Fianna Fáil’s cross-class ideological strategy since 2011: the limits of ‘Progressive Republicanism’ and the very end of one-party hegemony

Abstract

This article analyses and evaluates Fianna Fáil’s ‘progressive republican’ cross-class ideological strategy between 2011 and 2024 after the economic crisis and electoral collapse in 2011. Drawing on Antonio Gramsci’s hegemony, it demonstrates how the party reconstructed strategically ‘national-popular’ identity (i.e. republicanism) and ‘common sense’ values (i.e. ‘fairness’) to attempt to rebuild ideologically a cross-class alliance–the historic foundation of its hegemony. Party leader speeches, party literature and policy documents are analysed to show how its ‘progressive republican’ collective identity and core values framed a new programme. It argues that the strategy yielded a partial recovery but ultimately failed at the implementation stage as it was unable and unwilling to transform substantially the structural effects of Fianna Fáil’s previous neoliberal policies. The latter created deep class contradictions and inequalities in housing and health provision for low- and median-income workers. This meant the limited concessions actually implemented post-2020 were ineffective in winning their consent. I thus conclude that the era of Fianna Fáil one-party hegemony is finally over. The article also defends class and ideological analysis in the light of this application maintaining against existing scholarship that it can provide insights into Fianna Fáil and wider Irish party politics.