The 'stifling' of new climate politics in Ireland

Fitzgerald, LM, Tobin, P, Burns, C and Eckersley, P ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9048-8529, 2021. The 'stifling' of new climate politics in Ireland. Politics and Governance, 9 (2), pp. 41-50. ISSN 2183–2463

Preview

Text 1427821_email_Eckersley.pdf - Published version Download (534kB) | Preview

Abstract

In 2019, Ireland declared a 'Climate Emergency', receiving plaudits from across the political spectrum for doing so. Some argued the country was experiencing an era of 'new climate politics': in 2017 it had established the first Citizens’ Assembly on Climate, and in 2019 its Parliament debated a Climate Emergency Measures Bill, which was ground-breaking in its proposal to ban offshore oil and gas exploration. Yet, despite majority support for this Bill in Parliament, the minority Government blocked the legislation by refusing to grant a 'Money Message', a potential veto activated following indication by an independent actor that a Bill would require the appropriation of public money. We introduce the concept of 'policy stifling' to capture how the Money Message was used to block the Climate Emergency Measures Bill. We conduct detailed process-tracing analysis, building on elite semi-structured interviews with policy makers and campaigners involved in the process. We argue that whilst the Government’s stifling undermined the new era of elite climate politics, it simultaneously boosted an emerging grassroots climate politics movement with the potential for effecting more radical change in the longer term.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Politics and Governance
Creators:	Fitzgerald, L.M., Tobin, P., Burns, C. and Eckersley, P.
Publisher:	Cogitatio Press
Date:	28 April 2021
Volume:	9
Number:	2
ISSN:	2183–2463
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.17645/pag.v9i2.3797 DOI 1427821 Other
Rights:	© 2021 by the authors; licensee Cogitatio (Lisbon, Portugal). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY).
Divisions:	Schools > Nottingham Business School
Record created by:	Linda Sullivan
Date Added:	30 Mar 2021 08:43
Last Modified:	31 May 2021 15:03
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/42640

Actions (login required)

Edit View

Statistics

Views

Downloads