The
Nature of the British-Irish Agreement
by Brendan O'Leary
NEW LEFT REVIEW 233/1999
The Mysterious Work of Viktor d'Hondt in Belfast
Viktor d'Hondt is the best answer to the Trivial Pursuit challenge to name
a famous Belgian. He was a mathematician who devised a proportional method
that is used for many purposes, including allocating political offices according
to the shares of seats held by parties in the European Parliament. The method
works by iteration, using a simple series of divisors 1, 2, 3, etc. Rules
like this are needed because assembly persons do not come in convenient
fractions. The table below shows how the allocation works, assuming parties
have the seats displaying in Table 2 (above) and assuming all parties are
willing and entitled to take their seats. The party with the largest numbers
of seats, the UUP, must get the first Ministry, and then its seat share
would then be divided by 2. We then look for the next largest number of
seats held by the SDLP and they get the second Ministry. In table 3 below
10 Ministries are allocated. The numbers in square brackets in the M columns
indicate the order in which parties win Ministries of their choice, whereas
S is the number of seats each party has during each stage of the allocation.
Table Three. The Distribution of Ministries (assuming all parties use their
entitlements)
| |
|
UKUP |
DUP |
PUP
|
UUP
|
APNI
|
NIWC |
SDLP |
SF
|
|
|
S
|
M
|
S
|
M
|
S
|
M
|
S
|
M
|
S
|
M
|
S
|
M
|
S
|
M
|
S
|
M
|
|
1
|
5
|
-
|
20
|
[3]
|
2
|
-
|
28
|
[1]
|
6
|
|
2
|
-
|
24
|
[2]
|
18
|
[4]
|
|
2
|
|
|
10
|
[7]
|
|
|
14
|
[5]
|
|
|
|
|
12
|
[6]
|
9
|
[9]
|
|
3
|
|
|
6.6
|
|
|
|
9.3
|
[8]
|
|
|
|
|
8
|
[10]
|
6
|
|
|
4
|
|
|
5
|
|
|
|
7
|
|
|
|
|
|
6
|
|
4.5
|
|
|
All
|
|
|
|
20
|
2
|
|
|
28
|
3
|
|
|
|
|
24
|
3
|
18
|
2
|
Key: S = seats, M = Ministries
"At the beginning of 1999 Robert McCartney's UK Unionist Party split asunder, leaving McCartney isolated. His colleagues maintained, amongst other things, that he planned to withdraw the UKUP from the Assembly, an action that would have made matters easier for the pro-Agreement parties. One unionist journalist put it to me that Mr McCartney's ideological problem is that he does not know with which part of Mr Blair's disintegrating Kingdom he wishes to integrate."
In this scenario, unionists are entitled to five Ministries (3 UUP and 2
DUP) and nationalists get five (3 SDLP and 2 SF) if by contrast, the First
Minister and Deputy First Minister had decided that there should only be
six Ministries, then unionists would have three (2 UUP, 1 DUP) and nationalists
would have three (2 SDLP and 1 SF). If they had opted for seven, the UUP's
negotiating preference, then there would be four unionist Ministries and
three for nationalists. What happens if the DUP does not take its Ministries
because it will not accept the obligations of office? The results are shown
below. If there are to be ten Ministries, then the UUP, would win one more
Ministry and Alliance would win one more Ministry. Nationalists would keep
the same number of Ministries as before, but improve their position in the
"pecking order", that is the choice of Ministries. |
