Rationalising localism and brokerage: The deputy’s role in Irish democracy

This article focuses on the role of parliamentary deputies in Ireland. Their heavy engagement in brokerage activities for individual constituents at the expense of legislative work and policy discussion is often seen as a specificity of Irish politics and criticised by many Irish observers. The article employs the notion of global scripts and the concept of domestication of global trends in order to analyse how the question of the appropriate relationship between deputies and voters is informed both by a general trend towards the professionalisation of politicians and a domestic tradition of democratic representation that emphasises localism. A qualitative analysis of records of Irish parliamentary debates and newspaper articles reconstructs the long-term public debate about the deputy’s role. The analysis demonstrates the relevance of global scripts on the one hand and the importance of the domestic setting on the other. In this way the article contributes to a better understanding of the entanglement of the global and the local.

This article discusses the professionalisation of politicians as an example of the domestication of global trends that shape political institutions and actors. A public debate about the role of Irish parliamentary deputies and their strong focus on constituency service, which spans several decades, is analysed as an example that can shed light on the entanglement of the global and the local when it comes to notions of appropriate political behaviour. The debate indicates the contested character of a basic feature of democratic politics in Ireland, which seems surprising considering the long democratic past of the country. The article will analyse models of appropriate behaviour that professional politicians or others invoke when they account for political actions, drawing on the results of a qualitative analysis of the Irish debate on the role of the deputy. It refers to the notion of global scripts and the concept of domestication in order to analyse how the question of the appropriate relationship between deputies and voters is informed both by a general trend towards political professionalisation and a domestic tradition of democratic representation that emphasises localism.

The next section further explains the theoretical background and the choice of the Irish case. It is followed by a section dealing with some notable features of the role of the Irish deputy, especially the heavy engagement in brokerage activities for constituents. After this the empirical material for the analysis of the public debate on these particularities and the employed method are introduced. The article then discusses the results of the analysis and finally concludes with stating their main theoretical consequences.

For many years, social-scientific research on political representation has benefited from two important concepts that have helped to steer the discussion away from normative political theory. On the one hand, the concept of role behaviour opened the possibility to examine members of parliament in terms of their own accounts of goals and motives with regard to various political activities and to distinguish between roles (Andeweg, 1997; Eulau, Wahlke, Buchanan, & Ferguson, 1959; Searing, 1987). On the other hand, the notion of political professionalisation has pointed to a broad trend that affects the work of members of parliament in various democracies (Borchert & Zeiss, 2003). At the individual level it means that politicians actually live ‘off politics’ instead of engaging in it in addition to a separate, permanent job, a trend already noted by Weber (1919). Nowadays election and re-election to the national legislature have become the major focus for political careers in that sense, notwithstanding the fact that the career paths leading there can differ from country to country (Borchert, 2003, p. 6). At the level of political office professionalisation means that specific resources in terms of staff and salary are linked with a specific office, no matter which individual currently occupies it (Borchert, 2003, p. 9). In the same way, the institution to which this office belongs can be regarded as professional to the extent to which it relies on professional staff and has established ways to generate or access expertise. The observation that the ‘growth of government has meant a parallel expansion and intensification of parliamentary activity’ (Ryle, 1981, p. 497) is used to explain that even parliaments whose members traditionally did not consider themselves as legislators in the first place, such as the British House of Commons, have developed a more and more elaborate infrastructure in order to acquire some policy expertise (Ryle, 1981). In that way, the notion of professionalisation is linked with changing accounts of political role behaviour (e.g. Searing, 1987).

However, this link lacks specification in theoretical terms, considering that the professionalisation of politics is depicted as a global trend (Borchert & Zeiss, 2003). Regarding the spread of policy experts, the dominant reasoning is implicitly functionalist, pointing to the increased complexities of political decision-making within the framework of modern welfare states (Ryle, 1981). Regarding elections to parliament, the arguments found in the literature oscillate between a rationalist move of parties and candidates towards professionalisation in order to increase the chances of winning an election in the long run (Gibson & Rommele, 2001) and a general notion of a diffusion of campaign models, mostly originating in the United States (Plasser & Plasser, 2002).

