Politics, Ireland and the Eurovision Song Contest
Dr. Adrian Kavanagh,
Department of Geography/NIRSA and NCG research associate, NUI Maynooth
This paper proposes to study the recent participation of Ireland in the Eurovision Song Contest, with a specific focus on Ireland's declining fortunes in the 2000s, the cause of which has often been put down to political voting. Studying voting statistics from past contests and making reference to qualitative research carried out in relation to the contest (Reidy, 2009), the paper will analyse these trends and determine the degree to which the introduction of a televoting voting system now offers "new participants" from the Former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe an unfair advantage in relation to the 'old' Western European participants, including Ireland. The paper will also study other "politically interesting" dimensions of this contest.
In the mid 1990s the Irish were the undoubted kingpins of the Eurovision Song Contest. Starting in 1992, Ireland had enjoyed an unprecedented run of success in the contest. Between 1992 and 1996 Ireland would win the contest on four occasions (including a three in a row between 1992 and 1995); even in the year (1995) Ireland did not win the contest the winning act from Norway was to feature an Irish performer (Fionnuala Sherry) in a leading role. The winning run came to an end in 1997, but even in that year the Irish representative, Marc Roberts, would finish comfortably in second place. It seemed then as if it would be just a question of when, not if, Eurovision would be returning to Ireland.
Since 1997 however, Ireland’s Eurovision fortuneshave fallen decidedly into decline.
· While Ireland, between 1975 and 1997, had earned an average of 130 points per contest (averagedout on basis of what scores would be with 25 countries taking part/voting in eachcontest – maximum possible tally would be 288 points), with this average increasing to 169 points during Ireland’s glory days of the mid 1990s, Ireland’s average point tally has fallen to just 39 points per contest over the contests held during the1998-2010 period.
· Between 1992 and 1997, Irish entries wereawarded douze points (maximum number of points awarded by different participating countries) on 26 occasions, getting the “12″ from 3 different countries in 1992 (Linda Martin), 7 in 1993 (Niamh Kavanagh!), 8 in 1994 (Paul Harrington and Charlie McGettigan), 0 in 1995 (Eddie Friel), 7 in 1996 (Eimear Quinn) and 1 in 1997 (Marc Roberts). Sincethe late 1990s, however, Irish entrieshave only been awarded the coveted douze points on three different occasions, getting a “12″ from Lithuania in 1999 and from Switzerland in the 2010 semi final, and also getting “12″s from our nearest neighbour, the UK, in 2003 (Mickey Joe Harte) and the 2005 semi-final (the McCauls).
This paper will assess the reasons behind Ireland’s declining Eurovision fortunes and tease out the degree to which “political voting” may have had a role to play in this. But the political dimensions of the Eurovision Song Contest relate not only to voting patterns, as will be considered later when the relationship between the Dustin debacle of the 2008 contest and the failure of the first referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, which followed hot on the heels of the high profile Eurovision failure. Outside of Ireland, even though the contest professes itself to be apolitical and the organisers have intervene to prevent it becoming politicised, the political alliances and divisions that mark Europe often become too readily evident with the contest. Political and cultural allies (for example, Russia and Armenia, Cyprus and Greece) tend to consistently award each other high votes at Eurovision, while countries that are at war, or have recently been at war, tend not to vote for each other even if they are neighbours (Cyprus and Turkey, Russia and Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan) although this interestingly does not seem to apply in the case of the Former Yugoslav states. There are a series of incidents where politics has directly impinged on the contest; one of the earliest probably being the “Francogate” controversy surrounding the 1968 contest which allegedly cost Cliff Richard victory. In 2003 political opposition within Europe to the UK’s involvement in the Iraq conflict was argued to be the reason why the UK entry attained the dreaded nils points score in the Eurovision final in Riga. The Orange Revolution in the Ukraine in 2004 was to strongly influence hosting of the 2005 Eurovision by that country, as well as the song represented to select the Ukraine in that contest – the lyrics of which had to be changed after the European Broadcasting Union took issue with political references to the Orange Revolution in the song. In the same year, tensions in the lead up to a Montengrin independence referendum came to the fore in the Serbia and Montenegro Eurovision selection contest, almost leading to a riot at the event and ultimately leading Serbia and Montenegro to withdraw from that year’s contest. Following the conflict with Russia in 2008, Georgia initially seemed likely to boycott the following year’s contest which was being held in Moscow, but eventually relented. The song chosen by Georgia for the 2009 contest, We Don’t Wanna Put In, awoke controversy with alleged references to Russia and its prime minister, Vladimir Putin:
We don't wanna put in
the negative move
It's killin' the groove
I'm a-tryin' to shoot in some disco tonight
Boogie with you (Diggiloo Thrush, 2009)
After protests from Russia, the European Broadcasting Union requested that Georgia either enter change the song lyrics or else enter a different song; when Georgia refused to do they were disqualified from the 2009 contest. Controversy also emerged surrounding Azerbaijan, when it was discovered that authorities there had called in for questioning the 43 people who had voted for Armenia in the 2009 final. The 2010 contest did not attract the same degree of political controversy as the previous year’s contest did, although there was controversy surrounding the initial selection of the Ukrainian entry, which was allegedly politically influenced, and a change of government in the Ukraine subsequently kick started a new selection process for their Eurovision entry.
“Where oh where did it all go wrong?”
Up to, and including,1997, Ireland, on average, was receiving at least 4 points each year from all the other participating ESCcountries (apart from Israel), but over the 1998-2009 period only the UK (and also Hungary, but they only took part in a few contests during this period) has regularly awarded Ireland more than 4 points on average in the differentESC contests (although the UK gave Dervish nils points in 2007). Much of Europe has now become a desert in terms of Irish Eurovision prospects (Figure 1), with many countries awarding Ireland less than half a point per contest in this period; most notably including many of the former Soviet states (with the notable exception of the three Baltic states, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia), but also a number of states in the Balkan region (Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria and Greece) as well as Spain and the Czech Republic.
Figure 1: Average number of points awarded to Irish entries per contest in Eurovision Song Contests between 1998 and 2009
As opposed to the ‘catch-all’ era of the 1980s and 1990s when Ireland could expect to win significant votes from juries all over the continent, the source of Irish Eurovision votes has become much more geographically defined. For its main source of Eurovision votes, Ireland now mainly looks to our nearest neighbours, the UK, as well as to a host of countries located within the Nordic/Baltic bloc, such as Lithuania, Estonia, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Estonia, Finland and (to a lesser degree) Iceland. Outside of this region, Turkey, Switzerland and Portugal, as well as the 2007 Albanian jury, has proven to be more generous to Ireland than the rest of their European[1] counterparts.
Ireland’s declining fortunes can be explained in part by changes made to the contest format over the past twelve years, with the main changes being discussed in this section.
The introduction of televoting in 1997/1998: Ironically this is generally viewed as a response to growing frustrations amongst the Eurovision fan base that the inflexible jury voting system had brought about Ireland’s regular run of successes in the 1990s and the domination of the contest by MOR/ballad entries at the expense of more contemporary and up-tempo numbers. The main impact of televoting was to see the development of distinct voting Eurovision blocs as different ESC countries’ voting patterns tended to become more consistent across the years generally in favour of entries from neighbouring states. With televoting countries tending to (in what often has been termed political voting, but whichcan be more accurately termed geographical voting)favour songs of neighbouring states and (in the case of western European states, such as France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, as well as Irelandand the UK)also showing evidence ofdiaspora voting. Herein, for instance. largenumbers of Turkish and Armenian migrants in north-western European countries meant that, with televoting, Turkey and Armenia could regularly expect”big”votes (10s and 12s) from these countries for their entrants. In a similar vein, Ireland tended to award its highest televotes to Lithuania, Latvia and Poland, as well as the UK,during the 2000s.
Figure 2: "Voting blocs" for the Eurovision Song Contest - based on a principal components analysis of contest voting patterns between 1998 and 2008
The combination of diaspora and neighbour/geographical voting during the televoting era leadto the creation of distinct voting blocs (Figure 2)including a:
(a) Western Diaspora bloc: including large western European countries, such as Germany, France and Belgium, characterised by a tendency to award large marks, based on the size of emigre populations living within these states, to countries such as Turkey and Armenia.
