Every so often it’s healthy to reflect on where things are and where they are going. At Northern Slant, we want to promote a conversation as to how Northern Ireland can ‘rethink’ certain approaches to policy and decision-making. What can we do differently? What can we learn from elsewhere or from emerging research? In this article, Dr Sean Haughey considers how we can rethink aspects of our institutions.

Had it not been for the coronavirus pandemic, changes to the devolved institutions included in last year’s New Decade, New Approach agreement might have sufficed to keep the subject of institutional reform off Northern Ireland’s political agenda for a few years. As things have transpired, the difficulties encountered by the administration in its handling of the public health crisis could soon lead to a more fundamental rethink of how the institutions operate. The system of mandatory coalition in particular has come under the spotlight in recent months. 

Mandatory coalition is a misnomer for Northern Ireland’s system of Executive formation. Even if a party qualifies for ministerial office under the d’Hondt formula, there is nothing in the rules compelling that party to participate in an Executive. Consider, for example, the decision taken by the SDLP and UUP to form an Assembly Opposition in 2016 despite their respective electoral performances entitling each party to a place in the Executive. The status quo does facilitate some degree of choice in relation to coalition formation.

That is where the choice ends. A qualifying party can choose whether or not to take up its place in the Executive, but it gets no say in who else joins it in government: the system guarantees ministerial office to any party which qualifies under d’Hondt. In a divided society, the appeal is obvious for taking such a maximally inclusive approach to government formation. 

Maximal inclusivity versus cohesion?

The drawback of this maximal inclusivity is that it can give rise to some pretty disparate coalitions. Executives have oscillated from governing with (relative) cohesion to the point where ministers have taken one another to court. If the public had developed a tolerance to this state of affairs, recent events will have put this to the test. At a time when efficiency and unity of purpose were needed most, with lives and livelihoods at stake, the public watched on as Executive parties clashed and dithered over emergency public health regulations.

Whereas previously opponents of mandatory coalition have tended to couch their arguments in abstract democratic theory – that electors should be able to vote a party out of office – decision-making during the pandemic has offered a high-profile, relatable, and potentially dangerous illustration of the system’s drawbacks. This has helped to nudge the debate about mandatory coalition from the fringes to the mainstream.

Alternative arrangements

If cross-party agreement were ever reached on abandoning mandatory coalition – and that is a big if – the system to replace it would require careful consideration. Voluntary coalition in its purest form would likely be opposed on the grounds that it could lead to one community’s long-term exclusion from power. Support for the Northern Ireland Protocol, for example, could bring together a Sinn Féin/SDLP/Alliance Party coalition that could easily command an Assembly majority. Such a coalition would have good cause to re-form election after election to protect the Protocol. A consequence of this would be the long-term exclusion of unionism from government in Northern Ireland. 

Some form of qualified voluntary coalition (QVC) would be a more likely replacement. For instance, in addition to commanding the support of an Assembly majority, a coalition would need to be comprised of ministers representing both ethno-national communities. The DUP-Sinn Féin coalition of 2016-17 would have met this test. Using the current parliamentary arithmetic, there are a number of hypothetical configurations which could qualify as QVC: DUP/SDLP/Alliance, for example, or Sinn Féin/SDLP/UUP.

There are a number of potential benefits of QVC. Firstly, it removes the automaticity of d’Hondt such that parties would need to negotiate with one another to establish common ground – perhaps even some shared policy objectives – before entering government. This could make for more cohesive coalitions. Whilst it is naive to expect the same degree of collective responsibility from governments in Northern Ireland as from those in Westminster or Holyrood, there is much room for improvement on this front and smaller coalitions could go some way to addressing this. 

QVC would also facilitate the emergence of more substantial parliamentary oppositions. Parties of a certain size can already form an official opposition of course. However, such parties tend to qualify under d’Hondt for ministerial office and therefore need to opt out of government to sit in opposition. That runs counter to the logic of office-seeking political parties. In a QVC scenario, parties not included in a coalition agreement would have no other choice but to form the opposition and focus their energies on parliamentary scrutiny.

Potential challenges

A transition to QVC would not come without drawbacks. Post-election coalition negotiations could be exhaustingly long. Consider Belgium, another divided society with a consociational democracy, where post-election negotiations often go on for months, sometimes for a year or more. We should not doubt the potential for Northern Ireland’s political parties to outperform in this regard.  

There is also the potential for exclusionary politics. Sinn Féin are especially cautious about departing from mandatory coalition and this likely stems from a concern that, in the event of a more voluntary system, the chips would always fall in a way that excludes Republicans from power. As it happens, it could be the DUP which finds itself struggling to find governing partners, having done much to isolate itself in recent times. The DUP was the only mainstream party in Northern Ireland to support Brexit, for example. More recently, it has infuriated its coalition partners by using a cross-community veto to block emergency public health restrictions. 

A final thought worth bearing in mind is that voluntary coalition would create a clear ‘government versus opposition’ dynamic, replacing the (uneasy) cooperation of mandatory coalition with a more adversarial style of politics. In that regard it is worth bearing in mind that what might be good for governance and accountability may not necessarily be good for community relations in a divided society. 

In any event, if one of the chief midwives of the Good Friday Agreement is to be believed, mandatory coalition’s days are numbered. If that is indeed the case, it should be the people of Northern Ireland who decide its replacement. Be it through a referendum or a citizens’ assembly, such a central component of the Good Friday Agreement should not be changed without input from the people who endorsed that agreement.    

More in our ‘Rethinking…’ series: