I have always been fascinated by the way in which significant shifts within political systems occasionally take place without anyone noticing them at the time. Only many years later do people belatedly realise that the political ground had long ago shifted underneath their feet.
I believe that one such revolution occurred in our State about 20 years ago, the significance of which has yet to be generally realised. This is the effective disappearance in Ireland since the 1980s of the system of alternating governments.
Throughout Europe that system ensured that for almost two centuries governments were kept on their toes because they knew that they were liable to be turned out by the electorate from time to time and replaced by opposition parties. This alternating government system also helped opposition parties to retain their vitality because they have been buoyed up with the hope of getting into office from time to time.
In Ireland, this system worked well enough for the half-century after our first post-revolutionary government had created the conditions needed for a stable political system. During that period, because Fianna Fáil with average support of just under 47 per cent of the first preference vote was wedded to the idea of providing single party government, the opposition parties were forced to come together - on five occasions successfully - to offer an alternative.
However, during the quarter of a century since 1982, Fianna Fáil's average vote has dropped back to an average of barely 42 cent - despite which Fianna Fáil has been returned to office after every one of the six elections of the past 20 years. (It lost power only once during this period - during the lifetime of a government that it formed with Labour in 1992).
What is the explanation for this paradox: a lower vote enabling Fianna Fáil, for the first time in its history, to secure election to office consistently over a 20-year period? The answer is that at the end of the 1980s Fianna Fáil was forced by vote drop to abandon its "core" commitment to single party government, and this had the unexpected effect of returning it to office repeatedly, sharing power on each occasion with one or more of three different Opposition parties. To facilitate this process Fianna Fáil has been more than willing to adjust its policy stances quite radically so as to meet the pre-occupations of its very different partners.
I suspect that many people have yet to understand just how fundamentally this development has changed the working of our democratic system, suspending, for the time being at least, the traditional process of parties alternating in government. This new and original version of parliamentary democracy has had a profound impact on the attitudes of Opposition parties.
First of all, smaller parties like the Greens and the apparently now defunct Progressive Democrats have been understandably tempted to secure implementation of some of their niche policies by accepting Fianna Fáil offers of a junior government role.
Fine Gael is the only party which is too large to be a potential partner of Fianna Fáil in government. After its 2002 debacle it wisely, and successfully, concentrated on improving its organisation. But a concern to safeguard its diminished rural support base also discouraged it from continuing with its earlier commitment to social policies. Apart from the intrinsic merit of such policies in a country hugely marked by inequality, that commitment had in the past eased its relationship with Labour - without which, after all, Fine Gael could not hope to return to office.
As it happened, in the recent election, this Fine Gael policy drift was offset by Pat Rabbitte's unhappiness with Fianna Fáil's ethical record, combined with his democratic concern to revive the alternating government system that would prevent Fianna Fáil remaining permanently in office, The resultant alliance came very close to success.
However there is at least a possibility that its eventual failure might have the perverse effect of consolidating the new political system that has developed since the late 1980s, involving as it does one party remaining continuously in power, with the support of one or more different smaller parties.
It is thus to Labour that this new political system has posed the most difficult choices.
On the one hand there are minority elements on the left of that party whose concern with ideological purity rather than with securing a role in government has always led them to oppose coalition government.
Next, there are those in the party who in present conditions believe that their best chance of securing progress in the neglected area of social justice lies in joining Fianna Fáil in government - especially in view of that party's flexibility on policy issues.
And, finally, there are those in Labour who, as was the case with Pat Rabbitte, have been alienated by the involvement of some leading Fianna Fáil people in dubious financial activities, and who in any event see Ireland's future as being best served by a return to the traditional democratic system of alternating governments - by attempting to replace Fianna Fáil with a sixth Labour/Fine Gael government.
However, as Labour moves to choose a new leader, this kind of political choice is not the most immediate issue facing it. Its more urgent need is clearly a successful re-organisation and above all rejuvenation of the party, following the lead recently given by Fine Gael. It seems likely that in making its leadership choice it will be this urgent concern, rather than the political options it will face at and after the next election, that will loom largest in the minds of Labour's 4,000 voting members - if in fact there is a contest for the leadership.
It remains an open question whether our State will eventually succeed in returning to the standard European system of alternating governments, or will indefinitely continue to be governed by Fianna Fáil and an ever-changing cast of smaller parties.
When combined with the effective transfer of most long-term policy-making to the Social Partnership, which is guided by the Government through the work of the National Economic and Social Council, this new non-alternating government system has both deprived the electorate of its former power at election time to decide the shape of the next government and has, at the same time, further emasculated the democratic role of the Oireachtas.
The two elected chambers of the Oireachtas play no role in policy matters, but are now effectively limited to a role in legislative review, and even this is sometimes truncated by the much-abused use of the parliamentary guillotine. This is not the kind of democratic system that was intended by those founded our State or their successors who drafted the 1937 Constitution.