Comparing Nationalist Populism of Fianna Fail and the Union Nationale

• In Event: Poster Session: International Collaboration & Canadian Politics
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Canadian Politics

Abstract

Natural governing parties generate significant momentum for decades-long electoral dominance by successfully pitching themselves as the “instrument necessary for building a democratic national community” (Carty 2015: 59). The proposed paper aims to assess how and why Ireland’s Fianna Fail achieved natural governing party status whereas the Union Nationale of Quebec, despite a similar nationalist populist ideology could not sustain its political momentum beyond the reign of its founding leader. The parallels between Eamon de Valera’s Fianna Fail (FF) party and Maurice Duplessis’ Union Nationale (UN) in Quebec are notable. FF and the UN dominated political life in their respective spheres through effective nationalist populist appeals and firm party leadership. Both parties came to prominence in the early to mid 1930s and were singularly led by their charismatic founders until 1959. Whereas the UN struggled to define itself following the death of Duplessis in office in 1959 (notwithstanding the energy and vigor of Daniel Johnson Snr’s government from 1966-70), FF continued to dominate Irish politics in the process becoming “Europe’s greatest electoral machine" (Carty 2022). In the proposed paper, I argue that the brand of nationalist populism developed by FF under de Valera successfully shut down opposing interpretations of the nationalist question and embedded a “republican ethos” (Girvin 2010: 128) that dictated the contours of Irish political life for subsequent decades. The UN, on the other hand, was outflanked on the national question by both the Liberal Party of Quebec and later the Parti Quebecois. The UN brand of nationalist populism - what Duplessis called “autonomism” - would largely fall out of favour in mainstream Quebec electoral politics until revived recently by Francois Legault and the Coalition Avenir Québec. This paper seeks to differentiate the ideological composition of the FF and UN populist appeal on matters of autonomy/sovereignty in order to assess how one attained natural governing party status and the other faded into obscurity.

Author

• Donal Gill, Concordia University