But once we accept that a far-reaching trend towards political professionalisation somehow influences the role behaviour of politicians, matters are actually more complicated. The goals and motives that parliamentary deputies provide when asked to account for their political activities cannot be separated a priori from the global trend. That raises the question to what extent assumptions about the appropriate behaviour of the professional politician can be traced back to globally spread ideas of democratic politics and how they are linked to the domestic context in which politicians compete for seats in parliament. To pursue this question means to bring normativity back in, although not in the form of a discussion in terms of political theory. It means to focus on possible models of appropriate behaviour that professional politicians or others invoke when they account for political actions.

The question ties in with a sociological perspective that regards actors as socially constituted. They are not beings whose interests and identities derive from internal essences independent of their surroundings. This perspective can be traced back to the social constructionist tradition of Berger and Luckmann (1967) and thus to a focus on how knowledge shapes social life. Already the fact that the term commonly used to name representatives, such as member of parliament, deputy or delegate, varies from country to country hints at the possibility that specific notions of representation may make a difference with regard to what actions are seen as appropriate for people who have been elected to a national parliament. As Hacking (2000) points out, names are able to shape the entity that is named, provided the latter is aware of the name. Yet with regard to politics the social constitution of actors has predominantly been discussed in terms of the global spread of certain ideas and models.

Sociological neo-institutionalism considers a world culture as today’s most relevant social context that provides cultural rules and scripts to which political actors adhere or at least pretend to adhere in order to gain legitimacy (Meyer, Boli, Thomas, & Ramirez, 1997; Meyer & Jepperson, 2000). The respective authors emphasise the homogenising effects that the diffusion of a Western political culture has had on national political institutions and political actors all over the world since the end of the Second World War. In a similar vein, governmentality studies and other works inspired by Foucault describe dominant knowledge/power complexes that shape political regimes and political subjects on a worldwide scale (e.g. Ferguson, 1990; Larner & Walters, 2004). These approaches do not surmise that adherence to global ideas or scripts makes political actors or policy projects more successful in an instrumental sense. However, they argue that latter adhere to these models because they are deemed legitimate and/or rational.

Alasuutari and Qadir (2014a) have recently pointed out that this depiction does not sufficiently address the processes that link global ideas with the national level. They propose the concept of domestication in order to stress that elements of world culture are not simple scripts that get adopted within nation-states. Rather, they are enacted and negotiated at the national level in a way that makes them appear genuinely domestic. The concept of domestication thus points to the necessity to analyse more carefully how globally spread models are articulated in domestic political settings. So far, the concept of domestication has been applied to processes of policy reform (Alasuutari & Qadir, 2014b). Applying it to the topic of parliamentary representation extends its scope by focusing not on specific policies but on politicians as actors.

This article draws on the example of Ireland in order to analyse how a globally spread model of parliamentary representation is negotiated in a political setting that strongly emphasises localism. A debate about the role of the Irish deputy, spanning several decades and revolving around the notion of clientelism, indicates ambivalence and controversy with regard to an appropriate actor model for Irish politicians. The debate has been kindled by the extreme constituency focus of most Irish deputies and informed by comparisons with other countries as well as a model of appropriate political behaviour that is especially at odds with brokerage activities of deputies for individual constituents. The long-term continuity of both these brokerage activities and the critical debate about them suggests that the case of the Irish deputy is particularly helpful in order to learn more about domestication as the articulation of global trends and specific domestic settings.

With regard to basic state institutions, the British model was of paramount importance when the Irish Free State, the precursor of the later republic, was formed in the early 1920s. The stability of Irish democracy after the turmoil of the war for independence and the subsequent civil war in the early 1920s is credited, in a huge part, to formal institutions taken over from the British. The continuity of existing administrative structures can partly be explained by the necessities of governing a country rent by civil war as effectively as possible. Partly it was a consequence of explicit demands by the British, which were agreed on in the Anglo-Irish Treaty (Coakley, 2010). Moreover, the long-term ties to Britain had resulted in the existence of a strong strand of liberal thinking that fed into the creation of the independent state (Prager, 1986; Townshend, 1998). However, a second strand of thinking relevant to the formation of the new state was anchored in efforts to define a true, non-British identity, based on the notion of the Gaelic rural community and Catholic belief, both of which preceded all English influence and could therefore be re-invoked in order to do away with it (Prager, 1986, pp. 38–42, 194–214). The Irish identity that was thereby imagined was primarily one of a rural, pre-modern community, based on landownership, family, and the church.

