Ireland’s post-crisis election

This chapter sets the scene for the chapters that follow. We start by presenting a short background to the 2016 Irish general election – the most dramatic election in modern times and the first since Ireland’s emergence from the Great Recession. The chapter starts by describing the features of the 2016 Irish National Election Study (INES), a unique data set on Irish voter behaviour gathered by the Irish political science community (and the fourth such study since 2002). We then outline the key themes addressed in the book, relating to: changing partisan identities, issue mobilization, ideological dimensions, party system change, populism and generational effects. This is followed by an overview of each of the chapters.