While reflecting on these matters for a study on democracy between 1900 and 1950, I returned to the Irish case and in particular the reasons why Ireland remained a democracy after independence and through the inter-war period (1918-1939). The question here is whether the challenges that appeared amounted to a real threat to Irish democracy. If the period from 1910 to 1937 is taken as a single unit, then there is a strong case to be made that Ireland should not have survived as a democratic state, never mind emerging as a consolidated and stable constitutional democracy by 1939. In comparative terms, states that encountered only some of these challenges ceased to be democratic during the inter-war period.
The advantages that Ireland had are important:
1: Ireland had shared in the British parliamentary and
constitutional tradition before World War 1 (those democracies that survived
the inter war period tended to have such a tradition – Denmark, Sweden, Belgium
and the United States).
2: The population was relatively highly educated, the new
state was not corrupt and its civil service was efficient.
3: The military was under civilian control (at least from
1924) and it did not play a key political role in the new state (direct or
indirect military intervention was often the occasion for the end of
parliamentary rule in inter war Europe and Latin America).
4: Irish income per capita was reasonable high in a
comparative context in 1912 and remained so into the 1930s and beyond. Irish
income was around sixty per cent of the British average but ahead of Italy and
France and close to the Scandinavian states.
5: Ireland had a strong and vibrant civic culture and a
complex network of political and other associations. Majority outcomes were
widely accepted prior to World War One, though challenged in the decade that
followed.
These contributions to maintaining democracy and
consolidating parliamentary institutions are significant and should not be ignored,
but there are a number of other features that need to be assessed to gain a
fuller sense of what was achieved and how the democratic prospect could have
been lost.
1: Though a constituent part of the British state, Ireland
(and nationalist Ireland in particular) was treated as a quasi-colony. Its
status within the state was different in important ways to that of Scotland for
example though significantly different from India which was treated as a colony
in every respect. This hybrid status alienated nationalist Ireland and
prevented the majority of Irish people from becoming British as
proved to be the case with Scotland (Scottish and British).
2: Ireland was divided along nationalist and religious lines
and democratisation reinforced these divisions prior to the First World War.
Jack Snyder has made a persuasive case that newly democratising states are more
inclined to go to war over nationalist issues than stable democratic states.[1]
Ireland was democratising in the years before 1914 and was also challenging the
state with demands for self-determination. Within Ireland these demands led to
the mobilisation of a counter-nationalist movement committed to retaining the
link with Britain. As a consequence these demands were incommensurable and the
emergence of two armed movements in Ireland demonstrated that majority outcomes
(whether within the state or island) had lost their legitimacy among
nationalists and unionists. This made the prospect of violence greater and the
threshold for conflict lower.
3: Roman Catholicism was the dominant religion in Ireland,
whereas Protestantism was the dominant religion in the British state. There is
a strong relationship between those states that developed representative
institutions prior to 1914 and extended or consolidated democratic systems
during the inter-war period and a dominant secular or Protestant
culture/tradition (U.S., New Zealand, Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands and
Sweden; France and Belgium). Dominant Catholic states are more closely
associated with authoritarian outcomes before 1914 and are more likely to
become authoritarian during the inter-war period. Belgium is the exception
prior to 1914 but a case can be made that the Belgium constitution is secular
and that this was accepted by Catholic political movements in the 1880s when
they became the dominant force.
It might also be added that the strong link between
Catholicism and nationalism in Ireland was not necessarily conducive to
democracy as the Catholic Church was anti-democratic prior to 1914 and
indifferent to regime (to say the least) during the inter-war period. The
relationship between the existence of a dominant Catholic tradition in a
society and democracy remained weak up to 1945.
4: These factors were compounded by the Home Rule Crisis,
the First World War, the 1916 Rebellion and the Irish War of Independence. As
elsewhere in Europe, war and conflict reduces the threshold for the use of
violence when the war is over. Much of the violence in inter-war Europe had
former soldiers in the forefront of the conflict (Hitler and Mussolini are the
most obvious but there are many other examples). The presence of large numbers
of ex-servicemen in a community provides a pool of military experience to draw
on for extremists or for counter-insurgency (black and tans in the Irish case).