Nevertheless, with regard to the gradual expansion of the welfare state the general course of development does not look fundamentally different compared to other countries in the period after the Second World War (Cousins, 1997, pp. 228–230). The same is true for the framework of resources and structures within which Irish deputies (TDs) do their legislative work. Similar to the Westminster model, which Ireland had essentially adopted for the Dáil as the Lower House of Parliament in 1922, committees did not play a large role for a long time (Gallagher, 2010, p. 218). In spite of a first attempt in 1983 and renewed efforts in the early 1990s, it was only in the late 1990s that a working committee system, closely matching government departments, was finally installed on a permanent basis (Gallagher, 2010, p. 219; Murphy, 2006, p. 447). Moreover, the resources allocated to support committee work by means of secretarial and research staff continue to be very meagre (Gallagher, 2010, p. 221). Yet, the parliament, although belatedly, did set up a working committee system, supported by some professional staff. It has also made use of experts when it comes to reflect and decide on important questions, as is for example evidenced by the work of the Joint Committee on the Constitution, which was established in 1996 by a number of TDs and a number of senators from the Upper House of Parliament, the Seanad. Several times reinstated since then, it has invited experts both from the various political parties and from political science in order to consult on the necessity or desirability to change the constitution with regard to specific points (e.g. Joint Committee, 2010).

But whereas professionalisation in that sense seems to have been well under way for at least 25 years now, there is another feature of Irish politics that makes it an especially relevant case with regard to the role of parliamentary deputies: the long hesitation or even lack of interest in strengthening the policy competences of the Irish parliament corresponds with the extreme constituency focus of most TDs. Their role continues to be seen as predominantly concerned with mediating between local affairs and individual problems on the one hand and a centralised state on the other (Chubb, 1963; O’Leary, 2011). This state is regarded as an important provider of resources, dispensed by a public bureaucracy following impersonal rules. However, by emphasising brokerage TDs present their access to the respective decision-making procedures as superior to that of ordinary citizens, who would consequently be better off if they availed themselves of the help offered by TDs. Brokerage activities of TDs are facilitated by structures within the administration that grant them special access, for example a special hotline that allows them to enquire about individual applications for welfare benefits (Gallagher & Komito, 2010, p. 252) or a fast-track service for passport applications (Phelan, 2009).

The fact that government, both on the central and the local levels, offers an increasing number of services in the Irish case seems to have primarily reinforced the role of the deputy as a ‘welfare officer’, who attempts to sort out problems of individual constituents with the public bureaucracy (Gallagher & Komito, 2010, pp. 230–231). Moreover, in contrast to other countries, where deputies may regard it as a matter of their individual choice whether to focus on constituency service, Irish TDs consider this focus essential in order to win a seat in the Dáil (Wood & Young, 1997).

The emphasis on constituency service is mirrored in the system of allowances that was gradually introduced in order to support the work of the deputies (Houses of the Oireachtas, n.d.). It includes a start-up allowance for setting up a constituency office for new members and an annual allowance towards the costs of running a constituency office, most recently treated as a type of allowable expense within the Public Representation Allowance. For TDs the latter also allows expenses for hiring rooms for constituency clinics, where constituents come to ask for help with individual problems. In other words, the regulations allocating additional resources to facilitate the work of TDs explicitly provide for constituency service and brokerage. This is also indicated by the rules for the Travel and Accommodation Allowance, which now even includes expenses for travel within the TD’s constituency. Rural TDs had demanded such a support for a long time (O’Halpin, 2002, pp. 113–114). Its allocation can be interpreted as a further professionalisation of the parliamentarian as ‘welfare officer’, which runs counter to common expectations regarding parliamentary representation and its professionalisation in terms of policy expertise.

