholars, recent literature on the subject is sparse and there is a gap in the research, particularly in the past decade, on how Irish political parties motivate the changes in their positions. Existing research has examined party positions on the EU up until the early 2000s, however, the literature since then has been mostly focused on single policy areas, or for example the impact of Brexit on Ireland’s relationship with the EU.
There is an argument to be made for continuing the research into Irish party attitudes towards the EU and the importance of EU policymaking, in the post-Eurocrisis period, and certainly now in the era of Brexit. Considering the grave crises that the Union has been exposed to in recent years, it is reasonable to further explore the subject and seek to understand not only if party positions have changed, which we from previous research by other authors can conclude that they have, but in which policy areas changes are most prominent and how any Europeanization effect on parties’ programmatic contents differs between national and European elections. This thesis builds on Ladrech’s (2002) framework of analysis for the Europeanization process in political parties and is specifically focused on policy and programmatic changes. Furthermore, this thesis contributes to the research on effects of Europeanization on national political parties’ policy and programmatic content.
Party positions on different EU policy issues are established in party manifestos and programmatic and policy changes can thus be examined through them. The study is guided by the following research questions: – What programmatic changes can be identified in the Green Party and Sinn Féin? – How are programmatic changes manifested in national and European elections?
1.2.2 Limitations This study is concentrated on Sinn Féin and the Green Party and this research is limited to a timeframe of 2009–2020. Research (presented further in the literature review) has indeed shown a shift in attitudes and salience on EU issues in most Irish parties – and in general, as most European parties have experienced an increase in pro-EU stances over the years (Hellström 2008a). However, the most radical changes have been identified in the Green Party and Sinn Féin, which makes exploring the causes of those both more interesting and achievable, than for parties that have gone through less drastic changes. For the same reasons, this study is also limited to a certain time period that has been identified as when changes have occurred in the parties.
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While Sinn Féin and the Green Party also operate in Northern Ireland, this analysis is focused on the Republic alone, one reason being that the party system in Northern Ireland is structured differently from the Republic – as a “dual ethnic party system” that is polarized around support for a United Ireland versus the union with the UK (Murphy & Hayward 2009).
1.2.3 Outline This remaining part of the thesis is structured as follows. First, I present a brief background to the political parties and describe the context of the party system Ireland, with a focus on Sinn Féin and the Green Party and how they distinguish themselves.
Then, an overview of the previous literature on the subject and ongoing discussions are presented in the second chapter. Following the literature review, the theory chapter introduces the concept of Europeanization and a discussion of different directions of Europeanization and how it can be studied, along with other approaches to European integration. Within the same chapter, the operationalization of the Europeanization concept and the chosen framework of analysis are presented.
The fourth chapter presents the research design and method of analysis. This chapter includes the case selection and timeframe of the study. The empirical material, election manifestos, is presented and motivated, with regards to the operationalization and framework discussed in the theory chapter. The content analysis method is presented and critically discussed and is followed by a detailed description of the coding procedure. The possible limitations of the analysis and issues with reliability are considered.
The fifth chapter presents the findings from the analysis of the empirical material. The first part of the chapter is devoted to the findings of the European manifesto analysis, then, the findings of the national manifesto analysis are presented. In the sixth chapter, the analysis of the results in relation to the theory and research questions is presented. Lastly, the conclusions are presented in the final seventh chapter, along with a discussion and reflections on the results and their relation to previous research.
6 1.3 Political parties in Ireland In all of Europe, mainstream parties are normally considered pro-integrationist while Euroscepticism is reserved for the far left and right, which is often illustrated by an inverted U- curve (Hix & Lord 1997; Hooghe, Marks & Wilson 2002). The explanation for this is according to Marks (2004, 239) that for one, parties on the far left and right view the EU as an extension of the domestic opposition parties, as centrist parties have dominated political institutions around Europe and thus are responsible for creating the EU, making it easier for the parties which had no hand in the European projects to be critical of them. Second, centrist parties have strategic reasons for preferring convergence on EU support and avoiding competition with the left/right parties on European integration, who in turn may stress the EU issue for strategic purposes, further politicizing the issue.
Still, the relationship between ideology and integration has changed in the sense that social issues, rather than economic, are the main drivers of parties’ attitudes and that the U-curve is now two-dimensional (Prosser 2015). According to Hellström (2008a), it is within the mainstream parties’ interest to maintain the status quo and not challenge European integration, as membership in the EU is considered a fait accompli. The rise of the populist right-wing parties in the past decades that are by design anti-EU has been prominent in all of Europe, and although this trend has not bypassed Ireland entirely – The Irish Freedom Party has advocated for an “Irexit” and “national independence and sovereignty” since 2018 (Irish Freedom Party 2021) – it has yet to gain any traction with the electorate. This absence of any successful right- wing parties in the Irish political system is further discussed in the literature review chapter.
1.3.1 The Irish party system The party system in Ireland can be categorized as “broadly centrist” (Puirséil 2017) and has historically been less ideologically distinct than parties in the rest of Europe. Currently, the largest parties are Fianna Fáil, Sinn Féin, and Fine Gael. Sinn Féin, the centre-left party, received the most first-preference votes for the first time in the 2020 General Election, gaining 10,7 points since 2016. All of the mainstream parties except for Sinn Féin and the Green Party lost some ground since 2016, although Fianna Fáil still won the most seats (Raidió Teilifís Éireann 2020). Voter support has wavered, and election results fluctuated in the most recent elections, still, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, both belonging to the ideological centre-right, remain stable as the largest parties in the Republic of Ireland. The Irish political system has, up until
7 2020, fundamentally been centered around the competition between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael (Little 2020) and one of them forming a coalition government.
The 2020 election was a turning point in Irish politics, as it left the parliament unusually fragmented when the seats were nearly evenly distributed and no combination had the majority to form a government, in addition to Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael refusing to form a government with Sinn Féin, essentially putting an end to the traditional “two-and-a-half party system” in government (Field 2020) and leaving the Republic without a government for 20 weeks in the midst of a public health crisis. Because of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael’s refusal to enter a coalition with Sinn Féin, a government was eventually formed with Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, and the Green Party, which marked the first time that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael had formed a coalition together, coincidentally ending “the so-called Civil War era of politics” (O’Halloran, Fiach & Leahy 2020) and giving them a working majority in the Dáil, the lower house of the parliament.
As has been mentioned, the party system in Ireland is heavily focused on the centre. It should be evident that both the far-left and -right of the Irish political spectrum are relatively undeveloped. The two centre-right parties, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, are rather similar in their relationship with the EU. These two parties were welcoming of the EU membership from the onset (Laffan 2018, 249) and both remain supportive of further EU integration. Both are Christian-democratic and conservative “catch-all” parties with similar ideologies, although Fine Gael (“Family of the Irish”) leans towards more market liberalism. Fianna Fáil (“Soldiers of Destiny”), was for long the dominating party – the period until 1989 was considered the “Fianna Fáil vs the rest” era, followed by the “multi-party era” when coalition governments became the norm in Ireland, which is a system that the party has also thrived in (Gilland Lutz 2003). Nevertheless, even members have had trouble differentiating between these two dominating parties in terms of policy and left-right ideology (Gallagher & Marsh, 421).
1.3.2 Sinn Féin The first party in focus in this thesis is Sinn Féin. Sinn Féin (“We Ourselves”) is a centre-left party that is first and foremost characterized by its nationalism and Irish republicanism – the movement for a united Ireland and independence from the United Kingdom. As “the political manifestation of the Irish revolution” (Laffan 1999, 4), Sinn Féin has a controversial past because of its association with the paramilitary organization the Irish Republican Army (IRA), and consequently, its link to terrorism. Considered once as the political wing of the IRA, the
8 party was vastly different at the time of founding in 1905 than it is today. It was not until the Northern Ireland peace process in the 1990s that Sinn Féin became a mainstream party and started to drift further from its original core beliefs (Hueckel 2007). Even so, the party was still widely viewed as the political fringe until the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis that upended the Celtic Tiger economy, when they started to pick up votes as a result of the changing socio- economic dynamics and increasing unemployment rate (Utz 2019), although they have not been in part of any cabinet since the time of the Irish Republic in 1922. While the party no longer relies on the support and militarism of the IRA, a reunification with Northern Ireland is still in their endgame. On social issues, Sinn Féin is a progressive party with explicit support of LGBTQ rights (Sinn Féin 2018).
One reason for Sinn Féin’s status as a fringe party in the first decades of Ireland’s EEC membership was that they simply did not have the resources to campaign in elections, and that either way participation in elections would give legitimacy to the partition of Ireland, meaning that elections were therefore not useful to the party’s agenda (Maillot 2009). This approach dates back to the early abstentionist days of Sinn Féin, which is still practiced by the party in Northern Ireland, meaning that while they do participate in elections, they decline to take up seats in the UK parliament (Kelly 2019) when successfully elected – even in the context of Brexit, where it would appear logical, because, according to an abstentionist MP in Northern Ireland, “these institutions have often acted against the interests of the Irish people – not just in the past, but as we are seeing now” (Maskey 2018).
In the 1970s, the party also rejected membership in the EEC on the basis that it would jeopardize Ireland’s sovereignty, and continues to be critical of the EU, but still “critically engaged”. Sinn Féin opposes Brexit because of the threats it constitutes to Northern Ireland, where the people voted to remain in the EU, in terms of the peace process and the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, the access to the single market, trade, and the border with the Republic (Sinn Féin 2021). The early electoral efforts of Sinn Féin in the EEC and later in the EU were not, according to Maillot (2009), grounded in their willingness to engage with the Union, but rather in an electoral strategy to keep the momentum and established local activism that had been building in the 1980s. The party’s opposition to European integration has, however, been evident through the years, seen manifested in for example the “no” campaigns for the Nice and Lisbon Treaty referendums. The party at the time of the Lisbon Treaty referendum criticized both the Irish government for its failure to protect national interests, and accused the Green Party of only
9 siding with the “yes” side so that they could remain in government with Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats (O’Halloran 2008). This opposition towards the treaties distinguishes Sinn Féin from the other Irish parties, but their later “critical engagement” with the EU has also given the party increased legitimacy (Maillot 2009). Sinn Féin currently holds one seat in the EP and belongs to the European United Left/Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL) group. Additionally, two other Irish MEPs from the left-wing Independents 4 Change party, and one independent MEP, are also part of this group. (GUE/NGL 2021)
1.3.3 The Green Party The Green Party (“Comhaontas Glas”) in Ireland, located on the centre-left of the political spectrum, was formed in the 1980s around the same time as green parties were forming in the rest of the world. As such, the party’s focus is on environmental protection and a sustainable society (The Green Party 2021). The party is socially progressive, with support for example for reproductive rights, including abortion rights, and recognition and protection of transgender people (The Green Party 2021b). The Green Party has been in government twice; entering for the first time in 2007, and the second in 2020. As previously mentioned, the party is currently in a coalition government with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael since the 2020 election, a formation made possible by the fact that the two other parties both refused a coalition with Sinn Féin. In 2007, the Green Party enter government with Fianna Fáil and the centre-right Progressive Democrats, which formally dissolved in 2008 while in government (Hansen 2009). During the first government negotiations, one MEP wrote that a coalition with Fianna Fáil would be like “a deal with the devil” (Cuffe 2007). There was a certain disagreement between the party members who entirely opposed entering government, and those who saw it as an opportunity to implement green policies (Leonard 2011, 90).
