Social background and intra-party attitudes in Ireland

Abstract

This thesis examines the extent to which the distribution of politicians’ social background characteristics is associated with attitude variation within political parties. It addresses the research question with quantitative and qualitative methods by examining the substantive attitudes of elite members to political issues and their multi-dimensional interpretations of those issues. To maximise the potential for a study of intra-party attitudes this thesis is a case study of Irish political parties. The Irish party system has been a puzzling case in political science for decades due to ‘left’ and ‘right’ never being a basis for inter-party competition, as is commonly found elsewhere. In Ireland, there is typically more attitude variation within parties than between them. However, the Irish political elite confonn to international trends in that they are not demographically representative of the Irish population.