The role of the TD as a broker corresponds with a notion of politics as predominantly patrimonial and local. In terms of political power it leads to a sharp divide between common TDs, who are focused on brokerage and the interests of their own constituency, and a small elite of policy-makers who actually decide on national matters. In terms of general value orientations, it appears to accept a particularism within the realm of politics that is at odds with common notions of universalistic democracy; yet is has proven to be a foundation for long-term democratic stability (Prager, 1986, p. 18). At the same time, Irish political discourse has critically reflected on this localism and particularism for a long time.

Public reflection on the role of the Irish deputy has been heavily influenced by scholarly work that employed the notions of patron–client ties and patronage to interpret the localism in Irish national politics as one of several ‘“anomalies” for a western European democracy’ (Gibbon & Higgins, 1974, p. 30). In contrast to earlier observations that had pointed out the predominant role of the Irish deputy as an intermediary (Chubb, 1963), based on these concepts the Irish case was treated as one example of a transitional society among others, somewhere in the middle between tradition and modernity (Bax, 1976; Garvin, 1974; Sacks, 1976). In the same period, social scientists identified such transitional societies in other parts of the world, from Southern Italy (Weingrod, 1968) to developing countries in Africa that had just gained independence (Scott, 1969). Within the framework of research on patterns of patronage and clientelism the description of the linkage between Irish politicians and voters acquires a distinctly critical ring. It suggests a view according to which voters cannot be citizens in the true sense as long as they continue to rely on the help and favours of middlemen instead of asserting their individual rights vis-à-vis the state. Social science thus introduced analytical formulas that drew together various mundane features of Irish political life and declared them symptoms of a general deficiency of Irish democracy, compared to other Western democracies.

Later authors emphasised the important differences between brokerage and patron–client ties (Komito, 1984). Although political clientelism inevitably relies on brokerage, not all forms of brokerage are embedded in clientelistic structures. Political clientelism, as it is commonly understood, entails an exchange of favours and support, which is contingent on both sides sticking to their part of the deal (Hicken, 2011). However, in the Irish case politicians have no means to ensure that voters, having received help from them, will actually vote for them. Neither are they able to credibly claim such power. It is even common that the same person will go to several TDs and ask them for help, a behaviour which is possible as a result of the Irish electoral system, which returns between three and five deputies per district, based on a single transferable vote (Farrell, 2001, pp. 121–123; Sinnott, 2010). This system does not only lead to intra-party competition for seats, but also encourages the belief that casework for constituents can actually make the difference between gaining and losing a seat. Voters rank candidates according to preference and depending on the results of other candidates even lower-rank preferences will enter the count. But although the electoral system may encourage a focus on brokerage activities on the part of the TDs, it does not result in clientelism as such.

In any case, non-academic discussion of the TD’s role has been significantly inspired by the notion of clientelism. As a notion coming from the social sciences it depicts the relationship between TDs and voters in a specific way and distinguishes it from other possible characteristics this relationship could have. The further analysis is guided by the assumption that it is granted plausibility for a reason: it provides an idea of the relationship between actors in the context of political representation which on the one hand links Irish politics to the shape of this relationship in other countries and on the other hand permits seeing it as something distinctly Irish. Statements employing this notion can thus be expected to implicate specific models of political behaviour that are linked to the characteristics of this relationship. If a global cultural script pertaining to the behaviour of professional politicians were simply adopted, an ongoing public debate about this role would be hard to explain. The existence of such a debate therefore points to the importance of the concept of domestication of global trends (Alasuutari & Qadir, 2014a). An analysis of this debate can extend the scope of this concept by focusing not on specific policies but on politicians as actors. Understandings of their roles may be informed by globally spread models but are discussed and negotiated within a specific domestic context.

In order to systematically analyse the debate about the role of the Irish deputy, I draw on records of parliamentary debates, accessible via the website of the Irish parliament, and on articles from the Irish Independent, the most-read Irish newspaper with a claim to being a quality paper, as well as the Irish Times, which is regarded as the leading quality Irish newspaper (Brandenburg & Zalinski, 2008, p. 168). The articles were accessed using the online archive of the Irish Times and another online archive (Irish Newspaper Archive) for the Irish Independent. The choice of material and access permits the inclusion of contributions that refer to the matter only cursorily and yet reveal something about the understanding of the relationship between Irish politicians and voters. In order to find relevant items, an automated search for a number of terms denoting the issue of constituency service orientation was conducted in the respective online archives. According to Deacon (2007, pp. 18–20), newspaper online archives typically do not contain 100% of all published articles. However, his check of British newspaper online archives did not indicate any systematic bias with regard to the missing articles. Consequently, the search in online archives was deemed a practicable way to select the empirical material.

