*** PSAI PRESS ****

Announcing the publication of

Days of Blue Loyalty:

the politics of membership of Fine Gael

(see the cover)

ISBN 0-9519748-6-6 Price 16.00 euro

Professor Michael Gallagher and Professor Michael Marsh

Days of Blue Loyalty is the first book ever written about the members of an Irish political party. It contains a wealth of information on hitherto unknown aspects of Irish political life. The book is a study of the members of the Fine Gael party, based on a large-scale survey. A 22-page questionnaire was mailed to a representative sample of the membership in every constituency in the country, and over 1,700 completed questionnaires were received. Days of Blue Loyalty analyses members' responses to this survey. Comparable surveys have been conducted in other countries, and information on these can be found at Institute for the Study of Political Parties at the University of Sheffield, England,).

List of Contents: The questionnaire contained an extensive range of questions about the backgrounds, activity levels and political views of Fine Gael members. Among the issues covered in Days of Blue Loyalty are: - with which parties would members most like their party to enter coalition after the next election? -is the Fine Gael organisation demoralised or is the party thriving at grass-roots level? - do members believe that their party should introduce gender quotas to increase the number of women among its candidates and TDs? - are members in favour of dropping Irish neutrality and of deeper European integration? - do members want their party to take a more nationalist line on Northern Ireland? - who do members rate as the best Taoiseach of the past eighty years? - what do members regard as the main difference between their party and Fianna Fáil? - what policy proposal gets the vehement opposition of 74 per cent of Fine Gael members?

To purchase this book, contact PSAI Press

The authors both teach in the Political Science department at Trinity College Dublin. They have written extensively on various aspects of Irish and European politics and are frequent contributors to the media.