In Ireland there was a large cohort of ex-servicemen who had
fought in the War. But this was compounded by a militant paramilitary force
that had fought in the War of Independence, many of whom were dissatisfied with
the political compromise involved in the Treaty and the existence of the Irish
Free State. Both government and opposition in the new state had been bloodied
in war and were prepared to use violence to achieve their political ends. For
many the lesson of the period 1912-1923 was that violence achieved results that
would not have been otherwise available and this continued to be applied in the
years that followed. There were consequently many individuals available for
military action should this be required and these men were disciplined and capable of using armaments.
5: The Irish Civil War reinforced these tendencies and in my
view neutralised most of the positive attributes inherited from the pre-1914
period. It is at this level that individual agency weakens the influence of
structural explanations for democratic consolidation. The civil war divided the
elite, contributed to deep divisions within what had been a united movement for
independence and permitted atrocities on both sides. Though the Irish civil war
was not on the same scale experienced by Finland immediately after it became
independent; in the Irish case the legacy of civil war was mostly negative for both
government and opposition. Friendships were broken, friends were executed or
murdered and political stabilisation was only assured by the application of
draconian laws by the government. The political system and political
competition in the 1920s and after also reinforced the negative impact of the
civil war. Moreover, the Free State government remained committed to repression
where it considered it necessary and between 1927 and 1932 implemented further
legislation to constrain and harass republican militants.
6: Territorial loss was a major contributor to political
instability throughout Europe after 1918. For example, Germany lost about
thirteen per cent of its pre-war territory and other states even more so. In
the case of Ireland, about 20 per cent of the national territory was ‘lost’ as
a result of partition. This view might be contested by unionists and the
British but for Irish nationalist it constituted a part of the historic
homeland. It was also the territory where the Tain, Gaelic Ireland's great epic was based. It also was an area that contained important symbolic features for Irish
nationalism and Catholicism (Armagh;t he United Irishmen among others). A case
can be made that this was as much a psychic loss as a territorial one.
The legitimacy of Northern Ireland was never conceded by
nationalists during the inter-war period and nationalist and republican parties
within Northern Ireland rejected its legitimacy and looked to the independent
Irish state for support. This loss was compounded by a sense of grievance among
nationalists north and south and promoted irredentist demands among the public.
Other examples of this might include the Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia and
Hungarian minorities in adjacent states.
7: Ireland was beset by a series of crisis that weakened
democracy both in the immediate post war period and during the Great
Depression. Immediately after the state was established it was challenged by
civil war and this in turn affected the recovery of the economy for the post
war depression. Unemployment was high and much of the physical infrastructure
had been damaged as a consequence of the previous conflicts. These challenges
were overcome but government policy during the 1920s was conservative and
focussed on exporting agriculture which probably reduced opportunities
elsewhere. These agrarian elites also adopted labour repressive policies against
its labour force and in effect weakened the trade union movement in rural
Ireland. The Great Depression also contributed to further instability in the
farming sector and the Economic War with Britain radicalised the most important
section of rural Ireland. While economic crisis itself does not lead to the
undermining of democracy, multiple crises such as those that Ireland
experienced weakens the influence of parliamentary politics and provides an
avenue for paramilitary and anti-democratic forces to seek authoritarian
alternatives.
8: There was also a legitimacy crisis for much of this
period. The IRA and republican forces rejected the legitimacy of the state and
indeed fought to undermine the Free State in the Civil War. Subsequently,
between 25 and 30 per cent of the electorate supported anti-system parties.
Fianna Fáil remained ambiguous about the legitimacy of the state and the
democratic nature of the political system until they themselves formed a
government in 1932. Prior to this the party was close to the IRA and proved to
be a disloyal opposition committed to destroying the Free State t if possible.
After Fianna Fáil came to power, the opposition remained sceptical in respect
of the new government’s democratic credentials. Opposition leaders feared that
de Valera would prove to the Kerensky of Irish politics. This may appear
fanciful but the organisation of the Blueshirt movement and the challenge to
the government from the right should not be underestimated. Violent clashes
between the Blueshirts, the IRA and Fianna Fáil supporters heightened tension
and speeches by leading members of the movement especially Eoin O’Duffy and to
an extent John A. Costello can be construed as sceptical of the existing
system. The commitment to corporatism in Fine Gael was strong and there is not
a single example where corporate structures were introduce that the parliamentary
system was maintained (Austria, Portugal and Italy).