The decision about the terms to include in the search was taken in two steps. In the first step, the search focused on terms used in the academic literature in order to denote the strong constituency focus of Irish parliamentary deputies. Although today’s Irish political science regards brokerage as the most appropriate term, it turned out to be very rare in the public debate. In contrast, various deputies from all parties use the term clientelism over time in order to refer to the linkage between Irish deputies and voters. Both first appear in the early 1980s in parliamentary debates.

Using the results of the first search, other potential key terms were identified based on their presence in statements referring to either brokerage or clientelism. The distinctly negative Irish expression stroke politics turned out to be very unspecific, although it was sometimes used in connection to clientelism. Gombeen politics and gombeenism are terms that derive from the so-called gombeen men, an expression for rural moneylenders in pre-independence Ireland, who dispensed economic and political patronage to a dependent clientele (Gibbon & Higgins, 1974, pp. 31–33). On the one hand both expressions are thus directly linked to the topic of clientelism. On the other hand their contemporary use is much broader. Especially gombeenism is used to depict a wide variety of practices inside and outside of politics in a pejorative way. For the more specific meaning of clientelism there is only one common alternative term: parish pump politics. Although not synonymous with brokerage or clientelism it is frequently used to denote the localistic outlook of deputies and parliamentary proceedings that is linked to an extreme emphasis on constituency service. Parish pump politics is the only term that has been in regular use in parliamentary debates since the 1940s.

The automated search for key terms permitted a simple quantitative mapping of occurrences over time in order to get an idea of the dynamics of the debate. The qualitative analysis focuses on the period after 1980, when the term clientelism entered the non-academic debate and the professionalisation of TDs in terms of support staff took a leap (O’Halpin, 2002, p. 113). For the period from 1981 to 2012 the content of all articles in the Irish Independent and the Irish Times as well as all contributions of deputies to the parliamentary debate in one of the two houses of the Irish parliament that used one of the five terms mentioned above were coded, with the following restrictions. Due to the common nonspecific use of gombeenism it turned out not to be a suitable search term for the newspaper archives, where it delivered too many irrelevant results. The same problem occurred with brokerage due to its pervasiveness as a term related to business. In both cases, a manual search of the results that separated relevant from irrelevant items was only feasible for the parliamentary records. The analysis thus included 494 newspaper articles (including letters to the editor) and 176 speeches by members of the Lower and Upper Houses of the Irish parliament, the Oireachtas (Table 1).

The initial coding procedure followed the approach to qualitative content analysis proposed by Mayring (1983). It focused on what features are mentioned as characteristics of the addressed phenomenon, possible causes and effects that are pointed out as well as possible connections to specific policy fields or organisations. It also categorised the presentation of the matter as positive, neutral, or negative in terms of evaluation. Although not all occurrences of one of the terms come with such elaborations, between 40 and 50% of the contributions contain some kind explanation, illustration, or comment. Between 20 and 30% indicate one or several causes.

Such causal schemata (Kelley 1972) are especially relevant with regard to models of political behaviour since statements about the origins of a phenomenon imply assumptions about the role that actors may play in bringing it about. Statements linked with either a negative or positive evaluation pertain to the research question in a different way. As criticisms or justifications of a specific behaviour they can only be understood in reference to a model of appropriate behaviour. However, such references will hardly be explicitly stated. In addition to the content analysis, I therefore conducted detailed interpretations of typical examples for negative and positive statements, loosely based on the technique of objective hermeneutics (Wernet, 2009). These interpretations cannot be displayed in full in the space of an article. Consequently, the following section presents abbreviated accounts and links them to the theoretical question of global scripts of parliamentary representation and domestication.

