The state as ‘guardian of the common good’ and the constitution of Ireland

This article begins by noting the strong correspondence between the usages of the term 'the State' in The Constitution of Ireland and the current language of constitutional reform in Ireland. But the increasingly frequent uses of this concept in referendum campaigns and in the media raise a simple question: has the 1937 constitution a clear and coherent conception of the State? Given the strong corporatist influence on the document, I argue that it does. Beginning with a comparison with the 1922 constitution, the article traces the conceptual history of the concept of the State since independence by applying a framework of conceptual development found in R.G. Collingwood. It stresses the sociological approach to the State in the 1937 constitution compared to its 1922 predecessor, and also explains why decades of constitutional reform have not really revised the former’s language of statehood. The article concludes by discussing the current usages of ‘the State’ in the media. These stress its central role in economic development and public policy, in language uninfluenced by those religious and philosophical ideas which justified a limited state in 1937.