The Green Party was, undoubtedly, very much an opposition party. The party has, however, shown a certain degree of professionalization – in campaigns, decision-making, and organization – and a transformation from protest party to one of more mainstream and conventional politics, since its government participation (Bolleyer 2010). Ireland’s entry into the EU was also met with suspicion (Bolleyer & Panke 2009), although the party now holds significantly more positive views on the union. The electoral success that allowed the Green Party to participate in government twice has undoubtedly made its mark, and also shifted the power from ordinary party members to the officeholders (Bolleyer 2010).
10 The Green Party currently holds two seats in the EP and is part of the Greens/European Free Alliance (The Greens/EFA 2021).
2. Literature review In this section, previous discussions on Irish parties and European integration are presented, along with research on policy stances and general EU support from parties and the Irish electorate.
The mainstream Irish parties have historically had somewhat differing views on EU and European integration, and somewhat contradictory stances with the passing of time. This is exemplified in the rejection and later acceptance of the Nice and Lisbon Treaties, as Ireland requires referendums for authorisation to ratify treaties. Both treaties were initially rejected by the public but overwhelmingly accepted after second referendums and “a significant charm- offensive by the Irish pro-EU political parties” (Karv 2019, 36), which also involved guarantees by the Irish government that implementation of the Treaty would not impose on the constitutional right to life or Irish neutrality (Church & Phinnemore 2016, 43). The then-smaller parties Sinn Féin, the Green Party, and the Socialist Workers’ party campaigned against the Nice Treaty during the first referendum in 2001 and the second in 2002, dissenting from the consensus of the political establishment. During the campaign leading up to the first referendum on the Lisbon Treaty in 2008, the Green Party took a neutral position. Still, after securing a narrow majority with the Members of Parliament, the party campaigned for the “yes” vote in the second referendum in 2009 – making it the first time the Green Party had officially came out in favour of a European treaty (Brennan 2009).
2.1 Political parties and the EU Green parties across Europe have a tendency to be pro-EU but unsupportive of centralizing power to the union, although, even the Green parties that have been somewhat Eurosceptical until recent years (such as those in Ireland and Sweden) were still not to be considered outright anti-EU (Spoon 2012; Dolezal 2010). Bomberg (2002) has previously discussed green parties’ ambivalent relationship with the EU and the discrepancy between green political values and the EU’s structures and processes. For green parties, the nation state is “too large” in that it imposes on individual rights, but “too small” in that it fails to solve environmental problems, where
11 transnational cooperation is therefore much needed. Bomberg also claims that green parties around Europe have used the EU as a platform to increase exposure and exploited the voters’ dissatisfaction and low confidence in the EU in the 1990s and early 2000s. This has turned out to be a beneficial vote-maximizing strategy, but also a result of Europeanization in terms of programmatic changes and ideological adaption. After all, the European platform provides green parties with the opportunity to amplify their core beliefs, but also to shape the integration and direction of policies, which Bomberg (2002, 35) calls the “interactive character of Europeanization”– meaning that the parties are not passive to the process, but are actively engaged in the process for their own gain. However Eurosceptical the Greens were at the onset, the involvement in EU institutions and processes has led to a “mellowing” of ideologies and a positive shift in their EU attitudes and former opposition to certain EU policies. Bomberg also claims organizational changes and changing patterns of party competition in green parties due to Europeanization, which is associated with the increasing politicization of the EU domestically, and rivalry with other Eurosceptical parties. This is perhaps expected of a relatively new party family, which should be more prone to change and less bound by party traditions. The European electoral arena has always been important for green parties, as they were not initially strong in their domestic party systems and today tend to do better in European than national elections (Rüdig 2019, 4). All in all, green parties have certainly taken advantage of the benefits that EU integration has brought; resources that they would not have access to at a national level.
Research by Hellström (2008a) has concluded that the majority of European parties tend to position themselves as slightly more positive towards the EU over time and that the significance of left-right ideology has weakened. Party ideology is still important in party positions on the EU, and especially so because of the influence of European party families, but it is one significant factor among several others.
The subject of Irish parties’ shifting relations with the EU has not been extensively researched during the past decade, with exceptions such as Costello (2017; 2020) and Murphy (2019). A lot of attention has, however, been given to public support and opinion on the EU and European integration (see for example Eichenberg & Dalton 2007; Guinaudeau & Schnatterer 2019; Simpson 2019). The results of the first rounds of referendums, with the Nice Treaty being rejected by the public in 2001 and the Lisbon Treaty rejected in 2008, are cited by Simpson (2019, 511) as a potential for “emergence of a new popular scepticism” towards the EU,
12 although we have yet to see any evidence of such scepticism in Ireland. In the founding member states, there is a gap between public support for the principle of European integration and the utilitarian support – i.e. the perceived national and personal benefits of European integration – however, this gap does not exist e.g. in Ireland, where high public support is observed in both dimensions and where the public opinion has been, compared to other member states, relatively stable over time (Guinaudeau & Schnatterer 2019, 1189–1191). High support by the Irish public is also given to specific EU policy areas, such as the single European currency and the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) – in fact, the only area where the public is divided seems to be in the possibility of future EU enlargement (Karv 2019, 320–322).
It should be mentioned that the Irish voter is considered as somewhat of an anomaly within political science. Party loyalties are shallow (Marsh 2019), with the PR-STV (proportional representation by single transferable vote) electoral system allowing voters to express their preferences within but also across parties in the same election and being beneficial for independent candidates. This was illustrated exceptionally well in the 2019 local and European elections, where the differences in support were striking, contradicting the notion that parties perform at the same level when local and European elections take place during the same time. Furthermore, the Irish party system as a whole requires some attention, as it has several unique characteristics. For one, the strong centrist “catch-all” parties distinguish the Irish party system from other countries in Europe (Murphy & Hayward 2009), along with the absence of successful right-wing populist parties. This absence is notable considering the fact that Ireland meets many of the conditions that favour prosperity of those parties (O’Malley 2008), such as high levels of immigration, convergence on the left and right with parties with parties moving more towards the center, and an electoral system that allows the emergence of new parties and is suitable for independent candidates. O’Malley further argues that such ideological space is already taken up by Sinn Féin, whose voters are more likely have negative attitudes towards immigrants which is rather noteworthy. Costello (2017) hypothesizes that if the immigration issue and the future of the EU become more politicized in Europe, we should expect that Sinn Féin will adjust their positions to reflect their voters’ opinions, particularly if new parties that further emphasize these issues should arise. Still, the hypothesis that parties adapt to reflect the voters’ opinions of the EU as a rational vote-maximizing strategy was previously rejected by Hellström (2008b). The opposite, however, that voter opinion is to some extent influenced by the parties, has turned out to be true.
13 2.2 Europeanization in the Irish party system As stated before, the public opinion on the CSDP is highly favourable (Karv 2019). This is an upward trend that seems to mirror the stances of the parties. A 2009 study of Irish parties’ attitudes towards military and security policies – from positions on Irish neutrality to the European Union Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and its integral part the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP, renamed the CSDP after the Lisbon Treaty) – spanning four decades showed that Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour all moved steadily from neutrality towards a more maximalist ESDP (Devine 2009), while the Green Party were more inclined to maintain its position up until the 2000s, when the only party left supporting Irish neutrality was Sinn Féin. This suggests a certain level of Europeanization of party positions, at least concerning military and security policy up until the 2000s. The upward trend of support for more maximalist ESDP in all parties but Sinn Féin is noteworthy, as this is a policy area that relates to the de facto sovereignty and neutrality of a country. As Frampton (2005, 236) has noted, “sovereignty, nationalism and independence” is at the core of Sinn Féin, and it should perhaps not be surprising that this is mirrored in their stance on Europe.
Nevertheless does Maillot (2009) argue that Sinn Féin’s relationship with the EU has changed since the 1990s, from “outright opposition to European integration to critical engagement” and that the programmatic changes in the party meets Ladrech’s (2002) expectations for Europeanization, although these changes were more likely motivated by nationalist priorities than by loyalty to the supranational institution. It is argued that the party’s strategy to include European integration, while maintaining a critical position, has been fruitful in European elections. Similarly, in the 1997–2002 period, while the major parties shifted somewhat from pro-European integration to more moderate positions (Benoit 2009), Sinn Féin remained unchanged and the Green Party turned from Eurosceptic towards a more moderate position. Likewise, Bolleyer & Panke (2009) have found evidence of Europeanization in the Green Party during the early 2000s.
Party attitudes regarding the EU also seem to lean more positive in times of crisis. Research by Costello (2020) on parliamentary debates has shown a certain “rally around the flag” effect among Irish political elites, after and because of the Brexit crisis, that is most prominent in the mainstream parties. This phenomenon is defined by the development of consensus among the political elite, including the opposition parties, to refrain from criticism of the national government during an international crisis. It is argued by Costello that a similar effect would
14 occur not only towards the national government, but also regional institutions such as the EU during a crisis that involves them and the nation state. Also, this elite consensus is said to increase public support for the government (Groeling & Baum 2008, 1066). Costello (2020, 2) claims that when the EU appeared to champion the interests of Ireland during the Brexit crisis, and in particular in regard to the problems with the Northern Ireland border, politicians became more wary of appearing to criticize the EU and, by extension, to undermine the national interests of Ireland. It should be highlighted that according to this research, the support or lack of criticism was by definition due to the fact that the EU was furthering Irish national interests, and not necessarily because of politicians’ shifting loyalties from the national government to the EU. For example, the support from Sinn Féin politicians, where the change from before Brexit to after Brexit was most apparent, was the most significant during the timing of the backstop agreement – the effect should thus be explainable in this case by rational arguments (Costello 2020, 12). In contrast, it is shown by Rauh, Bes, and Schoonvelde (2020) in a study of political elite communication during the Eurocrisis that national leaders faced with growing Euroscepticism at home tend to undermine and attach more negative sentiments to European integration in their communication, while the European Commissioners in a similar situation tend to further defend it. Murphy (2019) has claimed it is evident that Brexit has caused a degree of Europeanization of Irish parties in the short term, but that these forces may not be resilient, depending on what long term impacts Brexit has on Ireland and on the future of the EU. In the short term, however, it appears that the Irish “uploading” and “downloading”, of national interests to EU level and vice versa, has become more prominent and the commitment to the Union has intensified.
To conclude, there is a variety of literature on Irish policy positions towards the EU up until the 2010s, and the consensus seems to be that there has been a positive shift in most parties, even in the previously Eurosceptical Green Party and Sinn Féin. The literature on this type of party attitudes is, however, sparse in the post-Eurocrisis period, and the Europeanization of political parties has not been excessively studied.
3. Theory
What follows is discussions of different approaches to European integration and the concept of Europeanization, its connection to the research questions and how this is operationalized for the purpose of this study.
