Tag: Consociationalism
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Christine Bell: A Modest Proposal: Power-sharing for the UK
This blog argues that the UK is moving towards a form of consociational (political power-sharing) constitutional settlement. I consider whether embracing and developing its silent consociational elements could form the basis for a more coherent and stable new devolution settlement. What is consociationalism? Sometimes called ‘power-sharing’, Arendt Lipjhart has identified 4 classic elements to consociational…
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Christopher McCrudden: Equality and the Good Friday Agreement: Fifteen Years On
The Northern Ireland peace agreement was born on the 10th April 1998, Good Friday, in Belfast and will thus celebrate its 15th birthday next week. One of the central elements of the Agreement was to achieve equality between the two main communities in Northern Ireland. It was an ambitious attempt to achieve this aim through…
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Colin Harvey: Reconstructing the ‘Political Constitution’ of Northern Ireland
For reasons that are not difficult to grasp, the constitutional process in Northern Ireland has been marked by fragility and instability. The entity ‘Northern Ireland’ – carved out in the early 1920s – rested on insecure foundations and struggled to establish legitimacy. It was a constitutional creation mapped onto stark ‘facts on the ground’, embedded…