From Stormont to Strasbourg – militant democracy in consociations

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article joins the nascent literature exploring the nexus of consociational power-sharing and militant democracy. While the two ideas appear to be different answers to different challenges, the respective empirical research agendas have been converging with militant democratic scholarship’s increasing interest in ethnically and religiously divided societies. Besides analysing the relationship between the two concepts, the article reviews the militant democratic provisions in various contemporary consociations, with a particular focus on Northern Ireland, the jurisdiction with the most explicit arrangements on restrictive measures protecting its democratic procedures. Given the similarities between the Northern Irish arrangement and the European Union’s procedures allowing the suspension of member states in the European Council, as well as its partially consociational features, the article also stresses the question whether the experience of Northern Ireland can offer any lessons for proponents of militant democracy in the EU. In the latter regard, the analysis suggests that the consociational experience can prove the most useful concerning the articulation of norms and arrangements on the arbitrational bodies. Nevertheless, this explorative comparative research also invites further contributions to this field of research, especially on the contextual analysis of individual cases.