15 3.1 Europeanization The research problems of this thesis are approached by applying the Europeanization theory and concept. The concept of Europeanization is similar to that of globalization, but with a geographical delimitation and the addition of a “pre-existing national framework which mediates … adjustment” (Ladrech 1994, 71). Europeanization is a process which explains the impacts that the European political arena has on national polities, and it has through the years been defined in various ways by different scholars. Some scholars imply that Europeanization is a top-down process, where the EU makes the rules and the domestic systems implement them, with indicators such as national parliamentary activity around EU matters and the EU in national legislature (Raunio 2009), thus reorienting (Ladrech 1994, 70) the workings of the national political system. A somewhat more nuanced definition by Radaelli (2000, 4–6) refers to the concept as a “construction, diffusion, and institutionalization” of formal and informal rules and norms, shared beliefs, and procedures, which are decided at the EU level and incorporated by domestic systems. Nevertheless, the top-down Europeanization concept explains how the EU produces domestic change – but only if the domestic system is not previously aligned with the European one, i.e. if there is a misfit between the domestic policies and processes and the EU (Börzel & Panke 2016, 116). Conversely, the bottom-up approach describes how member states can influence the politics and institutions of the EU by successfully “uploading” their domestic preferences to the EU level and thereby influencing policies, again, if there is a misfit between the domestic and European preferences (Börzel & Panke 2015, 117–119). Ultimately, Europeanization is, as Saurugger and Radaelli (2008) call it; “a process of power generation” among EU institutions, member states and civil society.
It is important to emphasize that Europeanization should, however, not be considered equivalent to convergence (although this can be an effect of Europeanization, the effect can also be divergence) or harmonization between member states. Also, Europeanization is not equivalent to European integration, but Europeanization is rather an effect of European integration. Furthermore, any traces of Europeanization will be expected to look different across different domestic political systems, and within those systems. Ladrech also calls the benefits of participating in the EP for national parties “indirect at best” as the EP does not have any authority over the national space and EU resources cannot be directly transferred to national parties (Ladrech 2002, 395–396).
16 Börzel and Panke (2016, 113) have argued that Europeanization matters for two main reasons: one, the ever-broadening integration affects every policy area of every member state, and likewise, it affects citizens, institutions and processes in the domestic system. This is, of course, also a matter of sovereignty for the member states, as they outsource power to the European level of politics. Second, the effects of Europeanization are not always limited to the member states, but also influencing governance in third countries – neighbouring countries, and also in the so-called candidate countries. For example, Norway is not a member of the EU, and yet, they are a part of the Schengen area. Nonetheless, the effects of Europeanization differ depending on the member state and policy area – Börzel and Panke claim that Ireland, among others, are more Europeanized in environmental policy because of their “environmental latecomer” status (Börzel & Panke 2016, 115), compared to for example the Nordic countries.
How can the possible effects of Europeanization be observed at the national level? Peter Mair, in his (2000) widely cited research on Europeanization, concluded that there are little direct effects of Europeanization on the member states’ national party systems. The format and mechanics of the national party systems appear to be unaffected, even when it comes to party competition with new, Eurosceptic parties because it is argued by Mair that these parties generally have little impact on the domestic system. Indirect effects, such as Green parties’ strengthened credibility in the national arena due to their engagement in European elections (Mair 2000, 36), can emerge, but the party systems as a whole appear to be resilient to effects of Europeanization. Mair (2000, 48) further holds the belief that Europe matters mostly to politicians and the bureaucracies of government, and that it does not necessitate involving the electorate to any larger extent.
3.2 Theories on European integration Besides the Europeanization concept, there are a few theoretical approaches to understanding European integration and the effects that the European political arena has on the member states. Intergovernmentalism refers to a more rationalist view where European states participate in bargaining for mutually advantageous purposes (Hooghe & Marks 2019), and where European integration is a direct effect of the cooperation or competition between them. The intergovernmental bargaining is thus directed by the needs and interests of the national governments, who are the central actors in shaping European integration – suggesting a more bottom-up approach where the processes of the political institutions of Europe are considered
17 less influential (Karv 2019, 41–42). Intergovernmentalism thus assumes rationality by governments who participate in bargaining at the European (or regional) level in accordance with their national interests, and also, that inter-state bargaining and further European integration takes place when the participating member states see enough concrete national benefits for it.
Neo-functionalist theories of European integration involve the concept of spillover effects (Haas 1958, referenced in Strøby Jensen 2016, 54–57) – functional, political, and cultivated – into the domestic area, due to repeated interactions and engagement of national actors in supranational decision-making, in the European political arena. For example, political spillover is the process that supposedly happens because political elites shift their focus to the European level, due to their involvement in supranational cooperation. In a similar way, the elite socialization hypothesis predicts that over time, actors tend to develop supranational loyalties, to the European level of governance, and preferences, oriented towards more European norms (Strøby Jensen 2016, 59). This integration process is assumed to be path-dependent and self- reinforcing (Hooghe & Marks 2019), shifting political elites’ and citizen’s views in a more pro- European direction, which in turn leads to further integration that was perhaps not planned for. This particular theory does however not fit into our case, where the Green Party and Sinn Féin have not been consistently involved in EU decision-making in the EP over the years, and still adapted to more pro-EU and pro-integration stances, and it would also be difficult to prove. The neo-functionalist point of view is also criticized by Mair (2000, 38), as the national parties tend to be effective in keeping their representatives in the EP bound to their domestic organizations despite new cross-national alliances that should emerge in the European arena.
Mair’s analysis does not, however, account for impacts of Europeanization on individual political parties in these national party systems. Political parties are very much central to Europeanization processes, as they represent the links between voters and EU institutions and work to legitimize them and EU governance (Poguntke et al. 2007). Somewhat contradictory to the above discussion on the flaws of the elite socialization hypothesis and political spillover effects, Poguntke et al. (2007) propose the possibility of the so-called “EU specialists” within parties (most of all MEPs, but also other actors well-briefed on EU affairs) triggering a Europeanization effect on the national parties that are shifting towards European integration, when their increased influence within the national party is combined with the socializing effect of the EP on members. This socializing effect is said to be “rapid, though gentle” on new
18 members of the EP (Franklin & Scarrow 1999, 45). Mair’s (2000) remark that national parties are well inclined to hold their respective MEPs accountable to the domestic polity has also been contested. Poguntke et al. (2007) highlight the risk that these mechanisms do not necessarily work as intended, and that the “EU specialists” thus have gained a greater influence on the direction of the party activities. Raunio (2000) shows evidence of MEPs independence from national parties, that MEPs have gained influence in general (and in small parties in particular), and that scrutiny from the national polity comes in the form of consultations rather than outright instructions (voting). MEPs are also in the unique position where they answer not only to their domestic counterparts, but also to their European Parliamentary group that they are affiliated with, according to political ideology rather than nationality of the members. Thus, there is an argument for not only political parties being central actors in Europeanization processes, but actors within those parties as well.
3.3 Operationalization and relevance Going back to the purpose and aim of this study, we are interested in examining how both Sinn Féin and the Green Party have adapted to the impact of the EU during the past decade. The programmatic changes in the parties through 2009–2020 and how this is manifested in national versus European elections are of interest. The assumption is thus that there has been a process of Europeanization in both parties and that recognizable changes have been taking place due to that process. Therefore, a top-down approach to Europeanization is employed, as the interest is in what impact Europe has on domestic actors – political parties.
Making the link between Europeanization theory and observable patterns and behavior in political parties requires a framework for empirical analysis. In this thesis, we rely on the pioneering framework developed by Ladrech (2002), who explains Europeanization as broadly referring to the integration of Europe on the “politics and policies of its member states as well as the process of enhancing European-level political institutions” (Ladrech 2002, 389). In other words, it is the process of actors responding to European integration. Ladrech’s work on Europeanization puts political parties in focus, as actors being impacted by European integration and responding to it in their primary environment, the national political system. This view on Europeanization assumes that it is a top-down process, where the EU (and politics at the European level) influences institutions in its member states (and in third countries), triggering domestic change (Börzel & Panke 2016).
19
Through Ladrech’s framework of analysis, the responses to the Europeanization process can be studied as (1) policy or programmatic changes, (2) organizational changes, (3) patterns of party competition, (4) party-government relations, (5) relations beyond the national party system. This framework is accordingly concerned with political parties as central actors and the changes within them, and between them, that come with the increasing impact of the EU. Policy or programmatic changes to a national party includes changes in policy positions including the formation of positions on EU-introduced policies (Ladrech 2013, 320), or the party’s stance on European integration in campaigns. Organizational changes refer to for example the creation of new positions within the domestic system that relate to EU affairs, new offices, changes to formal rules such as voting rights for MEPs in party congresses and efforts to contain dissent, or organizational links with transnational party groups (Ladrech 2002, 397). Patterns of party competition may be manifested in parties’ decisions to involve their pro- or anti-EU position in their strategies to target voters, depending on how politicized the EU is in national politics. Europeanization in party-government relations refers to the changes in interactions between parties and the government over time. Lastly, relations beyond the national party system can be represented in for example changes in Europarties and party federations (Ladrech 2013, 321) or changes in transnational cooperation. Given that we are interested in examining the parties’ policy views on and the impact of Europe on their programmatic content, the analysis will be carried out through focus on the first category; policy or programmatic changes.
What, then, should constitute programmatic changes? Although according to Ladrech, attitudes towards EU integration can also be evidence of programmatic changes, Europeanization of political parties is not merely a matter of how pro-EU and pro-European integration their positions are. These positions can be of importance, but there are other observable indicators of programmatic changes within the parties. As noted earlier, Ladrech (2013, 320) describes programmatic or policy changes as for example views on European integration, changes in policy positions and creation of new ones related to EU policies, and specifically cites (Ladrech 2002, 396) changes to party programmes as clear evidence of Europeanization of programmatic content. These changes can then be studied qualitatively or quantitatively, for example by mentions of specific EU policies and references to the EU or Europe in discussions of domestic policies.
20 The application of this framework comes with a potential pitfall: while studying the policy or programmatic changes can point us to how national parties may have adapted to Europeanization, it does not necessarily guarantee that the changes observed can be ascribed to the EU. This is recognized by Ladrech as a challenge for the analyst. The difficulty lies, in other words, in tying the changes back to the EU source or showing that they are either the result of the parties’ intentions to “use the EU as a possible aid in the resolution” of issues, or to “evaluate the problems that the presence of the EU issue presents for parties” (Ladrech 2002, 396). The impact of the EU could thus also be considered negative by the party in question, but it is an impact that requires changes to be made, nonetheless.
What we search for in this study is salience of the EU within the parties – i.e. how much importance these parties assign to the European political area when discussing different issues. This is a quantitative way of studying programmatic changes, as frequency of references to the EU and the European level is applied. The operationalization of Europeanization as EU salience, the importance of governance at the European level, by political parties is by no means a novel concept within the research field. This specific operationalization has been used by for example Spoon (2012), who considers e.g. parties’ stance on European integration and ideological position as influencing factors on EU salience, and who also uses this operationalization on EP election manifestos. This study therefore follows an established tradition in its operationalization (Kovar 2015; Pennings 2006; Spoon 2012; Whitefield & Rohrschneider 2009).
As mentioned in the literature review, research by Maillot (2009) has already suggested that the changes in Sinn Féin’s policy stances from the 1990s to the early 2000s do meet the criteria for programmatic changes, according to Ladrech’s definition of Europeanization. However, it is also argued by the author that these changes are the result of rationalist vote-maximizing strategies and national interests, rather than of the mere existence of the EU or a result of European integration. This implies that programmatic changes have certainly taken place in Sinn Féin, but they are not proven to be a direct result of the Europeanization process. Likewise, the Green Party also experienced programmatic changes through 2002–2007 (Bolleyer & Panke 2009), moving towards first neutrality, then support of the EU, which were said not to be primarily a result of Europeanization, but of national strategizing. Nevertheless, one can certainly argue that such a strategy is a de facto result of Europeanization.
