The legislative agenda in Ireland, 1922–2021

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article analyses the legislative agenda in Ireland since 1922 using new data coded within the Comparative Agendas Project framework. The data, generated using the codebook of the Irish Policy Agendas Project (http://irishpolicyagendas.eu/), show clear evidence of long-term changes in the complexity, issue focus, and Europeanisation of the legislative agenda in Ireland. The study uses the Irish case to test some existing arguments concerning the influence on the policy agenda of governments’ political capacity and pressures generated by policy problems. Its findings suggest that government capacity influences the agenda, but not in the way theorised: greater capacity leads, on average, to higher stability; more specifically, this effect is evident in the absence of government turnover, as governments maintain a focus on ‘their own’ issues as they continue in office. There is no evidence that the pressure to solve policy problems, in the form of weak or negative economic growth, influences the stability of the legislative agenda. The article contributes to the study of agenda stability, the analysis of Irish politics and public policy, and it provides a basis for coding comparable data across other policy agendas in Ireland.