Abstract
Ireland was once qualified ‘a periphery dominated centre' (Garvin, 1981), or put differently, a political system in which the government is monopolized by local interests rather than national ones. For example, Irish Teachta De'las (TDs) spend most of their time protecting the interests of their constituency and constituents helping them with their welfare and administrative problems. This phenomenon has been described in the corresponding literature that has flourished in the second half of the 20th century as “clientelism” or, more accurately in the Irish case, as “brokerage”. How can this be explained? Norris (1997) identified the problem of the explanation of TDs' important constituency service as a real “puzzle” while other tried to identify the “push factors” that increased constituency effort by politicians and “pull factors” that decreased it (Heitshusen, Young, and Wood, 2005).
More precisely, the factor we propose to examine here refers to the relationship between TDs' constituency work and the weakness of the Irish Parliament. The latter is sometimes considered as a consequence and sometimes a cause of Irish brokerage. On one hand “there are some who believe that constituency work causes TDs to become distracted from their role as legislators, which is considered their real job” and so weaken the Dáil (O'Leary, 2011:343). On the other hand, Gallagher and Komito (2010:247) argue that “some TDs […] come to prioritize national policies, while others, who find their initial national-level goals to be unachievable to acquire a stronger local focus over time”.