21 It does appear that past research on the Europeanization of Irish political parties has encountered problems with actually ascribing the changes to a process of Europeanization. Therefore, it is important in order to understand whether or not policy or programmatic changes in the 2009–2020 period are a direct result of a Europeanization process, that we can trace the given motivations back to the impact of the EU. Policy and programmatic changes can be studied through various party documents, and in this case the parties’ national and European election manifestos from the selected time period, introduced in the following method chapter, are utilized.
4. Method and research design In this chapter, the case selection and the choice of empirical material is presented and discussed. Then, the method for analyzing the data is presented along with a description of the coding procedure, and a critical discussion of the reliability.
4.1 Case studies This is a multiple case study of two Irish political parties. Case studies allow for in-depth and detailed explorations of a research phenomenon and comparative studies allows for explorations of how this is displayed, or if it is absent or present, in different cases (Lewis & McNaughton Nicholls 2014, 65–66). In this study, the research phenomenon we aim to capture is the Europeanization effects on the parties’ programmatic content, and the comparative trait lies in how these effects differ between the Green Party and Sinn Féin. Of course, findings from a case study may not be generalizable on other, similar cases, but they can still make valuable contributions to the research field.
4.1.1 Case selection It bears repeating why specifically these two parties have been chosen for this study. The Green Party is currently in a coalition government for the second time, Sinn Féin is not, and has not been in government. The Green Party and Sinn Féin have more niched (centre-)left political ideologies – the Green Party as an ecological party and Sinn Féin with their nationalist principles at the forefront – which separates them from the traditional “catch-all” parties on the centre-right. The Green Party and Sinn Féin have similar backgrounds as opposition parties, and as such, they also have a history of being less favourable towards the EU and European
22 integration than the other Irish mainstream parties have been – as early as when the membership was introduced in Ireland, and up to this day. However, as has been previously discussed, it is evident that both parties have in recent years moved towards more pro-EU positions and approached the views of the centre-right parties Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, as well as the Labour Party on the centre-left. These parties have also shown (Bolleyer & Panke 2009; Maillot 2009) indications of Europeanization in the early 2000s compared to previous decades. Although similar analyses have been made previously on Europeanization of all of the Irish parties, I would argue that singling out these two more distinct parties makes for a more interesting starting point for the purpose and aim of this thesis.
4.1.2 Timeframe of the study The parties that were selected to be in focus of this study of Europeanization have been introduced. What follows is the selection of a time period to where the data collection is restricted and the reasoning behind it. The specific time period of 2009–2020 was identified through data on party positions on the EU (figure 1) from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES). I used data on the Irish parties’ EU positions (1=strongly opposed to 7=strongly in favour) from the CHES 1999–2019 trend file (Bakker et al. 2020) which is illustrated in the figure below.
Figure 1. Party positions on the EU.
23 Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, and Labour have positive to mildly positive starting positions and although we can identify a change throughout the years, they remain relatively stable on the positive side of the scale. The Green Party and Sinn Féin, however, have very different starting points from where they are now. It is clear that while these parties still differ in their positions, they both used to be strongly opposed to the EU but have started to approach the other parties. This data also confirms what has been said previously by researchers about Irish party stances on the EU and the increasingly pro-EU tendencies of the Green Party and Sinn Féin. While data on parties’ EU positions over the years does not answer the research questions, it can point us to a direction of where the changes we are looking for may have occurred. Our starting point is 2009 because it is an election year for the EP, and also to complement the literature that has already been published about party positions on the EU, and also Europeanization of Irish parties, during the decade before. The most recent (general) election in Ireland took place in 2020, which will mark the end of the study’s timeframe.
4.2 Empirical material
4.2.1 Election manifestos In order to identify which programmatic changes have been taking place over time in the respective parties, manifestos prepared for the General Elections (national elections to the Dáil) and elections to the European Parliament are used as the foundation of the analysis. Because election manifestos are essentially the electorate’s guide to the parties’ views and policy goals and what can be expected from them, they are considered here to be representative of the two parties’ ambitions. The data is thus of qualitative character and naturally occurring, as it exists independently and was not created specifically for this study, as opposed to generated data e.g. interviews (Lewis & McNaughton Nicholls 2014, 52).
The European election manifestos for the Green Party and Sinn Féin during the study’s selection time period were prepared for three elections, in 2009, 2014 and in 2019. Because the General Elections did not take place in the same years, the national manifestos for the elections that were held the years closest to the EP elections were used, which are in this case 2011, 2016 and 2020. All of these election manifestos are available online on the parties’ official websites, and older manifestos on the Irish Manifesto Archive website. Another option would have been to use policy documents throughout the years, but these are not available from the Green Party prior to 2020. Programmes for government could have been used if the objects of the analysis
24 had not been these two specific parties, as the Irish government is a coalition, and Sinn Féin has never been a part of the government. These national and European manifestos are thus the documents that provides parties’ programmatic content for this study. Unfortunately, the codebook applied by the Manifesto Research on Political Representation (MARPOR) on national election manifestos only includes one general category on the European Community/Union, and the rest of the categorization does not refer to a specific level of governance, which means that statements related to the European level of governance cannot be immediately picked out from the coded material. The coded national manifestos from MARPOR are still useful and utilized in this study, accessed through their manifesto corpus (Burst et al. 2020). A description of how follows in the method section.
Using manifestos as a data source has the benefit of being comparable over time (Pennings 2006, 259) and the argument for using EP election manifestos is simply that they are where European matters are discussed. Of course, one should expect the salience of EU to be high in such documents. By contrast, the downside of national party manifesto is that references to the EU may be vague, or parties may even be strategically underemphasizing (Pennings 2006, 268) the EU’s impact on national politics, even when discussing policy domains where European politics certainly has an influence over national policy. Mentions of Europe in national manifestos may also be low simply due to the national character of the elections, but also other factors such as party-strategic ones and that national parties wish to underscore that they have the “final say” on different policies (Pennings 2006, 265). The downplaying, or absence of mentions to the European area in national party manifestos, should therefore perhaps not be perceived as a lack of importance of Europe across different policy areas. Nevertheless, both national and European election manifestos from the selected time period, are used for this study in order to not only answer the second research question (how are programmatic changes manifested in national and European elections?), but to increase the validity of the findings.
Additionally, European elections is where naturally, national parties have more reason to discuss and contest the interference of EU in national policymaking and the very nature and existence of European politics (Braun, Hutter & Kerscher 2016; Kovar 2015, 109; Mair 2000, 43). As Popa and Dumitrescu (2015) note, the European election manifestos “represents authoritative statements” on the parties’ stance on and ambitions for the European electoral arena in the specific years, although the Euromanifestos may have a narrower reach among regular voters than the national manifestos do (whether or not European elections should still
25 be considered second-order is a topic for another study). Still, election manifestos (European and national) serve not only as guides for the electorate, but also for the party members as to how they should act in policymaking when elected. Furthermore, research shows that election promises given in manifestos have a general tendency to be fulfilled (e.g. Costello & Thomson 2008; Naurin 2014; Royed 1996; Thomson 2001; Thomson et al. 2017).
4.3 Method
4.3.1 Content analysis As discussed in the previous chapter on theory, we rely on the Europeanization concept and the first category, policy or programmatic changes, of the framework developed by Ladrech (2002). The empirical material for this study is of qualitative character and a content analysis method is employed. A content analysis focuses on both the content and the context of the material (Spencer et al. 2014, 271). What is central to this method is that the researcher identifies themes in the material and focuses on how these are presented or how frequently they occur. In this analysis, the frequency of the themes (codes) are in focus. The content analysis method is beneficial because it allows the researcher to systematically go through large amounts of data and categorize it (Drisko & Maschi 2015, 25).
The procedure of coding the material can be done manually or by computer-assisted methods through the use of content analysis software. Described in more detail in the next section, the material for this study was manually coded. Typically, when this method is applied, the coding is deductive in that the codes are often developed a priori, before the data collection. In this study, a pre-existing coding scheme, which was deemed fitting for the purpose, was used in the coding of the material. Manual coding in content analysis requires strong familiarity with the data and careful reflection by the researcher. While part of the material used had been coded beforehand (see section 4.3.2), familiarization with the source material was still necessary in order to fully understand the context of the assigned codes. Because of the use of frequencies of codes, the data is presented in the form of descriptive statistics, as is common in this type of analysis, in order to summarize the contents in a clear and objective manner (Drisko & Maschi 2015, 52–53).
26 4.3.2 Coding procedure A content analysis was carried out on the manifestos. In credit to the efforts of the Euromanifestos Project (EMP), which builds on the categorization and coding procedure of the MARPOR and the Comparative Manifestos Project (CMP), the Euromanifestos prepared for 2009 and 2014 from all of the member states have been coded beforehand by previous researchers. Therefore, the quantitative data from these years was available (Braun et al. 2010; Schmitt et al. 2016) and there was no need to carry out a new content analysis on the 2009 and 2014 documents. However, manifestos for the 2019 EP election have not been coded previously, which is why the 2019 manifestos had to be coded specifically for this thesis, using a modified version of the 2014 EMP coding frame and procedure (Schmitt et al. 2016). The same applies to the General Election of 2020, for which the manifestos are yet to be coded by MARPOR.
The coding frame was modified to the extent that coding categories that were not relevant to policies for Irish parties were removed, such as “Foreign Special Relations to Ukraine” and “Marxist analysis” (the latter was originally developed for parties in Eastern European countries). Any unit that would fit into such category would be coded as non-specific and not part of the analysis. The original codebook includes two separate economy-related domains, “economic structure” and “economic policies and goals”, however, I have merged them into an overarching “economy” policy domain. Also, any discussions of Brexit have been coded as the already existing “EU exit”, instead of creating a new specific code. For an overview of the set of codes that are utilized for this analysis, I refer to the EMP codebook (Schmitt et al. 2016, 25–40).
The reason for working with the same set of codes and procedure as the EMP/CMP should be evident in this case; by using the same coding procedure, it will be manageable to fairly compare the 2019 and 2020 manifestos to the earlier data retrieved from the EMP. Through this procedure, we should be able to tell in what policy areas parties place more or less salience on EU, and where changes in party attitudes (positive or negative) have taken place.
The coding procedure was carried out by first dividing the texts into units – quasi-sentences that were each assigned into a policy domain and given a specific code within a category and/or subcategory. The quasi-sentences were divided according to the EMP (Schmitt et al. 2016, 20– 21) codebook of the 2014 manifesto project, hence, they were defined as arguments,
27 expressions of political issues. Headings, tables of contents, and forewords were not included in the texts to be coded. Of course, because the texts may differ in length, they have to be standardized so that we are able to compare the proportions allocated to certain policies rather than the quantity of the statements.
