Consociational Theory and Powersharing I

John
Cash -‐ Keynote Plenary Talk – Political Studies Association Conference, 2012
This is the full written version of my contribution to the Keynote Plenary Panel on
“Consociational Theory and Powersharing in Northern Ireland” held at the 2012 (UK)
Political Studies Association Conference. The other participants on the panel were
John McGarry, Rupert Taylor and Brendan O’Leary and the chairperson was Monica
McWilliams.
Consociational Theory and Powersharing in Northern Ireland:

A Response ©
In their responses in the Consociational Theory book, McGarry and O’Leary state that
both Jurg Steiner and I are right in our concern that, in their opening chapter - a
chapter that sets up the whole debate and discussion throughout the book - they fail to
systematically incorporate recognition of culture, or political culture. Their initial
response is to explain that this is the case because “one can only do so much” in an
introductory chapter.1 They go on to point out that they have addressed the limits of
culture as a causal or explanatory factor elsewhere – and point particularly to chapter
6 of Explaining Northern Ireland titled “Fiery Values: Cultural Interpretations”, from
which they quote at considerable length.2 A few statements will give you a sense of
the position or positions adopted. The prime argument is that “Rationalist
interpretations of political violence in Northern Ireland are more compelling than
culturalist accounts” and this can be generalised beyond the case of political
violence.3 Culture as atavism – as a vestige of the past that overrides conditions and
contingencies in the present and determines current practices and mentalities - is
being addressed and dismissed here and, of course, I fully agree with that dismissal of
culture as atavism. However, I will also add that this account of culture as atavism
certainly has nothing to do with my own argument. Towards the end of “Fiery Values:

1 Rupert Tayor (ed), Consociational Theory: McGarry and O’Leary and the
Northern Ireland conflict, p. 362.

2 Consociational Theory, p. 373.

3 J. McGarry & B. O’Leary, Explaining Northern Ireland, p. 262.
1
John Cash -‐ Keynote Plenary Talk – Political Studies Association Conference, 2012
Cultural Interpretations” they make a couple of interesting statements.4 First: “These

statements may appear to be too cool and detached, symptoms of the academic failure
to illuminate the ferocity of ethnic violence”. Not so, they go on. While recognising
evidence of “virulent emotional hatred, prejudice, and ferocious hostility towards
their ethnic enemies displayed by people within Northern Ireland” they “deny”, “that
these emotions, culturally channelled or otherwise, are fundamentally explanatory”.5
Clearly, McGarry and O’Leary are keenly aware of these perverse and divisive
political passions and the political cultures in which they are embedded, even if they
grant them no explanatory value. Second, however, and in a somewhat contradictory
manner, they conclude the chapter by granting that “Northern Ireland is the site of one
fundamental cultural clash: the clash of rival political nationalisms”.6
While a main tendency is discernible in these discussions of culture, the closer you
look the more unclear that discussion becomes. Sometimes, they use a term such as
“recursive”, but, mainly, negative terms connoting “inertia” are relied on. I’m happy
with recursive, by the way. Their detailed discussion doesn’t capture a recursive
process, however. Or else, it only does so implicitly and as unacknowledged. For
instance, their discussion of the ways in which Sinn Fein and the DUP shifted towards
more “moderate” positions is a good example of a change within political culture(s),
even if McGarry and O’Leary fail to recognise it as such.7
In discussing the hunger strikers, they comment that “synthesis between rationalist
and culturalist interpretations … is possible” before invoking their “parsimonious
methodological principle (which) suggests that unique cultural explanations should

4 Explaining Northern Ireland, chapter 6.

5 Explaining Northern Ireland, p. 263. Emphasis mine.
6 Explaining Northern Ireland, p. 264.

7 See their discussion on page 55 of Consociational Theory. Regarding the Sinn
Fein-‐SDLP positions, for instance, they argue: “There is significant evidence that
the policy differences between Sinn Fein and the SDLP have narrowed
considerably since the peace process began, and since the Agreement”. Surely
this is a change in the political culture that Sinn Fein draws on to present itself as
an electable party.

