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The Framework Document on Northern Ireland and the Theory of Power‐Sharing*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Arend Lijphart
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Extract

The Purpose of This Article is To Analyse The Document ‘A Framework for Accountable Government in Northern Ireland’, published by the British government in early 1995, and to assess its significance in terms of the theory of powersharing (consociational democracy). The Framework Document, as it is usually called, received a hostile reception from many Unionist politicians in Northern Ireland. The ideas that it contains, however, resonate with many previous blueprints for the future of Northern Ireland. In some form they are very likely to re-emerge in the proposed solutions that will follow the ‘all-party’ talks set for June 1996. I shall show that the Framework plan for democratic government in Northern Ireland is completely and thoroughly consociational in its orientation. It confirms the proposition that power-sharing is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for viable democracy in deeply divided societies.

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 31 , Issue 3 , July 1996 , pp. 267 - 274
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1996

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References

1 ‘A Framework for Accountable Government in Northern Ireland’ constitutes Part I of a longer British government publication entitled Frameworks for the Future, February 1995, pp. 3–11. The ‘Framework’ proposal is divided into 28 paragraphs; when I cite its provisions, I shall do so by paragraph instead of page number.

2 Kyle, Keith, A Framework for the North, Coleraine, Centre for the Study of Conflict, University of Ulster, 1995.Google Scholar

3 See Kyriakides, Stanley, Cyprus: Constitutionalism and Crisis Government, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1968.Google Scholar

4 Tuéni, Ghassan, ‘Lebanon: A New Republic?’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 61, No. 1, Fall 1982, p. 86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 McGarry, John and O’Leary, Brendan (eds), The Future of Northern Ireland, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1990.Google Scholar

6 Arend Lijphart, ‘Foreword: One Basic Problem, Many Theoretical Options – And a Practical Solution?’, in McGarry and O’Leary (eds), The Future of Northern Ireland, p. vii.

7 ibid.

8 For the Indian case of group autonomy, see Arend Lijphart, ‘The Puzzle of Indian Democracy: A Consociational Interpretation’, American Political Science Review, Vol. 90, No. 2, June 1996, pp. 258–68.

9 Hanf, Theodor, Koexistenz im Krieg: Staatszerfall and Entstehen einer Nation im Libanon, Baden‐Baden, Nomos, 1990, pp. 725–34.Google Scholar

10 Lustick, Ian, ‘Stability in Deeply Divided Societies: Consociationalism versus Control’, World Politics, Vol. 31, No. 3, 04 1979, p. 328. The other alternative is Donald L. Horowitz’s ‘vote‐pooling’ proposal, but, to my knowledge, it is not being seriously considered in or for Northern Ireland; see Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1985.CrossRefGoogle Scholar