Reaching across: institutional barriers to cross‐ethnic parties in post‐conflict societies and the case of Northern Ireland

Abstract

This paper investigates the paradox in post-conflict societies of continued marginality of cross-ethnic parties despite significant convergence in public attitudes and identities. In so doing, it examines the argument that parties that attempt to reach across the divide are constrained by consocational institutions designed to accommodate rival identities in such environments. The paper explores this puzzle in the context of Northern Ireland, drawing upon qualitative evidence from elite interviews and focus groups collected in 2012 and 2013. It concludes that cross-community parties operating in the region do encounter formal institutional barriers, but that such barriers only partially explain the phenomenon and an interplay between formal and informal constraints underlies their position of relatively limited electoral success.

Nonelectoral Participation in Deeply Divided Societies: Transforming Consociations from the Ground Up?

“…This may appear unsurprising given the overwhelming concern about political stability which consociational systems ought to maintain and the received belief that any mobilization is disrupting the fragile peace in divided places. Yet, civic mobilisations that take cues from protests feature in studies of political participation in deeply divided societies (Murtagh 2015 For example, in relation to Lebanon's "You Stink" and North Macedonia's "Colorful Revolution" studies offer retrospective analyses of factors internal to protests, mainly focusing on popular response to stasis in institutional politics (Bogaards 2019;Piacentini 2019). The attention to dynamics of protests has delivered post factum examinations of mobilization from perspectives of strategic interaction (Jasper and Duyvendak 2015) and strategic action field (Fligstein and McAdam 2015).…”

“…Resting on the principle of elite accommodation and representation of (ethnic) groups via their leaders, it evidently accords little role for bottom-up mobilization of citizens in politics. Because politics in consociational settings is particularly elite-centric (Murtagh 2015), issues that are crosscutting or unrelated to ethnic identity usually lack representation in high-table politics (Sircar 2019;Luther and Deschouwer 1999). Cross-group mobilization challenging political decision-making is oftentimes sporadic because every issue is dragged into the ethnic terrain (Fraenkel 2020;Horowitz 1985).…”

Non-Nationalist Politics in a Bi-National Consociation: The Case of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

“…35 Indeed, as Cera Murtagh finds, Alliance representatives themselves appear to be more exercised by the symbolic meaning of communal designations and their associated rules, rather than any substantive harmful effects on Alliance's electoral performance. 36 Also refuted by supporters of consociationalism has been the accusation, leveled by Alliance and many others, that inclusive coalition, plus rules such as parallel consent and the 'petition of concern' (a mechanism that can be triggered by thirty Assembly members forcing a decision to require parallel consent), produce ineffective, gridlocked, and unaccountable government. Christopher McCrudden et al caution against weighted majority voting due to the impossibility of determining the right threshold.…”

“Tribal Trenches”: A Qualitative Critique of Consociational Design in Northern Ireland

“…These designations are used when special voting is triggered that requires cross-community support, a key tenet of the consociational setup. Within the Executive, parties are allocated ministries proportionally through the d'Hondt method, while the first and second largest party choose the joint First Minister and Deputy First Minister (Murtagh, 2015).…”

“…In the 2016 election, Alliance maintained their eight seats, but lost support in every constituency (Bertoldi, 2016). This phenomenon is largely attributed to the culture of politicized ethnicity; even if a person doesn't actively identify with an ethnic group, they will still vote for the party that most closely represents their ethnicity (Murtagh, 2015). While the electorate is an issue for the cross-ethnic parties, the institutional design of the Assembly proves an insurmountable obstacle.…”