Transcending an Ethnic Party System? The Impact of Consociational Governance on Electoral Dynamics and the Party System
by Paul Mitchell
28 Of course this is neither accidental nor in itself a bad thing. O'Leary has correctly argued that: "The special skill of the designers/negotiators is that they have created strong incentives towards executive power-sharing and power-division, but without requiring parties to have any prior formal coalition agreement - other than the institutional agreement - and without requiring any party to renounce its long-run aspirations" (O'Leary, "The British-Irish Agreement of 1998", 7).
29 The offices of the joint first ministers elected on a cross-communal basis are intended to provide policy co-ordination and coherence. However, not only was there no agreed coalition policy document prior to formation - this is common practice, for example, in Italy and France - but even more unusually there were no inter-party negotiations to determine portfolio allocations. Instead parties simply picked ministries in rotation according to d'Hondt.
30 Even if the APNI, PUP, and NIWC are counted as "external support" parties for the Executive, their ten votes in the Assembly (combined) are not enough to compensate for loss of the DUP's twenty votes in a polarising vote.
31 To date, the DUP's participation in executive functions has been partial. In the initial phase of devolution, the party focused on its line ministries and committee work. It avoided direct contact with Sinn Féin's two ministers, boycotted all meetings of the Executive Committee and did not participate in North-South co-operation. The difficulties this caused at Executive Committee level were compounded when devolution was restored in May 2000. Confronted with the alternative of reassuming its two ministerial posts or of relinquishing them and going into opposition within the Assembly, they chose the former course but on the basis that they would rotate the ministries among their Assembly members. This enabled the DUP to maintain its presence within the Executive and, though subject to periodic bouts of ministerial musical chairs, to demonstrate that their Ministers were able and effective custodians of office. In that respect, while not acting as "all-out wreckers" of the Strand One institutions, their action has made the task of realising joined-up government at Executive level that much more elusive.
32 Laver, M. and Shepsle, K., Making and Breaking Governments: Cabinets and Legislatures in Parliamentary Democracies (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 280. However, the Executive is in no sense omnipotent. Its decisions are subject to cross-community voting procedures in the Assembly and to a form of committee oversight that is much more powerful than anything in the British or Irish parliamentary tradition.
33 Strand One, point 25 reads: "An individual may be removed from office following a decision of the Assembly taken on a cross-community basis, if (s)he loses the confidence of the Assembly, voting on a cross-community basis, for failure to meet his or her responsibilities including, inter alia, those set out in the Pledge of Office. Those who hold office should use only democratic, non-violent means, and those who do not should be excluded or removed from office under these provisions". (The Agreement: Agreement
Reached in the Multi-Party Negotiations, no date, no place). |
