Ideology and policy issues play a relatively minor role in elections in Ireland. Recently, it seems policy discourse has declined further while there is a marked increase in the emphasis on image. This presents a challenge in explaining how voters make their decisions. Research on alphabetical and ordinal voting has already established an element of chance to voting behaviour. At the same time, Banducci, Karp, Rallings and Thrasher (2008) have identified that voters include the attractiveness of candidates as a factor in their decision-making. In an attempt to facilitate greater voting participation in Ireland, photographs of candidates have been placed on the ballot paper for local, national and European elections. This policy change was implemented to address a perceived knowledge deficit and to provide assistance for those with literacy difficulties. Additionally, many candidates have similar names and this was thought to render the choice on the ballot paper less clear. The addition of photographs was designed to improve participation and encourage engagement. Social psychology research has long demonstrated that people are willing to make significant judgements about a person when shown a photograph. The advent of ballot paper photographs allows candidates to be evaluated on the basis of their appearance. This research considers how this is occurring. Whilst photographs were introduced to improve political knowledge, this paper suggests that they may be used in an altogether different way. Ironically, providing additional knowledge to encourage greater participation and engagement, may have introduced a new level of superficiality into the voter decision-making process. The paper will present data from an experimental study on ballot paper design taken at the 2009 elections in the Republic of Ireland. Using ballot paper photographs from a Dublin local electoral area, replica ballot papers were developed and tested in different parts of the country. The paper will demonstrate that voters are willing to use photographs in their decision making process. It will develop a hierarchy of cues employed by voters at low information elections.

It is widely believed and often argued that governments manipulate the economy to gain favour with the electorate, generating political business cycles. Political budget cycles posit that governments will manipulate budgetary policy, taxes and public spending, to enhance their chances of re-election. This thesis seeks to identify and explain the incidence of political budget cycles in 15 European countries over the period 1970-2000. It will employ graphical, time-series and panel data analysis to identify a political budget cycle in tax rates. It argues that the political significance of tax rates make them an ideal instrument for manipulation. The primary focus of the work is changes in income tax rates but a number of other taxes are also included. A secondary aspect of the research traces changes in wealth, capital and property tax rates over the electoral cycle. It is argued that governments could use the tax system to target certain types of voters. These taxes were selected as they can reasonably be expected to apply to higher socio-economic groups. In seeking to explain the incidence of political budget cycles, a framework of political and economic variables was constructed. These factors are identified as variables that could impact upon the potential for political budget cycles. A predictive model is developed which categorises countries according to their political and economic environment. The results of the statistical analysis are then interpreted in the context of the analytical framework and the country classifications.

Debate currently rages in the economic voting literature over whether national economic perceptions generally have an important impact on the vote choice in democracies. Recently, a revisionist view has arisen, contending that this link, regularly observed in election surveys, is mostly spurious. According to the argument, partisanship distorts economic perception, thereby substantially exaggerating the real vote connection. However, utilizing election panel studies a clear link has found that economics matters. These studies have focussed on plurality electoral systems where the attribution of blame and reward is more straightforward. We extend the test to proportional systems with panel studies for Ireland and Germany. During the Celtic Tiger period in Ireland (2002 and 2007 elections) we find that partisanship trumps the economy while in Germany for the period 2002-2009 a more complex picture emerges.