The major threat to democracy in inter-war Europe comes from
the military and/or the right not from the left. Leftist insurgency
destabilises the system but is rarely successful in established a left wing
government by insurrection (Russia is the exception: Hungary and Munich are the
norm). Right wing insurgency also destabilises democratic politics but often
build on the threat from the left to install an authoritarian government
(Italy). The right has clear advantages in that is it often associated with
traditional forces in society such as the church, the armed forces and the
dominant economic elites. It is possible for the right to mobilise against the
parliamentary system more successfully and comprehensively than parties on the
left because the right in most countries provide to be more sceptical of
democracy than was the case with the left especially social democrats.
9: the payment of land annuities to the British state was a
major objection of contention between Fianna Fáil and the British government.
The refusal to pay them led to the economic war and this in turn provided much
of the momentum behind the Blueshirt movement. These payments which amounted to
a major transfer of resources from Ireland to Britain were compared to the
reparations that Germany had to pay after the Versailles Treaty; in fact Seán MacEntee
the Minister for Finance in the Fianna Fáil government claimed that the land
annuities as a percentage of Irish GNP was greater than the amount paid by
Germany.
10: The existence of the PR system is often seen to be a
destabilising factor in the weakening of democratic regimes (Germany is often
cited) and the first past the post system in Britain and in the US cited as
ones that provided the government with a safe working majority. Other related
contribution to sustaining or undermining democracy might include a strong/weak
presidency; the existence of parties and leaders who support or oppose
democracy (Finnish democracy was secured in part because the majority of
political parties opted to maintain democracy against right wing insurgency;
this also proved to be the case with Belgium in 1938?)
To summarise the argument: Ireland started out with some
advantages in terms of democratisation but had not become a consolidated
democracy by 1927. Nor had it achieved this by 1932 but had by 1938. The disruptive
impact of the First World War, 1916, the War of Independence and the Civil War
heightened the prospect that Ireland would not survive as a democracy.
Ireland was overwhelming Catholic, a strong nationalist
ideology was shared by most of the citizens of the new state, it was
irredentist and there had been substantial territorial loss due to partition.
These features were also reinforced by the rural nature of the society and the
recurrent violence that prevailed after the new state was established. The
Minister for Justice was murdered in 1927 and the rule of law was frequently
undermined by the intimidation of the IRA.
Why then did Ireland survive as a democracy when virtually
every other successor state in Europe did not and those that were Catholic,
rural and irredentist even less so?
One contributory factor was that Ireland was lucky with its
neighbour Great Britain. Military intervention in Irish public life must have
been attractive to some sections of the British elite yet it did not occur.
There is little evidence that Britain tried to destabilise the new Irish state,
not even when faced with de Valera’s revisionist foreign policy and his party’s
commitment to revising the Treaty settlement out of existence. The external
element was largely benign and this may support the findings of research on the
so called democratic peace that no two democracies go to war with one another.
Another factor to this was the reluctance of the
republican elite after 1922 to reclaim the north by force. De Valera made a
more forceful claim to the north than his predecessor but did not pursue this
beyond political campaigning and diplomacy; the uncertainties that a war would
have brought did not arise.
The Cumann na nGaedheal governments had achieved much after
1923, though given the disloyal nature of the opposition it could not be
confident that the system had been consolidate. In particular, the government’s
decisive actions after the murder of Kevin O’Higgins forced Fianna Fáil to
abandon abstention and enter the Dáil and participate in parliamentary politics
(if perhaps reluctantly at first and in a highly confrontational fashion).
Cumann na nGaedheal also refused to be associated with any plans to neutralise
Fianna Fáil in 1932 and made a major contribution to consolidation by accepting
the electoral outcome.
As a consequence Fianna Fáil not only abandoned abstention
but after forming a government took care to introduce its radical programme for
change gradually and with the support of the majority in the Dáil and the
country. Successive re-elections made Fianna Fáil the dominant political party
in the state and provided it with the opportunity to transform the political,
economic and diplomatic landscape of the state. This culminated in the 1937
Constitution which provided the institutional and legal foundations for a
republican policy. De Valera was able to highlight by 1939 how much had been
changed over seven years and had largely been achieved in a peaceful and
democratic fashion.
A fuller explanation for this outcome is required but I will
not pursue it here. It is enough to conclude that the actions of individuals
and groups play the most important role in undermining democracy or indeed
consolidating it. While other outcomes were always possible in Ireland, the
evolution of politics from 1932 onwards expanded the foundations for a fully
consolidated democracy by the time de Valera declared neutrality in 1939.
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