Over the whole period, critical statements are much more frequent than positive ones. At the same time there is a remarkable continuity with regard to the causal schemata that are used to explain the prevalence of constituency service. Two causal schemata (Kelley 1972) stand out in the material: one points to the electoral system as the main cause for clientelism, the other to the high degree of centralisation that is characteristic of the Irish state (Kusche, 2016, pp. 275–280). The reasoning focuses on the electoral system as a firm constraint on the politician who wishes to win a seat in parliament and assumes that she will attempt to reach this goal by whatever means seem most appropriate given this electoral system. The Irish system of the single transferable vote, which is otherwise only used in Malta to elect the members of a lower house of parliament (Sinnott, 2010, p. 112), is made out as an ensemble of circumstances that incentivises a focus on the local constituency at the expense of policy orientation and national interests. Employing this causal schema in order to explain the predominance of brokerage in Irish politics thus implies that politicians are competent actors who adapt to constraints in their political environment.

The second causal schema that is often employed primarily concerns the demand side of brokerage, that is, the voters who request help from politicians. It points to the high degree of centralisation of the Irish state as the main reason for which people come to the conclusion that they need an intermediary (Kusche, 2016, pp. 276–278). Put in this light, voters who contact a politician with regard to an individual problem with the bureaucracy also appear as competent actors pursuing their goals in an effective way.

Compared to these causal schemata two others are considerably less frequent. By attributing the focus on brokerage to either the colonial past of the country or its peculiar political culture these schemata conceive of both politicians and voters as embedded in a culture whose implicit rules lead to the continuation of a practice that is no longer taken for granted but nevertheless cannot simply be replaced by another one.

Thus, the causal reasoning about brokerage in public debate mostly assumes a general model of actors who respond to specific constraints and incentives but sometimes also refers to the specificity of Irish actors who cannot simply shed the distinct past of their own polity.

The close interpretation of typical critical statements indicates that many of them frame the behaviour of both Irish voters and politicians as deeply problematic, even though comprehensible in the existing political setting. One of the earliest occurrences of the term clientelism in the Dáil is in a debate about the establishment of an Ombudsman office. It states the problem related to the notion of clientelism in the following way:

With regard to the relationship between TDs and voters, De Rossa names two problems. First, the TD’s role is described as that of a messenger for constituents. Although not rejected completely, the statement at least regards this activity as too dominant. Second, this activity is linked with the expectation that TDs can hand out favours to constituents and constituents should vote for them because of favours received. De Rossa links both problems with a deficient public service and with the hope that an Ombudsman office will be able to improve the situation.

Interestingly, he thus ties in with a concern for public sector reform that was common in many countries in the 1980s (Hood, 1991). But against the global trend towards more business-like approaches to public service (Haque, 2001), De Rossa focuses on the question of redress and thus on the realisation of citizens’ rights and entitlements. In this regard, the use of the term clientelism highlights the fact that the role of the TD as a broker depends on the perception that such an intervention is necessary in order to achieve a satisfactory result when dealing with the public bureaucracy. Thus, a deficient public service does not just equal a specific set of constraints for ordinary people who have to deal with it. Rather, it alters the understanding of how deputies act in relation to voters and how voters decide for whom to vote.

This perception is consequential when it comes to general notions of democratic politics and what elections are all about. By calling the brokerage activities in which TDs engage clientelism, these activities are denounced as essentially being an exchange of favours against votes. Such an exchange, taken seriously as the pattern underlying electoral choice, is not readily reconciled with common notions of democracy. These notions stress the element of free will, that is, individual choice, as part of the essence of democratic elections (e.g. UN Resolution 46/137; ACE, 2013, pp. 16–20). Such a choice would be hampered if the vote was something needed to repay the favours granted by certain politicians. Moreover, a vote based on this logic questions the ability of voters to act as ‘agents of the greater national collectivity’ (Meyer & Jepperson, 2000, p. 107). Instead they remain entangled in their own locality and their immediate concerns. At the same time, the notion of clientelism implies that the recipient of a benefit does not encounter the state as a citizen with specific rights and obligations but as a helpless and ignorant person in need of some connection to the small circle of people that is able to maintain direct relations with this state in order to draw benefits from it.

