Over the past few decades, one of the electoral attributes of the Irish centrist parties – Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael – is an ability to gauge where the majority of the population are on big issues and align with them. As we saw with the abortion referendum, when the centrist politicians are worried about being out of step, they outsource the decision making to an innovative focus group called a Citizens’ Assembly. Once they know which way the wind is blowing, they act. The result of this has been a gradual but obvious progressive shift in Irish economics and politics – the type of steady incrementalism that would make Edmund Burke proud.
In contrast, Irish radicals who covet extreme social, political or economic change have (so far) found their aspirations rebuffed by an electorate that appears to be happy with measured adjustments, rather than rapid transformation.
Ireland was, until recently, pretty much in step with western democracies where the “mainstream” parties, reflecting the middle-of-the-road voter
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