Candidate selection in Ireland: New parties and candidate diversity

The economic crisis in Ireland caused deep political turbulence and contributed to the formation of new parties and groups at elections in 2011 and 2016. This chapter will consider how political recruitment was managed by these new political parties. Ireland is an interesting case as all of the old parties in the system had embraced aspects of internal party democracy in the early years of the 2000s, some even before. New parties which formed during the crisis faced an expectation that members would have roles in candidate selection. This chapter seeks to understand how new parties behave when they emerge in a political system that is already characterised by reasonable levels of internal party democracy. It will demonstrate that while the new parties sought to emulate the internal party democracy of older parties, few were able to do so. But the new parties did bring important diversity to the system.