The concept of voluntary coalition was raised again this week in light of another missed and subsequently extended deadline for the restoration of devolution in Northern Ireland.

The argument, which is a compelling one, goes thusly – “well if they can’t work together, then why not let the others have a go.” This proposition has gained further momentum in light of some of the public service failures that are starting to occur in the absence of working ministers – the slightly haphazard response to Storm Ophelia comes to mind.

A few weeks ago, on this website Joel Cassells penned a very compelling case with the Slant, “We need to revisit the Good Friday Agreement”. At the end of the piece, he poses the question of whether voluntary coalition is the answer to our woes, and I’d like to set out some further thoughts on how I believe his idea is entirely workable whilst preserving the ethos of the Good Friday Agreement.

First of all, we need to get one thing straight – we already have a voluntary coalition, of sorts. It is not a mandatory coalition, as many continue to suggest. Parties are entitled to ministerial office if they secure sufficient electoral success, but they do not have to accept this entitlement. The Ulster Unionist Party left the Executive in the last mandate to sit in “opposition”, and the SDLP and Alliance joined them after the Assembly election in 2016.

The model, consociationalism, is used in a few other countries around the world, including Switzerland and Belgium. Its purpose is to secure political accommodation and co-governance in societies where there are deep ethnic and religious tensions.

“Perfect”, I hear you say? Sounds like us? Well, yes, but there is a price…

It’s probably worth getting a few of the more political science nerdy arguments out of the way first. On a basic level, it’s quite difficult to develop public policy and govern with multiple parties, with deeply conflicting positions, in the Executive arm of government. When devolution was ticking along over the last ten years, it often took the Executive the entire first year of the parliamentary term to cobble together a Programme for Government simply because there were five parties all trying to influence it.

In addition, there is fundamental question over the legitimacy and robustness of the scrutiny undertaken by the Assembly when the same parties that govern are those tasked with oversight in plenary and committee.

However, more important are the incentives for compromise across community lines that our system in Northern Ireland creates, or doesn’t create rather. Indeed, it is the method by which we form a government in Northern Ireland that is actually preventing one being formed – it encourages intransigence rather than compromise, and division rather than integration.

At present, according to the Northern Ireland Act (amended at St. Andrew’s), the largest party in the largest political designation nominates for the position of First Minister, and the second of the second the deputy First Minister. The reason why this problematic is that it creates a scenario whereby both the DUP and Sinn Fein know that the other needs them in order to form an Executive.

In other countries around the world, coalition governments are formed by groups of parties that can sit down and hammer out an agreement through compromise and negotiation, providing they can command numerical support in their respective parliaments. If the biggest party, or indeed the second biggest party, is unwilling to do so, then they can be left out in favour of groups of parties that can achieve agreement. This process necessitates meaningful compromise on electoral positions, because parties are not automatically entitled to enter government, even if they won the most seats in the election.

This incentivises compromise.

In the case of Northern Ireland, this incentive is not there. Both the biggest party, and second biggest party hold a mutual veto over the formation of a government. They do not have to move beyond their comfort zones, because they know they don’t necessarily have to (assuming they are willing to test the public’s nerve on an absence of government). Ironically, this creates a scenario where there is shared out power, rather than power-sharing.

That said, there is an obvious problem with the concept with a pure voluntary coalition model in “Our Wee World”. This would potentially allow for either nationalist parties to govern solely, or unionist parties to govern solely. It’s not difficult to see why this is not a workable or palatable solution.

This is where I declare a major interest. I’m quite a fan of the Good Friday Agreement. I like the idea that communities that have previously been deeply divided, and arguably still are, work together to govern for everyone.

So, is voluntary coalition incompatible with the ethos of the Good Friday Agreement i.e. the principle of nationalism and unionism working together? There are many that would cry “sacrilege!” – that this would completely undermine the Agreement. This is where, in my view, we get a bit hung up on process. Surely the point is that nationalists and unionists work together, and the method within which they do so is, at best, secondary?

Of course, it’s important to remember that there is already precedent for reform of the Executive and Assembly. The St. Andrew’s Agreement made major changes, including the method through which the First and deputy First Ministers are elected. John McAllister’s opposition bill created provision for parties to sit effectively outside the Executive. The number and nature of government departments has changed. There was actually a cross-party Committee, the Assembly and Executive Review Committee, set up to specifically consider institutional reform.

We are already part of an evolving process, so why not embrace the “devolution is a process, not an event” mantra first advocated by Scotland’s first First Minister, Donald Dewar.

How could a voluntary coalition model look, then? Well, the important thing for me is that the fundamental ethos of the Good Friday Agreement, power-sharing, is maintained.

We could amend the Northern Ireland Act to restore the original provision that the First and deputy First Ministers should be elected by the Assembly by a numerical majority and meet a cross community test, but in such a manner that the cross community threshold would allow a smaller nationalist or unionist party to enter government at the expense of the larger in its designation.

We could also add a simple legal requirement that an Executive can only be formed where there is representation of nationalists and unionists, but not necessarily the largest parties in each of those designations (although this may still be the case). We could remove d’Hondt and have ministerial positions allocated through negotiation and agreement.

The overall impact would acknowledge that there are multiple parties (and potentially new parties to come) in nationalism and unionism. Why do they all need to be entitled to sit in government? Surely the important thing is that there is power-sharing.

Removing the entitlement that exists presently would mean that parties would not be able rest on their laurels that a government could not be formed without them. The key question is whether, on balance, they would go further in terms of their willingness to compromise on their “red lines” if they thought there was possibility they could be left out. The outcome might be that an Executive is formed of parties who have compromised and are willing to work together under collective responsibility.

Of course, there could still be a deadlock under this suggestion, if all parties in nationalism and unionism refused to work together. In addition, parties would have to make a political decision about whether they could secure enough “wins” in a coalition to justify their decision to go into government with opponents to their supporters. This would be a marked change in our political culture – but hey, it’s not exactly like the current culture is working all that well.

Government structures matter because of the incentives for compromise they create. Whilst there will be a huge amount of resistance to the idea of moving to a full-blown voluntary coalition in “Our Wee World”, there is room for a natural process of normalisation and reform that maintains the ethos of the Good Friday Agreement. We ought to look at it.