Democracy in Ireland

How democratic is the political system of the Republic of Ireland? Answering this question requires recognizing that the term ‘democracy’ denotes both a normative ideal and a set of political practices aimed at advancing that ideal. In this chapter, I argue that the democratic ideal has both an individual and a collective component. At an individual level, a democracy must embody a conception of democratic equality. At a collective level, a democracy must embody popular sovereignty. I then relate this two-part ideal to Ireland’s political institutions. This task, I will argue, is complicated by the fact that Ireland, like most real-world democracies, employs several different democratic decision-making methods—what I will call direct democracy, electoral democracy, and aleatory democracy. It is difficult, I conclude, to specify how all three methods can be reconciled within a single story about the democratic ideal.