Worth Restoring? Taking Stock of the Northern Ireland Assembly

Abstract

The ongoing and almost record‐breaking hiatus in devolved government in Northern Ireland has brought the sustainability of the region's Assembly into sharp focus. As parties in Northern Ireland consider their options for restoring (and possibly reforming) the devolved institutions, this article takes stock of the Northern Ireland Assembly's merits and demerits. It is argued that, amidst the public's understandable exasperation with the current stalemate, it is easy to forget that the Assembly operated for a decade without suspension (2007–2017) and performed some functions reasonably well. This, of course, is not to detract from the institution's serious shortcomings, though it is argued that the worst of these could be mitigated via institutional reform. Crucially, institutional inertia is not an option. Should parties fail to address the need for institutional reform, commentators may well be right to question whether the Assembly is worth restoring.

Mini-Publics and the Wider Public: The Perceived Legitimacy of Randomly Selecting Citizen Representatives

“…Therefore, as a check on the robustness of respondents' perceptions of (hypothetical) citizens' assembly decisionmaking, all were asked to imagine the way in which the (real-world) Northern Ireland Assembly makes decisions and to evaluate its decision-making according to the same ten items on which they had evaluated the legitimacy of each respective version of citizens' assembly. At the time of the experiment in March 2018, it should be noted that the Northern Ireland Assembly had not been sitting for over a year; it collapsed along with the Northern Ireland Executive in January 2017 and was not restored until three years later (see Haughey, 2019). Therefore, for the purposes of their evaluations, respondents were to imagine the way in which the Northern Ireland Assembly makes decisions 'when it is functioning.'…”

“…First, Northern Ireland's postconflict institutions reflect an elite-centric logic, in that they emphasise power-sharing among political elites over the improvement of community relations at the grassroots level (Nordlinger, 1972). In practice, not only have elites often found themselves in regular gridlock (see Haughey, 2019), but the logic of the system creates a gap between citizens and their representatives. This context opens the possibility for the use of mini-publics, such as citizens' assemblies, to help politicians address issues that cause gridlock and to help strengthen people's perceptions of the legitimacy of decisionmaking more generally.…”

“…This article focuses on how the design of one key element of a mini-publicthe selection of participantsaffects public perceptions of legitimacy. It does so in the postconflict context of Northern Ireland, where high levels of dissatisfaction with representative institutions offer compelling grounds to experiment with democratic innovations (see, for example, Haughey, 2019), but where deep political divisions pose particular challenges in designing institutions that command widespread support (Morrow, 2005). By examining different approaches to participant recruitment for one type of mini-publica citizens' assemblythis study weighs up the relative effects of sortition (over election) and citizen representatives (over professional politicians) on perceptions of legitimacy.…”

‘Enter parliament but never become part of it’: How have the Greens in the United Kingdom approached opposition?

“…This brings differences in scrutiny outputs, with opposition amendments to legislation and private member’s bills having a somewhat lower success rate in the UK Parliament than has been reported in the devolved parliaments (e.g. Haughey, 2019: 706; Shephard and Cairney, 2005: 310). Other different institutional mechanisms include the petition of concern procedure at Stormont, which can be used to enforce a cross-community vote on a motion (McCulloch, 2018: 736), and the use of electronic voting in Holyrood alongside the possibility for legislators to register formal abstentions (Cowley, 2001: 87).…”

The Myth of Power-Sharing and Polarisation: Evidence from Northern Ireland

“…The catalyst for the collapse was the mismanagement of a renewable heating policy by the DUP, but this came on top of the previous years' simmering tensions around identity politics. However, others have argued that the Assembly actually performed some functions fairly well despite experiencing stalemate (Huaghey, 2019).…”