Consociational Power Sharing: Conflict Regulation or Exacerbation?

Abstract

In the space of nine days in late October 1993, 25 people were killed in sectarian and paramilitary violence across Northern Ireland. A pro cession of politicians lined up to warn that if Northern Irish society was not peering down a dark abyss, it was on a civil war footing. Less than five years later, in 1998, a peace accord called the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) was signed in Belfast, which it was hoped, would her ald a new shared peaceful future for the people of Northern Ireland. Today it is common to read that the Northern Irish peace process and the power sharing forms which underpin it provide a successful model for violently divided societies to emulate (cf. Mac Ginty 2009). World leaders, seeking to purchase some of the kudos, indulge in hyperbole. Bill Clinton, for instance, has called Northern Ireland a lesson in how intractable disputes can be resolved, and as such should be ‘studied’ across the globe by those interested in securing peace (RTE 2009). If the ethno-national conflict in Northern Ireland had once appeared totally impervious to any solution (Whyte 1981), it is now commonly framed as an archetypal success story of conflict management.