Each quasi-sentence has been given one code only and could therefore not be covered by different policy categories. However, longer sentences can of course contain several quasi- sentences that include separate statements about different domains. For example, the following sentence from the Green Party’s 2019 manifesto combines five quasi-sentences: “Thanks to Green leadership, Europe is moving towards protecting whistleblowers who expose information in the public interest, taking action against authoritarian governments, banning unnecessary plastics, and fighting tax evasion by big corporations.” (The Green Party 2019, 4)
This sentence is combined into five quasi-sentences, because it contains five different statements that express different issues, albeit some within the same general policy field. “Thanks to Green leadership” (1) falls under the “General political system” and the code “Political authority” with a positive semantic connotation, because it refers positively to the party group’s own competence. “Protecting whistleblowers” (2) and “actions against authoritarian governments” (3) both fall under the “Freedom and democracy” domain, but under different categories and subcategories, where “protecting whistleblowers” would fall under the “freedom and human rights” category with the subcategory “human rights” and a positive connotation, and “actions against authoritarian governments” falls under the “democracy” category with a positive connotation. “Banning unnecessary plastics” (4) is categorized under the “Welfare and quality of life” domain and the “Environmental protection: general” subcategory with a positive connotation. Lastly, “fighting tax evasion by big corporations” belongs in the “Economic structure” domain under the “Market regulation” category with a positive connotation. Also, as indicated in the beginning of the entire sentence, these statements refer to the European level of governance. Some quasi-sentences would appear to be devoid of meaning as standalone sentences in a paragraph. In those cases, they were categorized with respect to the context and the continuous argumentation taking place. After identifying the (sub)category and the positive or negative semantic connotation, the political level the unit is referring to was identified – national, European (or EU), or unspecified. Specifying to what extent the parties refer to the different political systems is useful in order to
28 draw conclusions about the salience of Europe in the analysis. Naturally, a greater salience on the European political system in various policy domains should indicate stronger Europeanization of parties.
For the national election manifestos, a similar approach was used, although some modifications had to be made because the categorizations of the 2011 and 2016 manifestos coded by MARPOR/CMP do not refer to specific political levels such as the national or European one, and contains only one category referring to the EU in general, which does not cover any of the specific EU policy areas. Additionally, the coding scheme for those manifestos was not the same as the EMP one. The national manifestos from 2011 and 2016 coded by CMP were used to determine the amount of coded statements in total, and the amount of statements that in some way referred to the EU (institutions, policies, or specific EU programs) or the European level of politics were then identified. Then, the amount of EU-related statements divided by the total in order to reveal the overall salience of Europe. These statements were then coded according to the EMP categorization, so that the European content of the two different types of manifestos were analyzed in the same manner.
4.3.3 Reliability problems and validity The weaknesses of coding empirical material in this way should be addressed. While the CMP/EMP datasets have been widely used in previous research, the CMP has been criticized for issues with coding reliability (Gemenis 2013), and since the EMP is based on the CMP, we can assume that there are likewise certain reliability problems in the EMP data. As a third-party user of the EMP data, I have refrained from application of variables that are considered to have low reliability, such as the scale estimates by the researchers on party positions. Furthermore, Gemenis (2013, 19–20) cites application of frequency categories and consequently the quantitates, rather than scale estimates of policy stances, as a better way to conceptualize and compare ideological positions. Applying frequency categories should also give better indication to in which policy areas parties place salience on the EU, whereas the amount of positive/negative positions on the issues is not as relevant in this analysis. A strength that hand- coding manifestos provides is better validity than computer-assisted methods (Bruinsma & Gemenis 2020, 4). To improve the quality of my own coding, I have first familiarized myself with the material, and after the initial coding I have performed a second one to verify it and to correct any inaccuracies.
29 Finally, validity, which refers to the “correctness” of the research and its conclusions, is ensured by the links from the theoretical framework and its operationalizing to the presented findings, and that statements are supported by the findings (Lewis et al. 2014, 356–357).
5. Findings The results of the content analysis of the European election manifestos for first the Green Party and then Sinn Féin are presented in the first section of this chapter, along with a summary and comparison of them. The results of the content analysis on the national manifestos are presented in the subsequent section.
5.1 Background We return to the discussion on Europeanization of political parties and how to measure it. Through the framework presented in the theory chapter, we have set out to operationalize programmatic changes due to Europeanization of the Green Party and Sinn Féin as salience on the EU. This means that an increased salience on the EU level should constitute increased Europeanization of party policies. We look to the percentage of EU salience in the manifestos overall, but also in the specific policy domains, to see where these possible programmatic changes due to Europeanization have taken place.
5.1.1 Policy domains The contents of the manifestos were coded into eight different policy domains, according to the domains and categories listed in the EMP codebook (Schmitt et al. 2016), with the exception that I have merged the “economic structure” and “economic policies and goals” domains into one “economy” domain. What follows is a brief description of these domains. It bears repeating that the goal of this analysis was not to examine what policy areas the two parties are focused on in European elections, but rather what policy areas are deemed as important by the parties for the EU to solve, or where the EU presents a problem. Therefore, only the share of the contents that have been devoted to the European political level have been accounted for, and not what is said about these policy areas on the national level.
1. External relations The first domain concerns everything related to foreign policy, military, peace, internationalism (such as international cooperation, foreign aid, United Nations). It also entails general
30 statements about the EU, such as financing of the EU, and exiting of the union. Mentions of the Irish peace process and the Good Friday Agreement are categorized as “peace: general”.
2. Freedom and democracy This domain relates to statements about human rights (including refugees) and freedoms, along with mentions of democracy and citizens’ involvement in decision-making. Human rights issues such as protections for whistleblowers and personal freedoms, such as data protection, would fall under this domain.
3. Political system general In the third domain, statements that relate to the workings of the political system in general are categorized. These could relate to decentralization (general, and transfer of power to EU), executive and administrative efficiency, political corruption, political authority. Discussions on Irish reunification falls under the “decentralization” category, as it describes support or opposition to more national autonomy and keeping regional and local customs and competences.
4. Political system of EU The Political system of the EU contains codes related to the functioning of the EU, such as the Parliament, the Council of Ministers, Court of Justice, and other institutions. The statements in this domain were by definition described to the European political level.
5. Economy All statements about the economic structure and economic policies and goals fall under this domain, as well as those related to productivity and the job market, such as labour migration. The single market, the EMU, technology and infrastructure, are some of the categories in this section.
6. Welfare and quality of life This domain is a broad one, as it relates to both environmental concerns and welfare state issues, such as healthcare and education. The environmental category includes issues about environmental protection such as pollution and biodiversity, as well as climate change. There are also categories for culture and social justice (equality, fair treatment, discrimination).
31 7. Fabric of society This domain relates to topics such as immigration, EU integration, social harmony (solidarity, calls for unity in society) and multiculturalism – preservation of cultural diversity, heritages etc. Statements about protection of the Irish language and culture have been added into the multiculturalism category because it relates to preservation of linguistic heritages. Efforts to combat crime and terrorism fall under the “law and order” category.
8. Social groups Targeting of different social and demographic groups fall under this domain, with categories such as labour groups, immigrants. Support for trade unions and employment laws fall under the labour groups categorization. Agriculture and farmers make a separate subcategory. Statements on underprivileged minority groups (UMG), such as sexual minorities and people with disabilities, and non-economic demographic groups (NEDG), such as women, old people, young people, also belong in this domain.
5.2 European elections The first section chapter presents the results for salience of the EU in the 2009, 2014, and 2019 manifestos, along with the relative EU salience of different policy domains. The percentages of EU salience were reached by adding together all the quasi-sentences in each manifesto that were coded on the European level and dividing them by the total of quasi-sentences, because the codes on the European level refer to statements about policies or issues where it was suggested that the EU is or should be involved, whether or not those statements had a positive semantic connotation. When it comes to EU salience, we are not concerned about the amount of pro- or anti-European statements the parties devote the contents to. Because the EU salience was counted as percentages, it is measured on a 1–100 scale. It was expected that the salience of EU would be high in both parties considering these are manifestos prepared for European elections, and that parties, consequently, often discuss European issues on an EU policymaking level. However, this turned out to not be entirely true, as Sinn Féin drops below the 50 percent salience level in 2014.
As illustrated in the following chart, Sinn Féin is at its most salient in 2019, while the Green Party is at its lowest. 2014 stands out in both parties but for opposite reasons. Sinn Féin dipped to approximately 41 percent salience, dropping 20 percentage points from the previous election.
32 The Green Party had a 99,75 percent salience, which is remarkable considering the dip in the party’s EU attitudes in the same year. This datapoint could of course be skewed due to a coding error, but it is also plausible that the Green Party’s high salience on the EU is an effect of the plunge in confidence and rise of negative attitudes in the party – if the EU issue is politicized or controversial, it is deemed as important. It is also noteworthy that the party did not win any seats in the EP elections in 2004–2014, leaving the party out of the EP for over a decade. Sinn Féin, which has only been represented in the EP since the 2004 election, did also not win any seats in 2009 (except in Northern Ireland). Despite the lack of representation in the EP for the Green Party in particular, the party positions on EU integration since 2004 have been increasingly positive (Bakker et al. 2020), except for the dip in the Green Party around 2014.
In contrast, Sinn Féin’s salience in 2014 was at its lowest, at approximately 41 percent. It seems clear that the parties currently have differing views on the impact of the EU in policymaking and that this impact has fluctuated over the years.
Figure 2. Overall EU salience in EP elections 2009–2019.
5.2.1 Programmatic changes in the Green Party As illustrated in the beginning of the chapter, the EU salience overall in the Green Party has dropped in 2019, compared to the two preceding election years, from 73 to approximately 61. Salience on EU was, however, unusually high in the 2014 election year (99,7), which is apparent in most, but not all, policy domains. The most salient issues in the Green Party, throughout these elections, are related to the Welfare and quality of life domain. This should of course not be unexpected considering the ecologist nature of the party and that environmentalist
33 issues are given a major share of attention – but even within this domain, salience has decreased somewhat. The only policy domain where EU salience has increased in both 2014 and 2019 is external relations, growing from 2,1 in 2009 to 7,7 in 2019. The general political system domain is more or less at the same level as in 2009, with an upswing in 2014. The domain for the political system of the EU is consistently decreasing from 11,5 in 2009 to only 2 in 2019. The economy domain had a surge in salience in 2014 and although it has decreased since then, economy is still the second most salient one. The fabric of society domain is consistently the one with the least salience, and social groups has also experienced a slight decrease in salience.
Table 1. Relative salience of domains in the Green Party in the EP elections. Domain 2009 2014 2019 External relations 2,1 4,3 7,7 Freedom and democracy 4,5 8,3 6,6 Political system general 4,9 10,1 5,2 Political system of EU 11,5 4,3 2,0 Economy 15,2 23,7 12,2 Welfare and quality of life 22,1 29,1 18,5 Fabric of society 1,2 1,9 1,5 Social groups 11,8 18,1 7,0
The following subsections entail brief descriptions of programmatic changes and variations in EU salience in each policy domain as well as concrete examples from the contents.
External relations EU salience given to external relations has consistently risen within the Green Party, being at its highest at 7,7 in 2019. When taking a closer look at the coding of the manifestos, the increase in salience appears to stem from negative mentions of military (unmentioned in 2009 and 2014), and more favourable mentions of the EU and the European community in general. “EU exit” is also previously undiscussed but mentioned in 2019, which is due to Brexit and the at the time ongoing negotiations on the Irish border.
An example from the 2019 manifesto (The Green Party 2019, 16) states that the party opposes “redirecting European funds towards military purposes” and the party also supports an EU ban
34 on weapons export. Somewhat contradictory to the opposition to funding military purposes, the party also calls for a Common Security and Defence Policy – with the goal of maintaining peace. This explicit support for the CSDP is a new addition to the party in 2019. The idea that the EU should be more actively involved in peacekeeping was however also discussed in 2009, albeit in terms of “civil and non-violent peacekeeping” (The Green Party 2009, 14). This discussion was continued in 2014, when it was said that the EU should prioritize assisting victims and focus on the root causes of conflict in their foreign and security policy (The Green Party 2014, 17).
