Transcending an Ethnic Party System? The Impact of Consociational Governance on Electoral Dynamics and the Party System
by Paul Mitchell
From: Aspects of the Belfast Agreement edited by Rick Wilford (Oxford University Press 2001)
Incentives towards Cross-Communal Co-operation
A Consociational Executive Coalition
Coalition cabinets govern most parliamentary democracies. Coalitions are either formed before, but mostly after, elections, when a set of parties negotiate a coalition deal that is usually underwritten by a more or less comprehensive coalition policy document.26 While the prospect of joining a governing coalition may cause considerable intra-party dissent "parties do in practice tend to go into and come out of government as single actors".27 For the most part the coalition strategies of Northern Ireland's parties correspond to this unitary actor status, despite the obvious divisions this causes within the UUP. What is unusual is the posture of the DUP. Although the party is largely united behind its leadership, its tactic in a sense is to be "partly in, and partly out" of the executive and legislative coalitions induced by the institutional rules established by the Agreement. In other words a party, in this case the DUP, can join an executive coalition without joining the legislative coalition that supports it. It can do this because membership in the executive is not based on the mutual consent and mutual veto that is normally the outcome of voluntary coalition negotiations.28 As such no initial policy coherence can be assumed.29 Rather, membership in this version of a consociational "grand coalition" is an automatic entitlement of electoral strength, determined merely by the application of the mechanical d'Hondt divisor. Thus, the party - the DUP - is "entitled" to posts in the executive although opposed to its very existence.
It is analytically useful to distinguish between executive coalitions and their supporting electoral/legislative coalition. Although these are often coterminous, the frequency of minority governments tells us that executive coalitions often rely on electoral coalitions larger than themselves, by attracting external support from parties or individuals in the legislature who do not join the government. However, it is highly exceptional for the executive coalition - normally defined as only those parties holding cabinet ministries - to be larger than its supporting legislative coalition!30 To be sure coalition parties do many unexpected things, but voting against their own government is not normally one of them! Yet this is precisely the situation in Northern Ireland. The DUP has taken its entitlement of two ministries in the twelve-person executive but is not part of the executive's legislative coalition in the Assembly.
Indeed, given the chance it will vote against the Trimble-Mallon dyarchy, and is selectively attempting to immobilise the institutions of the Agreement through the special voting procedures.31
The explanation of course is that the consociational executive formed in December 1999 is not designed to be a coalition like any other in parliamentary democracies. Indeed, under the Strand One institutions established by the Belfast Agreement, Northern Ireland is not really a parliamentary democracy at all. The usual minimal definition of a parliamentary democracy is that the executive is directly responsible to the legislature via confidence procedures; or more colourfully that, at any moment - at least while parliament is in session! - a parliamentary majority can "can rise up and strike the government dead".32 Neither the quasi-presidential joint first ministers nor the Executive as a whole can be dismissed easily by the Assembly. Individual ministers can be removed by a no-confidence vote, but the relevant party can then nominate a replacement.33 Thus, by institutional design the Agreement provides incentives toward power-sharing by not requiring policy agreement in advance. The Executive once formed is intended to be "stable" vis-&aagrave;-vis the Assembly in that it cannot be easily dismissed. Of course it is still a "voluntary" grand coalition rather than a labour sentence; parties can decline to take their ministerial seats although this would result in a disproportionate re-allocation to their rivals, and/or they can resign. In particular the resignation from the Executive of either the UUP or SDLP, for well-known reasons associated with other aspects of the Agreement, effectively terminates the coalition.
27 See Laver and Schofield Multiparty Government, 15. |
