Fergus Finlay: Democracy risks being strangled by the red tape of proceduralism

We must learn how to implement better to avoid going down the road that Trump and Johnson put their countries on

Frustration at a lack of progress on quality-of-life issues helped propel Boris Johnson into high office in the UK. We in Ireland must ask if such frustration will provide a similar win for populism here. File picture

Proceduralism is undermining democracy. It’s one of the things that drives people into the hands of populists. They vote for people who can get things done, until eventually their votes disappear altogether, and the populists become dictators.

That’s a big bold claim. And ‘proceduralism’ is a brand new word (to me anyway). But it’s a word that suddenly made a lot of things clearer to me.