Freedom and democracy Salience in this domain has increased since 2009 but decreased since 2014. Statements that fall under either freedom or human rights are absent in 2009, when the focus was merely on democracy. Hence, there is a new tendency in the party to look to the EU to be involved in issues of freedoms and human rights, which in 2019 is demonstrated in, for example, the demand that the EU protects whistleblowers and investigative journalists (Green Party 2019, 15). There is thus an increased emphasis on the EU protecting human rights and freedoms, but the emphasis on promoting democracy has decreased slightly (4,5 in 2009 to 3,6 in 2019). Mentions of democracy in 2014 and 2019 include expanding voting rights in European elections (The Green Party 2014, 8; The Green Party 2019, 15). One of the freedoms unmentioned in 2009 relates to support for European data protection rules and net neutrality (The Green Party 2014, 14; The Green Party 2019, 15). The calls for the EU to protect these freedoms and human rights were perhaps a sign of the times in the given election years, with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) being implemented in 2018 and the spotlight on Edward Snowden in 2013. Nevertheless, there is an increase in salience in this domain since 2009.
There are no mentions in the 2009–2019 period of constitutionalism, i.e. the idea of a European constitution is not entertained neither in a positive nor negative manner.
Political system general In 2014, the focus in this domain was on supporting decentralization, the need for executive and administrative efficiency, and on eliminating corruption. Statements were thus mostly related to support for reforming the system in various ways. Since the level of salience was around 10, compared to approximately 5 in 2009 and 2019, there was clearly an expectation on the EU to solve these issues, although decentralization and consequently support for more
35 national autonomy, was highlighted. However, any discussions of decentralization and transfer of power appear to have ceased in 2019, which is interesting considering the formerly Eurosceptic positions of the party.
Political system of EU There has been a consistent decline in salience on this domain – from 11 in 2009 to 2 in 2019. In 2019, the EU’s political system is barely discussed, only the voting procedures of the Council (0,5) and the competences of EU institutions (1,5) are criticized. However, the negative mentions of the EU institutions in general have also declined (and not criticized at all in 2014). There is less focus on the “Union’s democratic deficit” (The Green Party 2009, 4) and on reform and oversight of EU institutions. Distinctive for 2014 is the focus on EU enlargement, with the Balkans and Eastern Europe. Overall, the EU in this domain can hardly be considered salient after 2009.
Economy EU salience in this domain is among the highest in every election year with a mean of 17, and never drops below 10, alluding to the fact that this is a policy area that the EU should certainly be involved in. There is support in 2019 for more harmonization of economic policies, e.g. tax policies (The Green Party 2019, 9). As was the case with every policy domain except external relations, the salience is at its highest in 2014. In 2009, Ireland along with the rest of Europe was dealing with the aftermath of the 2007–2008 global financial crisis, and this is evident in the manifesto and the high (15) salience on economic issues – although this election preceded the European debt crisis, or the Eurozone crisis, which started at the end of the year. In this year, the lion’s share of statements on economy issues was related to economic goals at the EU level, such as creating jobs and technology and infrastructure. For example, the EU should “play a key role in ensuring that a coherent, reliable transport system develops on a pan- European basis” (The Green Party 2009, 9). The party in 2014 shows less interest in those areas, where the focus is on energy policies. This is the only year that the EMU and transnational solidarity are mentioned, also marking the end of the IMF bailout program for Ireland, which had been initiated in 2010 (IMF 2018).
Welfare and quality of life This policy domain is consistently the most salient in 2009–2019 in the Green Party, as it entails messages about climate change and environmental protection, which naturally are the party’s
36 main priorities. As with most domains, EU salience has dropped slightly and is at its lowest in 2019. Environmental protection (general and subcategories) is continuously the biggest category in this domain, although it has dropped for 19 in 2009 to 10,8 in 2019. Areas of focus in 2009 are EU protection of biodiversity and increased land conservation, combating climate change, and the initiative to green Europe’s cities where EU funding and knowledge-sharing between member states is advocated for (The Green Party 2009, 12-13). The “Green New Deal”, that would ensure EU investment in renewable energy, a sustainable economy, and emissions reductions targets, is introduced in 2009, further discussed in 2014, but seemingly abandoned by 2019 as it is no longer explicitly mentioned, even though the European Green Deal is in place (European Commission 2021).
Social justice is another category that is highlighted by the party, in particular in 2014, albeit at lower levels than for environmental protection. In 2019, the party introduced discussions about the in the previous year unmentioned welfare state category – policy views on e.g. social services, health- and childcare, social housing, at the European level. Education has increased in prominence in 2019. For example, it is said that the EU should “support Member States to achieve universal health coverage” and that Europe should aim to be world-leading in research and education, making it accessible and equal (The Green Party 2019, 11–13). By contrast, the emphasis on culture in 2014 (2,9) and for example support for “artistic creativity in Europe which is good for communities, the economy and quality of life” and EU-level improvements for artists’ opportunities (The Green Party 2014, 20), was only existent that year.
Fabric of society This domain has very low salience in the Green Party each election year with very little changes, and therefore does not warrant much discussion here. Immigration is viewed positively in 2009 and 2019 (unmentioned in 2014) and multiculturalism is favoured in 2014, such as in the form of support for conserving the “cultural and linguistic diversity” (The Green Party 2014, 20) that exists within the Union.
Social groups In the last domain, salience has fallen from 11,8 in 2009 to 7 in 2019 (with a high point of 18 in 2014, when it was one of the more salient domains). There is a lack of attention in 2019 given to different labour groups and workers’ rights, prominent in previous years. Similarly, there is less targeting at the European level of UMGs except for people with disabilities,
37 whereas in 2014 immigrants and ethnic minorities were included. However, there is an increase in the category for NEDGs from 2009 to 2019. It is also noteworthy that salience on the category on agriculture and farmers has decreased, from 3,2 to 0,5, although this is a policy area that should very much be in the interest of green parties on a national as well as European level.
5.2.2 Programmatic changes in Sinn Féin An overview of the relative salience of policy domains for Sinn Féin shows a similar trend to that of the Green Party – the EU salience in the external relations domain is growing. There was an overall decline in EU salience in 2014, which is apparent in this domain as well. Yet, the salience in external relations in 2019 has tripled since 2009. Salience in the freedom and democracy domain has decreased slightly as well, with a particularly low point in 2009. Both of the “political system” domains have grown, and especially the EU one. The economy domain is relatively stable with a surge in 2014. There has also been increased salience in the fabric of society and social groups domains since 2009, although with a small drop in 2014. Welfare and quality of life has in 2019 however dropped to almost half the level of 2009.
Just like for the Green Party, the 2014 election year appears to be somewhat of an outlier; overall salience was at its lowest for Sinn Féin (while in the Green Party, it was unusually high that year), and then stabilized in 2019. Only one domain, economy, shows a higher salience in 2014 than in the previous and following years.
Table 2. Relative salience of domains in Sinn Féin in the EP elections. Domain 2009 2014 2019 External relations 4,4 1,6 13,4 Freedom and democracy 7,5 1,1 5,7 Political system general 14,4 9,2 20,5 Political system of EU 1,3 4,8 15,5 Economy 5,7 8,9 4,9 Welfare and quality of life 20,3 11,2 9,6 Fabric of society 0,8 0,4 4,5 Social groups 7,1 4,5 11,2
38 External relations A closer examination of the external relations domain shows that the codes for anti-imperialism make a first appearance in 2019 (1,2). Most of all, the party’s stances on this category is manifested in statements on the EU’s policy towards Israel and Palestine, where they advocate for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), and an end to the EU-Israel Association Agreement, in order to confront the “illegal occupation of Palestine” (Sinn Féin 2019, 14). Moreover, there is a clear increase in salience on military, and more specifically negatively loaded statements on military expenditure, cooperation, and arms trade. In 2019, the EU’s development into “a military union” is explicitly criticized as a threat to the country’s neutrality and “respected international reputation” (Sinn Féin 2019, 7). This is a continuation, but also an intensification, of the party’s 2009 and 2014 policy stances, where the “positive neutrality” was defended and a military alliance or a CSDP rejected (Sinn Féin 2019, 15; Sinn Féin 2014, 34). One of the more salient categories, peace, is consistently discussed, and on similar levels, but especially so in 2009 (2,5). When peace is discussed, it is often in reference to the Northern Ireland peace process and the Good Friday Agreement, and the role of the EU in supporting it (Sinn Féin 2009, 7; Sinn Féin 2014, 32).
Of course, the party also introduces salience in the “EU exit” (4,7) category in 2019. These are clearly not statements entertaining the possibility of an exit of the union for the Republic, but the discussions are related to the current issue of Brexit and the future of Northern Ireland’s relationship with the EU and the border, as “the Brexit crisis has created unprecedented political uncertainty across the entire island” (Sinn Féin 2019, 6).
Freedom and democracy Salience in the freedom and democracy domain has increased to 5,7 since 2014 (1,1) but decreased somewhat from 2009 (7,5). There has been an increase of salience in the freedom and human rights category and there is a particular focus in 2019 on human rights – in general, and for refugees. An example from 2019 highlights this as the party’s belief that the EU “could do a lot more to promote equality and human rights” and that the country needs to “comply with all human rights obligations under the ECHR and European Social Charter” (Sinn Féin 2019, 13). The democracy category has gone in the opposite direction, with 5 percent salience in 2009 and only 1,2 in 2019. The higher salience in 2009 can be traced at least in part to the current issue of the Lisbon Treaty and the (first) Irish referendum on it in 2008, which the party opposed. Sinn Féin also, then, vowed to “oppose any Lisbon Treaty re-run as anti-democratic”
39 but supported a “new treaty the brings greater democracy to the EU” (Sinn Féin 2009, 8). In 2019, the democracy references are a little more vague as the party is aiming for “a fairer and more democratic EU” (Sinn Féin 2019, 6).
Issues about constitutionalism – the need for or opposition to an EU constitution – were discussed by the party in 2009, but not in the two successive elections.
Political system general This is the most salient domain in 2019 for Sinn Féin. The party in 2014 and 2019 uses less political authority (competence of own party to govern, criticism of the others) than in 2009, while there is an increase in support for eliminating corruption. There is also a slight increase in salience on issues that relate to reforming the political system in some way – such as executive efficiency, transfer of power and decentralization. The most salient category within this domain was political authority in both 2009 (8) and 2014 (3,4), however, the issue given most emphasis in 2019 is decentralization. Negative mentions of the transfer of power to the EU have decreased since 2009, but still, the combined frequencies of the decentralization (sub)categories (decentralization, positive + transfer of power, negative) has doubled since 2009, signaling a greater emphasis on national and local sovereignty. From a closer examination of the 2019 manifesto’s content, it becomes evident that much of the emphasis on decentralization comes in the form of encouraging the EU to support Irish reunification through various means. For example, Sinn Féin is said to aim to seek “EU support for unity”, “building political support in Europe and in Ireland to bring about Irish reunification” and to ensure EU financing of the reunification (Sinn Féin 2019, 5–6). There is, consequently, an increase in reliance on the EU to support the party’s ultimate goal of Irish reunification, while reaching that goal that would also result in more sovereignty for the nation state.
