Celtic Tiger, Hidden Dragons? Referendum Campaign Financing by Political Parties in Ireland

• In Event: Global Insights on Political Parties

Abstract

Studies on the referendum experience in Ireland have generally embraced that an important role is reserved for actors from representative democracy, most noticeably political parties, in their campaigns. Yet, a question yet to be addressed in the literature is the extent to which political parties actively engage in referendum campaigns. This paper attempts to bridge this gap by studying referendum campaign finance of Irish political parties, which offers a precise quantitative indicator party engagement and thus forms a solid basis for explaining the level of this engagement. I follow a mixed-methods approach: first, a descriptive and explorative quantitative part compares the expenditure patters of Irish political parties in several referendum campaigns dating back to 1996 and links these to several potential explanatory factors. The qualitative section then attempts to test the found relationships through semi-structured interviews with party officials, as well as a qualitative case-study based on an analysis of internal party documents of the Labour party.

Author

• Toine Paulissen, KU Leuven (University of Leuven)