My argument here is not that this is an adequate description of the situation in the Ireland of the 1980s or today. Elections are not only about repaying favours and rewarding a strong constituency service and voters are not helpless, since they could in principle address the administration instead. The notion that there is an exchange of votes against favours at the heart of Irish politics does not so much represent a reality of clientelistic politics in Ireland as throw into sharp relief some problems associated with the heavy constituency focus of TDs. Yet the way in which these problems are depicted is relevant since it directly concerns the question of appropriate political behaviour. Irish voters are suspected to vote for the wrong reason, namely out of gratitude for help they received, which is not regarded as an appropriate motive.

A TD from the small Progressive Democrats party notes the same problem almost sarcastically a few years later:

The conspicuous credit-claiming (Mayhew, 1974, pp. 52–57) described in this scene is rigorously rejected by the critical TD. He opposes the behaviour of the respective government minister (who is also a TD, as is common in Ireland, and thus needs to worry about the next election like every other deputy) and his constituents, because he sees it at odds with the idea of citizenship. O’Malley does not present this idea in abstract terms, but directly relates it to the Irish Constitution, the fight for independence, and the pre-independence Ireland of the nineteenth century. He thus frames the problem in distinctly domestic terms. At the same time, the incongruence between the political behaviour criticised here and the notion of citizenship stems from a denial of agency that is implied by the manner in which the allocation of resources to a constituency is presented. The difference between acting as a nineteenth-century peasant and acting as a citizen is the difference between two models of appropriate behaviour. The first is based on an awareness of status and cultural rules that expect deference from people with low status as a prerequisite to achieving anything in relation to people with power. The second is the model of an actor who is the holder of individual rights and entitlements and does not need intermediaries to pursue her goals.

The brokerage role of TDs is further complicated by the fact that politicians actually seem to have less and less to offer. Already in the early 1960s, the amount of actual influence was questionable. Chubb (1963) concluded that some of it was purely imaginary, with TDs carefully documenting their contacts with the respective government department or agency in order to prove their involvement to constituents, but without actually believing that their intervention would make any difference for the decision. Today critics doubt any substantial effect of brokerage. They simply regard it as a waste of time and resources on the part of the TD as well as a deception of the voter who continues to be under the impression that the TD will make a difference:

This statement no longer depicts an exchange of actual favours against votes as the most problematic aspect of the TD’s role. Instead it is the deception of voters who are kept under the false impression that the service of the TD can actually make a difference regarding the outcome of an administrative decision. At the same time, the behaviour of the TD is also seen as inappropriate considering their job as legislators, that is, as decision-makers on policy. According to this account, both voters and TDs are prevented from acting in appropriate ways. Voters are deceived by the pretence that there are means to further their goals where there actually are not any. TDs, on the other hand, are kept from their actual business as members of parliament due to the fear of losing an election, in which constituency service and brokerage are seen as decisive.

Not only are TDs prevented from what they should mainly be doing, that is their legislative and committee work. Some observations even amount to stating that they do things they do not actually wish to do, yet cannot help doing, considering the expectations of their voters. Such a view is expressed in the following commentary on the case of a state minister from the Green Party, who had to resign after it was made public that he had contacted the police in favour of a constituent who had been involved in a fight:

Strong convictions regarding policy are contrasted here with the necessities of securing a political career, none of which has to do anything with policy. The Green politician is portrayed as having been drawn against his will into the banal and routine world of constituency service and brokerage. Immersed in this world, he finally overlooks the one case in which he should better have not got involved and ruins his career after all in the end.

This motif of constituency service as a routine activity that is imposed on politicians against their own inclinations is especially common in connection with recurring scandals that involve individual TDs who have contacted the Department of Justice or other judiciary agencies in the name of a constituent. Such contacts tend to become scandals when they happen to concern high-profile cases. By framing the problem as one of clientelism, commentators partially negate the agency of the respective TD and point to forces beyond their control, namely the established expectations with regard to brokerage:

In sum, the last 30 years have seen established brokerage practices of Irish deputies questioned on grounds that eventually concern the scope of action of both deputies and voters. The model against which their perceived behaviour is gauged is not stated explicitly. But the interpretation of explanations and comments given reveals that the Irish voters are described as overly dependent on the knowledge, effort, and good will of others in order to achieve something when dealing with the state. Even worse, they are also depicted as being consciously left in the dark about the opportunities and constraints of their actions. This picture implies that the model of appropriate political behaviour behind such critical reflection is one of knowledgeable, autonomous agents able to pursue their goals in a purposeful manner. Irish voters are found lacking in this regard according to the critical statements. The scope of action of the deputies also appears deficient. The way they fulfil their role as TDs is portrayed as something beyond their control. Neither can they help focusing on constituency service and brokerage nor can they avoid the pitfalls of these activities, namely being approached by constituents in matters in which they should not get involved due to rules about the separation of powers or other formal regulations.

