ELECTION 2011: STEPHEN COLLINSreviews How Ireland Voted 2011Edited by Michael Gallagher and Michael Marsh Palgrave Macmillan, 326pp. £65

HOW CAN WE have government by the people when the actions of government in a small country like ours is so circumscribed by outside institutions such as the European Union and the European Central Bank, not to mention the international bond markets?

This question is posed by the late Peter Mair in this analysis of this year’s general election by some of the country’s leading academics.

Mair reflects on the fact that every modern democracy is faced by the need to balance what the parties – or their voters – might like to happen with the real room for manoeuvre available to government to meet the demands of outside institutions and forces. “For Ireland, which is a relatively small and highly open economy, and which is fully embedded within both the 27-member EU and the 17-member euro zone, these external constraints are especially severe,” he writes.

“In other words in Ireland, most obviously, but also in other economically troubled polities, it is becoming more and more difficult to reconcile the preferences of the citizens with the strictures of external actors, particularly when the range of policy choices that are in practice available to governments grows ever narrower.”

Mair suggests that these developments have created a real problem for the legitimacy of modern democratic party systems. “On the one hand there are the voter preferences to which the parties are expected to respond and which they must also seek to represent. On the other hand there are various international and supranational actors that expect and demand that certain policies are pursued by domestic authorities.”

National governments composed of political parties are caught between these two sets of pressures, leading to a situation in which it is suggested that voters can change governments far more easily than they can change policies. “In present circumstances, in short, democracy in Ireland is also becoming a democracy without choices, one in which elections might continue to be full of drama, sound and fury, but in which the outcome might signify little,” concludes Mair.

It is a thought-provoking take on the election outcome that has become all the more relevant in the nine months since the Fine Gael-Labour Party coalition has taken office. It is arguable that the political parties themselves have brought about this situation. One set of parties pursued policies that led to the spectacular economic collapse while the other set misled voters into believing that it could all be set right by a change of government.

We are now left in a position that some present as a choice: save our sovereignty or save the euro? Of course the choice is not that simple. The pooling of sovereignty in the EU has in fact given us far greater freedom and prosperity than the pure sovereignty of earlier decades that left us poor and isolated – but there are serious questions now about how much further that pooling should go, and what the consequences are likely to be if we try to stop the process.

One way or another these are issues that will be debated in 2012 as the euro crisis works towards its endgame and our politicians and people are faced with stark choices.

The subtitle of this book is The Full Story of Ireland's Earthquake Election. It refers to the scale of the political change that happened last February rather than the potentially far bigger economic earthquakes that could happen in the months ahead.

The 13 chapters in the book look at the election from a number of angles and provide a comprehensive account of the campaign itself, the most dramatic election outcome in the history of the State and the aftermath that led to the formation of the Government. It is the seventh in a series that dates back to 1987 and a valuable addition to the literature on Irish elections.

One quibble is the extraordinarily high cover price of the hardback edition – although a paperback edition costs a more reasonable £22.95.

Stephen Collins is political editor of The Irish Times