(b) Former Soviet bloc: including most of the newstates that emerged with the break up of the old Soviet Union, as well as other Orthodox Eastern European countries, such as Greece and Bulgaria, and Israel- these countries tend tomainly vote for other countries in this blocbut especially tend to award high votes toRussia. In the 2010 Final for instance82 of Russia’s 90 points came from this voting bloc; Slovakia (6) and Portugal being the only countries outside of this bloc to award Russia points on the night. Georgiawas the only one of the nine other competing Former Soviet states not to award Russia any points (Azerbaijan awarded Russia a lowly 3 point score).
(c) Nordic/Baltic bloc, including the Baltic and Nordic states, as well as Iceland, Ireland, the UK, in addition to Poland and Hungary: countries in this bloc tend toaward/receive their highest votesto/fromother countries in this bloc, with evidence of adiasporaeffect also evident in the large number of points awarded by Ireland and the UK to Baltic states such as Lithuania during the 2000s- prior to recent years, Sweden was probably the most likely receipient ofsuch ‘bloc’ votes but they have been overtaken by Norway and Denmark inrecent years. (In the 2010 Final, Denmark proved to be especially popular amongst the Nordic Bloc countries, winning an average of 7.3 points from these countries, but the contest winners, Germany (average of 9.7 points) proved to be the most popular entry amongst the Nordic Bloc states.)
(d)Iberian bloc: including Spain, Portugal and Andorra, diaspora voting is evident here again with high votes being generally awarded to the entries from Moldova and Romania; in 2010 the strong entry from Romania, which finished in 3rd place, won 20 points from Spain and Portugal.
(e) Former Yugoslav bloc: encompassing all the former Yugoslav states and Albania, countries in this bloc generally tend to vote for each other, but in recent years have especially tended to favour Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
During the televoting era, countries such as Armenia and Greece, who can rely both on diaspora and geographical voting, are be at a decided advantage, while countries lacking large numbers of ”friendly neighbours” and diaspora populations in other European (or rather Eurovision) states, such as Ireland, the UK, Slovakia, Switzerland, Andorra and Belgium, will be at a decided disadvantage.
But it’s not all about political voting (or rather diaspora and geographical voting) – while these voting trends have tended to favour the newer Eastern European participants – often to quite dramatic levels as in the 2007 semi-final in Helsinki wherenone ofthe ‘old’ western European participants managed tomake the list of tenqualifiers from the semi final) – Western countries could still do well with good songs and striking performances (Lordi winning for Finland in 2006, Norway and Iceland taking the first two spots and improved UK and French results in 2009, Germany winning in 2010 and strong showings for Denmark and Belgium). Another point to make was the fact that the new entrants from the eastern part of the continent were, for the large part, taking the contest more seriously during the 2000s than their more experienced and cynical western counterparts, selecting their leading artists to represent them (many of whom, such as Russia’s Dima Bilan and Turkey’s maNga, were big stars not just in their own countries but in much of the rest of the continent). For new entrants and indeed new states, such as the former Yugoslav and Soviet states, taking part in Eurovision was a means of staking a place on the European stage and furthering the process of “becoming European”, as well as viewing the contest as a means to furthering their country’s economic development in a similar vein to the way Ireland viewed the contest in the 1980s and 1990s. As Sophia Nizharadze, Georgia’s entrant in the 2010 contest was to claim ahead of the Oslo finals:
“If I win, and the next contest is held in Georgia, it would be great for investment in the country…loads of sponsors would come to help organize the event. It would show Georgia in a positive light, and after what happened, we need it.”(GeorgianDaily.com, 2010)
Another significant development has been thereintroduction of professional voting juries as part of a new 50-50 jury vote-televote system, as a means of addressing growing concernsabout bloc voting; this was used for the first time in the 2009 Final (in which much more jury votes, as opposed to televotes,tended to beawardedto ballads, such as those from Israel, France,the UK and Iceland)in which the fortunes of western European participants improved dramatically. Some commentators believe the improved western European fortunes in 2009 could be put down to stronger entries from these countries (the UK, for instance, making a very evident effort to take the contest more seriously with the Jade Ewan/Andrew Llyod Webber collaboration), but there is no doubt thatjury voting did significantly improve these countries’ prospect, as Figure 3 shows.