The Limits to Coercive Consociationalism in Northern Ireland
| Author | Brendan O'Leary |
| Published date | 01 December 1989 |
| Date | 01 December 1989 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.1989.tb00289.x |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Political Studies
(1989),
XXXVII,
562-588
The Limits to Coercive Consociationalism
in
Northern Ireland
BRENDAN O’LEARY
*
London School
of
Economics and Political Science
The merits of consociation as a means of solving the Northern Ireland conflict are
presented through contrasting it with other ways
of
stabilizing highly divided political
systems. Why voluntary consociation has
been
unsuccessful in Northern Ireland and
unfortunately is likely
to
remain
so
is explained. The signing
of
the Anglo-Irish
Agreement (AIA) must be understood against the background
of
the failure of
previous consociational experiments. The AIA partly represented a shift in British
strategy from voluntary to coercive consociationalism. The prospects for this coercive
consociational strategy and variants on it are evaluated.
Irish history is something Irishmen should never remember, and Englishmen
should
never
forget.
Oscar Wilde
Stabilizing Segmented Societies: the Case
for
Consociation
Northern Ireland is a ‘segmented society’. Segmented ‘societies’ are not real
societies. They are, in extreme cases, divided into parallel societies with
endogamous marriage, which school themselves, organize separate exclusive
voluntary associations, read separate media, have different cultures and
languages, and exclusively work with and service their own kind. The cleavages
dividing the segments may be racial, ethnic, religious, linguistic or ideological,
or
some cumulative permutation, but all dispose people towards war. Segmented as
opposed to homogeneous societies are more likely to experience civil war because
their divisions are not conducive to consensus. They are unsuited to the
Westminster model
of
simple majoritarian or minimum-winning coalitions,
single-party governments, and
a
disproportional voting system which creates a
governmental executive able to impose its will within a unitary state.’ The home
rule government
of
Northern Ireland
(1920-72)
was a pathological specimen
of
This essay is a radically revised version
of
a paper presented in April
1988
at the IALS
Conference
on
Anglo-Irish Legal Relations.
I
thank the following for helpful criticism:
P.
Arthur,
B.
Barry, A. Beattie,
P.
Dunleavy,
S.
Greer, G.W. Jones,
D.
King, T. Lyne,
C.
McCrudden, J. McGarry,
P. Mitchell, J. Peterson, G. Smith, C. Symmons, the anonymous referees, and the editor
of
Political
Studies.
I
also acknowledge the benefits of a Nuffield Foundation travel grant.
‘
A. Lijphart,
Democracies: Patterns
of
Majorilarian and Consensus Democracy
in
Twenty-one
Countries
(New Haven, Yale University Press,
1984).
0032-321 7/89/04/0562-27/$03.00
0
1989
Political Studies
BRENDAN O’LEARY
563
majoritarian ‘democracy’, a tyranny of the majority, in which the Ulster Unionist
Party
(
UUP2) won every parliamentary election held in the province.
Consociation by contrast is primarily distinguished by cooperation amongst
political
elite^,^
but has four key institutional traits. First, the state in
a consociational system
is
governed by a power-sharing coalition of parties
which enjoys the support of more than a simple majority of those who vote.4
Secondly, consociation endorses segmental autonomy, permitting the blocs
which divide the regime freedom to make autonomous decisons on matters of
profound concern to them. Thirdly, proportionality applies throughout the
public sector: there is proportional representation in elections, in assembly
committees, in public employment; and proportional allocation of public
expenditure. Finally, mutual veto
or
concurring majority principles operate,
permitting the minority segment(s) the ability
to
protect its (their) most
important interests.’ Consociational democracy is therefore the antonym of
majoritarian democracy.
Consociational theory explores how segmented societies may be stabilized and
operated with liberal democratic institutions. It suggests, by implication,
six ideal-typical strategies for stabilizing segmented societies: hegemonic
control, integration, partition, internationalization, arbitration and con-
sociation.‘ According to consociational theorists regions like Northern Ireland
must have consociation or no effective democracy at all, a claim this essay seeks
to reinforce. To see why, consider the alternatives to consociation in Northern
Ireland.
*
I
use
UUP to refer also to the Official Unionists
(or
the OUP), as they became known in the
1970s.
A. Lijphart,
Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration
(New Haven and
London, Yale University Press, 1977), p.
1.
This requirement is
less
than a ‘grand coalition’ of all parties. Consociational require-
ments arguably are also met
if
all segments are proportionately represented within parties which
compete for (rather than share) state power:
see
E.
Aunger,
In
Search
of
Political Stability:
A
Comparative Study
of
New Brunswick and Northern lreland
(Montreal, McGill-Queen’s University
Press, 1981).
The elements of consociation are elaborated in Lijphart’s many publications: A. Lijphart,
The
Politics
of
Accommodation: Pluralism and Democracy in the Netherlands
(Berkeley and
Los
Angeles,
University of California Press, 1968); ‘Typologies of democratic systems’,
Comparative Political
Studies,
1:
I
(1968),
3-44;
‘Consociational democracy’,
World Politics,
XXI
(1969), 207-25;
‘Consociation: the model and its application in divided societies’, in
D.
Rea
(ed.),
Political
Co-
operation in Divided Societies: A Series
of
Papers Relevant
to
the Conflict in Northern
Ireland(Dublin,
Gill and Macmillan, 1982), pp. 16686;
Power-Sharing in Sourh Africa
(Berkeley, Institute of
International Studies, 1985).
Lijphart mentions three strategies
-
integration, partition and consociation -in a review article,
‘The Northern Ireland problem: cases, theories and solutions’,
British Journal
of
Polifical Science,
5
(1975), p.
105,
while
G.
Lehmbruch, ‘Consociational democracy in the international system’,
European Journal
of
Political Research,
3
(1975) p. 378 mentions two
-
arbitration and consociation.
Internationalization is my own term.
I
developed my classifcation ofsix stabilization strategies before
reading Lijphart’s latest book where he argues: ‘There are five logical solutions
to
the problems of
violence and democratic weakness in plural societies: assimilation, consociation, partition, mass
emigration and genocide.
I
mention the last possibility merely in order to make the list exhaustive’:
Power-Sharing in South Africa,
p.
31.
Assimilation
is
what
I
call integration. Like Lijphart
I
do not
regard mass emigration
or
genocide as solutions worth considering; however, unlike him,
I
believe
that hegemonic control, arbitration and internationalization are ‘logical’ solutions to the problems of
segmented societies which are worth consideration.
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