The framing of brokerage as clientelism has by no means led to the abandonment of the former. One reason for its persistence can of course be seen in the logic of the critical arguments themselves. If it is beyond the control of individual actors to engage in brokerage activities, this can be changed only with difficulty. But there are also emphatic defences of brokerage. The latter affirm the appropriateness of both politicians’ and voters’ behaviour by declaring the focus on brokerage an expression of genuine democracy. These defenders also refer to clientelism, but they thereby do nothing more than acknowledge the fact that the expression has become common parlance in the Irish political debate.

In contrast to those who introduced the term clientelism into the debate, the defenders of brokerage do not at all agree with its negative connotations. Instead they stress the benefits of a close link with constituents and the truly democratic character of representation. They thereby posit the deputy that engages in brokerage activities as an active promoter of democracy. Another statement stresses the disinterestedness of advocacy: Suggestions to understand the brokerage role of Irish TDs (and senators) as advocacy or as an ombudsman role are thus moved up against the notion of clientelism. They do not deny the superior knowledge of deputies in administrative matters but refuse to see it as a problem when this knowledge is used in the interest of a constituent. It is interpreted as the essence of representation instead.

With regard to the professionalisation of politicians the Irish case exemplifies a twofold domestication of global models. First, public debate has framed the contested nature of the deputy’s role in politics as a clearly domestic topic. The political debate revolves around the Irish deputy and the Irish voters and discusses their relation as specifically Irish. Yet it crystallises around a term that was imported from social science and that both implicitly and explicitly places Irish democracy within a horizon of other cases from Western Europe, Southern Europe, and former colonies all over the world. The comparisons thus triggered are unfavourable when the negative connotations of the term clientelism are taken seriously. They by no means follow the specifications of social scientists, who no longer regard it as an appropriate concept for the Irish case. Instead the concept is used – and thereby domesticated – in order to reflect on the role of Irish deputies and a tension between legislative tasks related to specific policies at the national level and a representation oriented to the local level of the constituency.

Second, the idea that policy expertise has become more and more important and has to be tackled with the help of specialised support staff and experts is familiar in countries all over the world. The belated and rather reluctant establishment of a committee system and professional support within the Dáil indicates that this model of parliamentary work was not simply adopted in the Irish context. But neither was it simply refused. The debate about the brokerage activities of Irish deputies instead articulates different models for the role of parliamentary deputy and at the same time implicitly promotes a specific model of appropriate political behaviour in general. The model that the analysed critical statements put forward conforms to globally spread notions of political behaviour in democratic settings. It rejects gratitude and the repayment of favours as motives for vote choice and decries attempts to invoke such motives. It also rejects limits to the scope of action that brokerage activities entail and expects citizens to act based on rights and entitlements as well as expecting politicians to focus on policy and legislation. This model is countered, although infrequently, by suggestions of another model of parliamentary representation, which posits advocacy and an ombudsman role as the essence of representation.

Against this background, the political debate about the role of the Irish deputy can be interpreted as an ongoing process of domestication. It seeks reconciliation between a global model of appropriate political behaviour and professional democratic representation, and a distinctly domestic tradition of understanding representation as concerned with the problems of individual constituents and the needs of the local constituency in general. The debate about the present and the future of Irish democracy is thus on the one hand informed and rationalised by the global availability of specific concepts and models and on the other hand cast as a distinctly national issue.

I would like to thank the members of the Political Sociology Section at the Department of Political Science at Aarhus University for the very helpful feedback that I received on a previous version of the article. I also thank two anonymous reviewers and two editors for valuable comments and suggestions.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.