Political system of EU There is a large, and continuous, increase in salience in this domain 2009–2019, from 1,2 in 2009 to 15 in 2019, which derives from a large and continuous increase in criticism towards the competences of the Commission, the Council, and other EU institutions such as the establishment of a Multilateral Investment Court (Sinn Féin 2019, 9). In particular, the increase of criticism of the ECB stands out in 2019 (2,5 compared to 0,2 in 2014). The complexity of the political system of the EU is also explicitly discussed in 2019 and 2014.
40 Economy A bit surprisingly, this is the second to least salient policy domain in 2019, while it was the second most salient in 2014. Yet, the party in 2019 does show a slight increase (0,99 from 0,2 in 2009) of encouragement of market regulation on the EU level. There is however no reliance on the EU in the “creating jobs” category in 2019, such as in 2014 and 2009. For example, the party has campaigned for more investment by the European Investment Bank to “assist private and public sector job growth” (Sinn Féin 2014, 15) and to “maximize the job creation potential of EU transport and energy programmes” (Sinn Féin 2009, 10). Jobs are, of course, mentioned also in 2019 on the EU level, but more in terms of workers’ rights and fair employment (within social groups domain) than job creation as an economic policy. As an effect of the European debt crisis, the party begins to criticize the EMU and the “’one size fits all’ fiscal and budgetary policy” (Sinn Féin 2014, 12) in 2014 and the single currency, “the Eurozone straitjacket” (Sinn Féin 2019, 7), in 2019. The higher salience in 2014 is however not defined to any specific category but is instead spread out over many which add up.
Welfare and quality of life EU salience in this domain has consistently gone down and is in 2019 at half the level it used to be in 2009. The starkest difference between the years is that the social justice category has been given only 1,2 points in 2019 compared to 8,3 in 2009. In 2014 and 2019, the party campaigned for the EU to promote equality and social inclusion as well as social rights to be incorporated in EU law (Sinn Féin 2014, 17; Sinn Féin 2019, 13), but these issues are not nearly as emphasized on a European level as in 2009 when half of the EU salience within this domain was taken up by the social justice category. However, issues related to the welfare state has increased slightly. The salience in environmental protection is relatively stable (between 5,4 and 8,5) while discussions on education on the European level have ceased in 2019.
Fabric of society This is the least salient domain during in every election year, however it has still increased from 0,8 in 2009 to 4,5 in 2019. The issues that are given attention are a little more spread out in 2019 than in 2009, when the sole focus was on the law and order category, such as support for European measures “which genuinely combat international crime” (Sinn Féin 2009, 14). What stands out in this policy domain in 2019 is the focus on multiculturalism, which shows itself in the form of support for and preservation of the Irish language, but also other minority languages, at the EU level, for example by establishment of a European Language Ombudsman (Sinn Féin
41 2019, 13) and recognition of Irish as an official EU language. Also, the party in 2019 adds to the social harmony and EU integration categories (0,5 each).
Social groups In 2019, EU salience on this domain is at its highest at 11,2 which is a more than doubled frequency from 2014. The most salient categories within this domain, in 2019 and 2014, were labour groups and agriculture and farmers. In 2009, however, more attention was instead given to the UMG subcategories, such as immigrants and people with disabilities. Agriculture and farmers is the only category which has consistently grown within this domain, from 1,3 in 2009 to 4,7 in 2019 with no decrease in 2014, as most categories had, which should be a sign that the importance of the EU within the agriculture sector is increasing. For instance, the party praised the impending 2020 reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and called for a continuation of the CAP funding for farmers in Northern Ireland even after Brexit (Sinn Féin 2019, 10), which mirrors their 2009 stance to “ensure that Irish farmers have a strong all-Ireland voice at all levels in the EU” (Sinn Féin 2009, 11).
The labour groups category is also increasing in importance (2,9 in 2009 to 4 in 2019), where the EU should “play a greater role in protecting workers’ and trade union rights” and also defend collective bargaining and the right to strike (Sinn Féin 2019, 8). There does appear to be an increase in the reliance on the EU to protect these rights for workers and to ensure fair employment policies.
5.2.3 Summary When it comes to overall EU salience, the Green Party and Sinn Féin appear to have taken completely opposite paths in the three most recent EP elections. The Green Party’s high starting point at 73 percent in 2009 is followed by a surge in overall EU salience in 2014, which again drops in 2019 to a lower level than previously (60,6). By contrast, the EU salience of Sinn Féin starts out at 61 percent in 2009, which is followed by a drop to 41,5 percent in 2014, and is in 2019 higher than in previous years, at 85.
42 Table 3. Summary of relative salience in EP elections 2009–2019.
SF SF SF
GP GP GP
2014 2019 2009 External relations 2,1 4,4 4,3 1,6 7,7 13,4
Freedom and democracy 4,5 7,5 8,3 1,1 6,6 5,7
Political system general 4,9 14,4 10,1 9,2 5,2 20,5
Political system EU 11,5 1,3 4,3 4,8 2,0 15,5
Economy 15,2 5,7 23,7 8,9 12,2 4,9
Welfare & quality of life 22,1 20,3 29,1 11,2 18,5 9,6
Fabric of society 1,2 0,8 1,9 0,4 1,5 4,5
Social groups 11,8 7,1 18,1 4,5 7,0 11,2
Comparing the relative salience in the two parties, it is evident that issues related to the external relations domain have become increasingly salient in both, but especially so in Sinn Féin. We can therefore conclude that the external relations domain is of growing importance at the European level for both parties, suggesting a certain convergence between the parties. This is also the only domain where EU salience has consistently increased in the Green Party in the most recent elections. The salience is however a bit higher in Sinn Féin, due to the party’s focus on military issues and more speficically, their opposition to military cooperation and a CFSP, which has only increased through 2009–2019. Also, Sinn Féin has a higher focus on the EU exit category, 4,7 compared to the Green Party’s 0,5. Considering Ireland’s close relationship with the United Kingdom, and especially so with Northern Ireland, it is only natural that mentions of Brexit and an emphasis on these foreign relations should increase during the most recent election campaign, contributing to a higher EU salience of the external relations domain. The issue of Brexit is however of more prominence in Sinn Féin than in the Green Party, where in the 2019 EP manifesto it is only briefly mentioned.
When comparing the salience of all these domains it also becomes clear that issues related to the fabric of society is the least emphasized, in both parties during these three past election campaigns. Although Sinn Féin shows an increased emphasis on the domain in the 2019 election, the share devoted to it is still below 5 percent, while the Green Party remains consistently under 2. This signals that in both parties, issues such as those related to
43 multiculturalism, immigration, law and order or fight against terrorism, are not considered of much importance on the EU policymaking level.
Within the other domains, the parties have taken entirely different routes when it comes to the distribution of EU salience. Salience in freedom and democracy has gone up from 2009 to 2019 in the Green Party – but gone down in Sinn Féin. The general political system domain has low salience levels in the Green Party, and high in Sinn Féin. When salience in the social groups domain decreased in the Green Party, Sinn Féin went in the opposite direction. The most salient domains for the Green Party in 2019 are welfare and quality of life (18,5) and economy (12,2), while in Sinn Féin it is political system general (20,5), political system of EU (15,5), and social groups (11,2). However, EU salience in 2019 compared to 2009 has increased in four of the policy domains in the Green Party, while in Sinn Féin it has increased in five out of eight.
5.3 General Elections 2011–2020 In this section, summaries of the findings from the national manifestos are presented for the Green Party and Sinn Féin.
What was expected of the national election manifestos was for the presence of the EU and discussions of European issues to be at low levels. However, some increases could still be observed in both parties. The presence of the EU has grown consistently in the Green Party, while the 2020 level is at the same as in 2016 for Sinn Féin, although that is more than doubled than what it was in 2011.
Figure 3. EU salience in General Elections 2011–2020.
44 5.3.1 Programmatic changes in the Green Party The Green Party has increasingly emphasized the EU and European integration in their national election manifestos 2011–2020. The 2011 manifesto had an EU salience level of 1,7 percent. In 2016, that level had increased to 3,9 and in 2020 it was as high as 5,5.
Table 4. Relative salience of domains in the Green Party in national elections. Domain 2011 2016 2020 External relations – 1,3 0,8 Freedom and democracy 0,5 0,2 0,2 Political system general 0,2 0,3 0,1 Political system of EU 0,4 – 0,3 Economy 0,2 0,2 0,2 Welfare and quality of life 0,2 0,9 2,0 Fabric of society – 0,3 0,5 Social groups 0,2 0,3 0,4
There is a similar trend in the national election campaigns to that was observed in the EP elections, which is the increasing emphasis on external relations. Unlike in the EP manifestos, the most recent election showed a slight decrease from the previous year, the difference, however, is minor.
The main increase of EU salience (from 0,2 to 2,0) is evident in the domain devoted to welfare and quality of life, and more specifically, in the categories related to environmental protection. Thus, the Green Party in their national manifestos for the general elections put increasing emphasis on the EU and Europe when they talk about issues that relate to protection of the environment, climate change, animal welfare, as well as issues of social justice.
The social groups and economy domains show rather consistent levels through these elections. In the general political system domain, there were a couple of statements in support of decentralization. This was demonstrated in the forms of more power to the Oireachtas in overseeing European legislation in 2016 and 2020, whereas in the 2011 election the focus was on fighting political corruption by support of implementing the Group of States against Corruption recommendations (The Green Party 2011, 15).
45 5.3.2 Programmatic changes in Sinn Féin Sinn Féin has also increasingly emphasized the EU and European integration in their manifestos prepared for the General Elections 2011–2020. However, the analysis of the manifestos showed barely any difference between 2016 and 2020. Still, the share of the programmatic content devoted to the EU in the party’s national manifestos has more than doubled since 2011.
Table 5. Relative salience of domains in Sinn Féin national elections. Domain 2011 2016 2020 External relations 0,8 0,6 1,8 Freedom & democracy 0,0 0,2 0,2 Political system general 0,2 0,2 1,0 Political system of EU 0,0 0,1 0,2 Economy 0,3 0,7 0,6 Welfare & quality of life 0,3 0,3 0,5 Fabric of society 0,3 0,3 0,7 Social groups 0,7 0,3 1,4
The analysis of the EP election manifestos showed an increase in the external relations domain in both parties. This is mirrored in the national manifestos of Sinn Féin. Overall, there has been in increase of EU salience in all domains, although the difference in most of them may be small. Within external relations, the lion’s share of the statements were related to protecting future of the Good Friday Agreement and the peace process at the European level, and about the party’s negative views on militarization of the Union.
The social groups domain increased between 2011 and 2020 with a dip in 2016, but second to external relations it is the policy area in which European matters are discussed the most.
5.3.3 Summary As was expected for the national election programs, the share of the content devoted to European politics and co-mentions of the EU is small. What is clear is that Sinn Féin tends to include the EU and Europe more in their national election campaigns than the Green Party does. The inclusion of EU politics and European integration in the national manifestos is however a growing trend in both parties.
46
Table 6. Summary of relative salience in national elections.
SF SF SF
GP GP GP
2016 2020 2011 External relations – 0.8 1.3 0.6 0.8 1.8
Freedom and democracy 0.5 – 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2
Political system general 0.2 0.2 0.3 0.2 0.1 1.0
Political system of EU 0.4 – – 0.1 0.3 0.2
Economy 0.2 0.3 0.2 0.7 0.2 0.6
Welfare & quality of life 0.2 0.3 0.9 0.3 2.0 0.5
Fabric of society – 0.7 0.3 0.3 0.5 0.7
Social groups 0.2 0.7 0.3 0.3 0.4 1.4
In national election programs, there has been an increase in salience of issues related to external relations on the European political level in both parties. This is slightly higher in Sinn Féin, which was also the case in the European elections 2009–2019.
