The Irish Constitutional Tradition: Responsible Government and Modern Ireland, 1792–1992 by Alan J. Ward (review)

ness or ignorance serve as explanations? Mutual economic beneWt necessitated a relationship between mill owners and Irish. This book reveals diVerent dimensions of this relationship while being a tolerably good true life murder story. —William M. Ferraro The Irish Constitutional Tradition: Responsible Government and Modern Ireland , 1792–1992, by Alan J. Ward, p. 412, Washington, DC: The Catholic University Press of America, 1994, $19.95 paper. The workings of governments, and the complexities of the constitutions that created them, are often lost sight of by traditional political historians. Certainly much of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Irish political history is focused on the problem of creating an acceptable form of self-government in Ireland, but it is the political struggle and not the details of the speciWc form of government that has received the greatest attention. Alan J. Ward has attempted to correct that imbalance in The Irish Constitutional Tradition: Responsible Government and Modern Ireland, 1782–1992. Ward begins by looking at the “Constitution of 1782” and the relations between the Irish and British parliaments during the years between 1782 and the Act of Union. Although the legislative constraints had been removed from the Irish parliment, the Irish executive, the government, was still appointed by the Lord Lieutenant and was responsible to him. This meant that despite legislative “independence ,” the two kingdoms were by no means equal. From the perspective of the mid-eighteenth century there was nothing particularly remarkable about either this form of government or this kind of relationship. However, the British constitution was itself in the process of dramatic evolution. From the point of view of the mid-nineteenth century or of our own time, the constitution of 1782 appears fundamentally Xawed because the government, the executive, was not responsible to the parliament. The American constitution, also dating from the 1780s, deliberately forbade the possible fusion of the executive and the legislature, and thereby the prospect of the executive being “responsible” to the legislature, by enshrining the principle of the separation of powers in the text of the document. At the heart of Ward’s book is the concept of responsible government—i.e., an executive responsible to a majority in the legislature which Ward calls a “Westminster” model or parliamentary style government—and the struggle to establish that form of constitution in a way that would satisfy all elements of the Irish community. The subsequent discussion of both the repeal movement and the several Home Rule movements is fascinating. Ward is careful to call attention to the ambiguities of repeal and to O’Connell’s expectations for an Irish government; he notes, too, that the granting of responsible government to Canada in the 1840s stimulated the belief that this structure could be extended in some form to Ireland as well. Ward BOOK REVIEWS 189 shows that Parnell’s public position was similarly ambiguous, but the introduction of Home Rule legislation did, at least, present concrete constitutional models that could be tested against the criteria of Ward’s “eight characteristics of responsible government.” Thus, he eVectively raises the question, How well would Home Rule have worked? One of the most interesting sections of the book is the discussion of the alternatives to home rule: Chamberlain’s Control Board, federalism within the United Kingdom, “Home Rule All Round,” and partition. The events following the First World War led to the implementation of working constitutions in Ireland. Ward turns Wrst to the Northern Ireland government arising out of the Government of Ireland Act of 1920. Ward explains the structure of the government created and analyzes it against his deWnition of responsible government . His conclusion is that in the social and political conditions of the time the electorate could not support a two-party system with a normal periodic change in the parties holding a majority in the legislature. Therefore, the Westminster model of government could not satisfy all elements of Northern Ireland’s population and produce social stability. The collapse came in the early 1970s, and Ward deftly traces the alternative forms of government that followed—power sharing, direct rule, rolling devolution, etc., between 1972 and 1992. Ward’s discussion of the constitutional developments in southern Ireland after the First...