IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/bjposi/v32y2002i02p193-220_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Explaining the Northern Ireland Agreement: The Sources of an Unlikely Constitutional Consensus

Author

Listed:
  • HOROWITZ, DONALD L.

Abstract

Advocates of one or another set of institutions for new democracies have typically neglected the question of adoptability. The omission is especially evident in institutional prescriptions for the reduction of ethnic conflict in severely divided societies. These have been advanced with little regard for obstacles likely to be encountered in the process of adoption. Yet adoption is problematic. Processes of negotiation and exchange open the possibility of mixed outcomes reflecting the asymmetric preferences of majorities and minorities. The Northern Ireland Agreement of 1998, however, is a glaring exception, for it produced institutions that are intended to be clearly and consistently consociational. An examination of the process by which the agreement was produced suggests that the coherent outcome in Northern Ireland was the result of some very special conditions conducive to a consensus on institutions that spanned party lines. These conditions are unlikely to be widely replicable, and the fact of consensus does not imply that the agreed institutions are apt for the divided society whose problems they are intended to ameliorate.

Suggested Citation

  • Horowitz, Donald L., 2002. "Explaining the Northern Ireland Agreement: The Sources of an Unlikely Constitutional Consensus," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 32(2), pages 193-220, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:bjposi:v:32:y:2002:i:02:p:193-220_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S000712340200008X/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Tridimas, George, 2011. "The political economy of power-sharing," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 328-342, June.
    2. Sherrill Stroschein, 2014. "Consociational Settlements and Reconstruction," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 656(1), pages 97-115, November.
    3. Stroschein, Sherrill, 2013. "Consociational Settlements and Reconstruction: Bosnia in Comparative Perspective, 1995-Present," WIDER Working Paper Series 089, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    4. Sherrill Stroschein, 2013. "Consociational Settlements and Reconstruction: Bosnia in Comparative Perspective, 1995-Present," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2013-089, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    5. Colin Jennings, 2007. "Political Leadership, Conflict and the Prospects for Constitutional Peace," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 8(1), pages 83-94, January.
    6. Colin Jennings, 2011. "Intra-Group Competition And Inter-Group Conflict: An Application To Northern Ireland," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(1), pages 63-83.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:bjposi:v:32:y:2002:i:02:p:193-220_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/jps .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.