The levels are similar in the freedom and democracy domain throughout the years in both parties, likewise in the political system domains which were mostly devoted to decentralization and transfer back to member states. As expected, the Green Party put the highest emphasis on the welfare and quality of life domain, which mirrors the findings from the party’s European election manifestos.
6. Analysis
This chapter presents the analysis of the findings from the empirical material and how they relate to the bigger picture of the Irish political system.
To summarize the findings of the analysis on the General Election manifestos and the European election manifestos, we have concluded that the two parties in the European elections went into opposite directions with how much they emphasized the importance of EU. The salience of EU is currently at the highest in Sinn Féin in European, as well as national election campaigns. The salience in national elections has been increasing from 2011–2020 in both parties, with slightly higher levels in Sinn Féin.
47 6.1 Ireland, foreign policy and the EU As shown in the previous chapter, the consistently increased emphasis on the EU in the external relations domain was mutual in the two parties in the manifestos prepared for EP elections, and also in the national manifestos (although the Green Party showed a slight decrease from 2016 to 2020, references to Europe in this policy domain were non-existent in the 2011 national manifesto).
The increasing frequency of references to the EU regarding external relations matches research by Pennings (2006) showing an increase in references to the EU in the external relations and security policy areas, across all of Europe. For the purpose of context, let us go back to the literature review chapter and what could be said previously about the Irish party positions in the foreign policy area. The party positions on the CFSP and the ESDP spanning over four decades up until 2009 were laid out, showing that there has been a noteworthy shift among all of the Irish parties, except for in the case of Sinn Féin, towards support for a more maximalist ESDP (Devine 2009). Furthermore, Ireland has along with Finland, Sweden, Malta, Austria, and Cyprus opted out of membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), in the name of military neutrality. Still, cooperation between NATO and Irish armed forces occurs in peacekeeping and crisis management situations, for example in Kosovo, and through the Partnership for Peace program (NATO 2021). Both parties opposed the Nice Treaty in the 2001 referendum, based on the perceived threat to the country’s neutrality (Devine 2009). Sinn Féin maintains their support for positive neutrality. The aversion towards a European army follows a long tradition in the party of defending Irish neutrality from the threat of European militarism (Frampton 2005, 238).
The Green Party, leading up to the Nice referendum, also called a protocol in the Treaty to allow exemption from the EU’s military efforts (Dáil Éireann debates, 2000). Since then, the Green Party has been said to take a more moderate position towards the EU’s foreign and security policies (Devine 2009). However, in neither the national nor European election manifestos from 2009–2020 is there any opposition towards it. In fact, they explicitly state in their 2019 manifesto that the “EU needs a common security and defence policy” (The Green Party 2019, 16), with the goal of maintaining peace around the world, as opposed to Sinn Féin’s manifestos, in which mentions of CFSP and military have a negative connotation and the party is explicitly against it.
48 Generally, Ireland’s foreign policy has been a consistent one over the years. However, as argued by Rees and O’Brennan (2019), the so-called “dual crisis” of first, the financial crisis hitting the country and second, Brexit, has given Ireland incentives to change their approach to foreign relations and their positioning on the global stage. The financial crisis led to both the reinvention of Irish economic interests around the globe and efforts to salvage the damaged reputation (due to the bailout) in the Eurozone. More recently, Brexit prompted a reconsidering of foreign relations and alliances, along with what Ireland’s position in the EU should be. Ireland being a small state in the international arena likely plays a key role in the parties’ foreign policy views. The EU plays a significant role in international affairs and engagement in the EU increases the likelihood of Ireland having its voice heard in these matters. Likewise, Ireland has always been supportive of for example the UN, and the Council of Europe as one of the founding member states (Rees & O’Brennan 2019). This is of course also reflected in the prominence of the EU in the parties’ foreign policy stances.
6.2 Environmental issues and agriculture In Sinn Féin’s national and European election manifestos, there was an increase in EU salience in the social groups domain. This consisted of commitments to labour rights and worker protections, but mainly to farmers as a specific labour group, and agriculture. Considering Ireland’s rich tradition of agriculture and farming (in 2016 there were more sheep than people in the Republic [Central Statistics Office 2016]), it should perhaps not be surprising that the agriculture sector is emphasized as it is dependent on the EU and the CAP. As recently as May 2021, the Irish Farmers Association expressed concerns with the pending reforms to the CAP that is an attempt to make the farming and agriculture sector more environmentally sustainable, which would make considerable cuts to the payments to Irish farmers (O’Sullivan 2021).
As the Green Party is by nature focused on environmental issues and policies, it is rather obvious that a Europeanization of green issues should take place in the party’s election campaigns. This demonstrates a need for European cooperation on these issues and a view within the party that the EU is crucial in combatting climate change and protecting the environment.
49 6.3 Reforming the system While the Green Party in all elections shows less interest in any of the political system domains, this has not always been the case, as they through 2002–2007 have concerned themselves with reforms to the EU system and the transfer of power (Bolleyer & Panke 2009). It does appear that the positive shift in EU attitudes has made the party less inclined to criticize the political system since then. By contrast, this tendency has only increased in Sinn Féin. The emphasis on these issues by Sinn Féin is aligned with their history as an opposition party and as a somewhat Eurosceptical party. Also, the increasing emphasis on the decentralization and transfer of power back to the member states and regions, demonstrates an increased emphasis on the EU, but calls for reforms to the system that it has created.
6.4 General attitudes towards the EU The chapter (3) on theory and Europeanization described what constitutes programmatic changes and that the parties’ general position towards European integration is one factor. Although not the primary focus of this study, it can be motivated to say something about the positive and negative connotations of the manifestos’ content – how do the parties talk about the EU, and how has that changed? The EMP data (Schmitt et al. 2016), which was used for analysis of the 2009 and 2014 European election manifestos, placed the parties on a –100 to 100 scale (–100 anti to 100 pro-EU), by calculating the sums of positive statements subtracted with the negative statements. This showed that the Green Party was in 2009 at 1,64 and at 2014 on 2,67 on the scale, while Sinn Féin was at –5 in 2009 and at –4,9 in 2014. Through my own coding and calculations of the 2019 manifestos, the Green Party is now at 2,06 while Sinn Féin has moved to –15,6. Although the EU is more salient in Sinn Féin than in the two years prior, the party’s positions also appear to be more negative towards the EU. However, in the Green Party, no similar correlation between the high salience in 2014 and negative statements appears. Also, this is just an indication of the parties’ specific policy stances in the campaigns and does not take into account the other variables and source material that for example the CHES (Bakker et al. 2020) study on parties’ EU positions does. As demonstrated in the method chapter (figure 1), the CHES 1999–2019 positioning of the parties tells a different story about their attitudes towards the EU, in which it is indicated that the EU attitudes in both parties are increasingly positive.
50 With data from the CHES 1999–2019 trend file (Bakker et al. 2020), we have previously showed (see figure 1) how the parties’ EU positions in general have changed throughout the years. Using the same data file, let us take a look at the parties’ respective degrees of intra-party dissent on European integration (where 0 = the party is united and 10 = the party is divided) and the relative salience of EU integration in the parties’ public stance. The parties are less divided on the integration issue in 2016 than in 2011, the Green Party from 2,4 to 1,3, Sinn Féin from 1,6 to 1. Consequently, the parties are more united in their views on European integration and those views on integration lean more positive among the party leadership. However, the same dataset shows a slight decrease in EU salience in both parties between 2011 and 2016, suggesting a certain downplaying of the EU in the parties’ public stances.
6.5 The Europeanization process The question is, then, can the identified changes be considered programmatic changes due to Europeanization? According to Ladrech (2002) Europeanization could be measured by references to the EU, and discussions of Europe regarding traditionally domestic policy areas. These findings fulfill that criterium. Furthermore, for changes to reflect a Europeanization process according to Ladrech it does not only imply that political parties intend to use the EU for solving issues or furthering certain policy agendas, but also to demonstrate how the impact of the EU presents a problem for the parties (Ladrech 2002, 396). Thus, while Europeanization of political parties can also manifest itself in their general views of the EU and integration, when it comes to the presence of EU in programmatic or policy content, it does not necessarily have a positive connotation. This reasoning suggests that Europeanization of a party’s e.g. foreign policy does not equal support of the EU policy, but it is more of a reflection of the importance of Europe and the impact of the EU in that domain.
7. Conclusion
The purpose of this study was to study the programmatic changes that the Europeanization process has caused in the Green Party and Sinn Féin in Ireland, manifested in national and European election campaigns. With the help of Ladrech’s (2002) framework for analysis of political parties, the programmatic changes have been identified through examination of election manifestos 2009–2020.
51 One conclusion that can be drawn from the results and analysis is that European matters are of increased importance in the parties’ national campaigns. If the European issue has previously been underemphasized (Pennings 2006) in national elections, they are at least less so in recent years.
7.1 Discussion of research questions This thesis was guided by two research questions: 1) What programmatic changes can be identified in the Green Party and Sinn Féin? and 2) How are programmatic changes manifested in national and European elections?
What programmatic changes can be identified in the Green Party and Sinn Féin? Programmatic changes in the Green Party and Sinn Féin are most evident from the increased presence of Europe in external relations. This increase in EU salience can be identified in the national as well as European elections. Also, these results align with previous research by Devine (2009) regarding the CFSP and Irish parties. The Green Party and Sinn Féin both recognize the EU as an important actor in the global arena, and the importance of international cooperation, but only Sinn Féin has been consistent with their opposition to the CFSP and militarization of the Union. In this regard, Sinn Féin continues their policy of critical engagement with the EU.
In the Green Party, there was an increased reliance on the EU regarding environmental issues in both national and European elections.
How are programmatic changes manifested in national and European elections? There was never any expectation that the EU salience in national and European elections would be at remotely similar levels as they are by design concerned with different levels of politics. Salience levels have been increasing in national manifestos through 2011–2020 and in European manifestos both increasing (Sinn Féin) and decreasing (the Green Party) through 2009–2019. However, there are both differences and similarities in which policy areas are salient. Programmatic changes are manifested in Sinn Féin through increasing EU salience in both election types. The Green Party, however, demonstrates programmatic changes mostly in national election campaigns, with the exception of environmental issues, which is very much an area where the importance of EU cooperation is emphasized.
52 To conclude, if Europeanization is operationalized as EU salience, such processes have taken place in both parties to various degrees.
7.2 Final reflections In spite of the Green Party’s and Sinn Féin’s initial scepticism towards the EU, and that their positions towards EU integration is not yet aligned (but still, approaching) with the ones of the centre-right parties, there is no denying of the impact of European politics on these parties. The findings that have been presented supports previous research on the subject and continues a research tradition on Europeanization as EU salience in election campaigns, and the impact of Europe on Irish political parties.
The framework developed by Ladrech (2002) to study Europeanization in political parties turned out to be useful for this analysis. Of course, programmatic or policy changes could have been studied in different ways such as through various policy documents. Additionally, interviews with party officials with specific knowledge of the parties’ EU policies would be beneficial for further understanding of the motivations behind any programmatic and policy changes in future studies. Also, studies involving the three other parts of the framework; organizational changes, party-government relations, and changes beyond the national party system, would paint a fuller picture of Europeanization of these Irish parties.
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