Suchergebnisse

The 2012 Constituency Commission report has recommended a reduction in the number of Dail deputies from 166 to 158 and the number of general election constituencies from 43 to 40, while bringing about changes - some very fundamental in scope - to the majority of the existing Dail constituencies. These changes are detailed in this article, while being placed in the context of previous electoral boundary amendments throughout the history of the Irish state and the processes employed in other states, such as the United Kingdom. The oft quoted contention that the 2012 boundary revisions are the most considerable in scope since those of 1980 is tested and proven with reference to the use of the Kavanagh index of constituency change (KICC scores), with these KICC scores also employed to highlight the regions and constituencies that have been most prone to boundary amendments over the past three decades. Adapted from the source document.

Voter turnout is defined as the percentage number of registered voters who vote in an election - although the valid adult population (those aged 18. and over). is taken as the base from which turnout rates are calculated in other countries. such as the USA. Turnout levels have generally been in decline in Western democracies for the past few decades, as is also the case in the Republic of Ireland. TurnoUiS in socially-deprived urban areas have fallen to exceptionally low levels, particularly in innercity and western suburban areas in Dublin. Problems related to voter turnout feature amongst the most significant concerns facing the Irish political system at present. Democracy is weakened if the numbers voting in elections are in decline, while cross-constituency turnout variations involving socio-economic or demographics biases will have an impact on the final election results and resulting policy outcomes, which may act to further peripheralise an already marginalised groups. It is important to study how-economic and demographic factors may influence turnout levels.

During the 1990s, several of the conflicts that have demanded the most media attention have been associated with the disintegration of the Yugoslav Federation. A number of attempts have been made to outline the main causes of these, but these causal factors remain difficult to describe definitively, largely owing to the complexity of the post-Yugoslav political landscape. This paper studies the validity of employing a postmodern paradigm for investigating the conflicts in former Yugoslavia, as well as other current conflicts, arguing that the present cultural & philosophical context has to be addressed. After an outline of some of the key aspects of postmodernity, the focus centers on the importance of the media & the postmodern perspective on the issue of the nation-state. Key theories related to postmodern conflict, with relation to economic & cultural factors, are outlined. These are evaluated in regards to their applicability to the Yugoslav conflicts & -- by extension -- to all future wars in the postmodern era. Adapted from the source document.

This paper reviews the May 2014 local election contests in the Republic of Ireland, while also offering a brief overview of the contests in Northern Ireland. These local elections took place in the context of radical changes to local government structures on both sides of the border – changes which would frame the types of choices open to voters at the May 2014 contests. The new – and generally larger – constituency areas opened up opportunity spaces for new candidates (including new female candidates) to participate in local electoral politics, although these opportunities, in turn, were very much framed by geography. The overall reduction in local representation levels in rural areas in the Republic of Ireland meant that incumbency factors acted as significant brakes on the entry of new candidates in these areas. The radically changing political landscape associated with the era of austerity politics saw a major swing against the government parties in the Republic of Ireland, with notable gains made by Sinn Féin and a number of other anti-establishment parties and groupings. These changes have brought about the formation of new alliances to control different local authorities, which, in turn, have posed an increasing set of challenges in terms of the governance of such councils, as evident in a number of conflicts over council budgets in the winter of 2014.