2
only be resorted to in the last instance, rather than in the first instance”.8 Here, I think,
the real issue is looming into view. Reading this reminded me of the epigraph that I
used as an introduction to my book on Northern Ireland, where I quote Kenneth Burke
from A Grammar of Motives. In that text, Burke supports the proper incorporation of
complexity when he writes:
“For if much of service has been got by following Occam’s law to the effect
that ‘entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity,’ equally much of
disservice has arisen through ignoring a contrary law, which we could phrase
correspondingly: entities should not be reduced beyond necessity’” 9
Failing to systematically address political culture in explanations of the troubles and

the peace process is, in my opinion, reducing entities or variables beyond necessity.
I’m sure more about this will arise in discussion.
Perhaps I should indicate that I am neither a consociationalist nor an integrationist, to

use the terms most commonly used in this discussion emanating from the
Consociational Theory book. Rather, my interest has been in analysing Northern
Ireland as a society slowly and somewhat falteringly displacing a political culture in
which the friend-enemy distinction has operated as master signifier – and as the prime
organiser of political identities. Another way of putting this is to say that the history
of Northern Ireland reveals a pattern in which social identities have been consistently
trumped and domesticated by what I term exclusivist political identities organised by
the friend-enemy distinction. If I were to venture into advocacy, I would not advocate
the necessary dispersal or deconstruction of those political identities that have been
most prominent in Northern Ireland. Clearly Unionism, Nationalism, Republicanism
and even Ulster nationalism or particularism, are, for many, deeply embedded in the
institutions, practices and mentalities of everyday life. Again, many citizens, of one
persuasion or another, are passionately attached to one or another ideology. They
identify with one or another ideology and construct an identity in its shadow. The


9 Quoted in J.D. Cash, Identity, Ideology and Conflict; the structuration of politics in
Northern Ireland.
3
shadow of the ideology has fallen upon the citizen-subject, we might say, following
Freud in his account of identification.
What I would advocate, however, is a transformation of political culture(s), such that

political identity no longer trumps social identities. Once that state is achieved, we
could expect a recursive process where social identities, now granted many degrees of
freedom, would feed back into the constitution of political identities. Whether that
leads to integration or multi-culturalism or whatever, becomes an open question.
However, it is only open in so far as the friend-enemy distinction has been displaced,
at least to a significant extent. In that situation an exclusivist political identity, now
lacking predominance, can no longer readily trump and domesticate the potentiality of
social identities. In my characterisation of this process, an alternate political culture,
inclusivist in form, has, to a significant extent, displaced the figure of the enemy and
replaced it with the figure of the adversary. As it happens, while my account is more
developed in this respect, it is consistent with a distinction that McGarry and O’Leary
make, elsewhere, between civic and ethnic versions of Unionism.10
As I argue in my essay in the Consociational Theory book, typically, political cultures

are analysed in terms of their ideational content and their capacity to support
subjective identifications with the values they encode, (as is evident in the debate at
hand between “integrationists” and “accomodationists” concerning identifications
with nation in a deeply divided society.)11 Such an approach characteristically
overlooks the internal differentiation within any political culture; its qualitatively
distinct internal forms for the organization of cognition, affect, evaluation and
identification.12 This oversight is perilous, as the typical focus on ideational


11 “Integrationists” and “accomodationists” are terms used by McGarry and
O’Leary as broad characterisations of the two principal tendencies in the
literature. See Consociational Theory, page 2.

12 In this formulation I have drawn upon the classic account of political culture
developed by Almond and Verba and their focus upon cognitive, affective and
evaluative orientations towards politics. I have added an emphasis upon the
mode of identification with political collectivities, institutions, values and
projects. See G. Almond & S. Verba, The Civic Culture, Boston: Little, Brown, 1965.
4
continuity/discontinuity (for or against Unionism, Nationalism or Republicanism, for

instance: or for or against violence or some prized tradition) - this focus on ideational
continuity/discontinuity can disguise transformations in the mode of such
identifications and the implications this carries for ways in which cognitive, affective
and evaluative orientations towards politics are performed.
In a larger work first published 16 years ago and reprinted in 2010, I turned to both
psychoanalytic theory (mainly Kleinian) and cognitive-developmental theory (as in
Piaget and Kohlberg) to address this critical issue about the internal qualitative
differences within a political culture, understood as an ideological or discursive field
containing repertoires routinely drawn upon by citizen-subjects in their cognitive,
affective and evaluative performance of their political identities.13 Along these
cognitive, affective and evaluative “dimensions” these competing cultural repertoires
establish what counts as proper: the proper way of constructing and feeling towards
power, authority and violence and the proper way of constructing self and other.
Drawing on Kleinian theory, for instance, I distinguished three qualitatively distinct
modes for the performance of political identities. One was the dehumanising mode –
perhaps self-explanatory – and a second I termed persecutory. These are both
variations on the friend-enemy distinction. In Kleinian terms, they construct and relate
to the political and social order through a series of splits and projections and they
construct and relate to the other as, to use the technical term, a part-object. This is a
very basic friend-enemy dichotomy, a split between an idealised self-identity and a
despised or devalued other-identity. Significantly, this form of a political culture
supports a political order that relies on practices such as partition, segregation,
discrimination and exclusion – the very sectarian practices that Rupert Taylor has
highlighted in his chapter.14
The third mode I termed ambivalent – meaning a way of thinking, feeling and relating
that could contain the ambivalence of political experience rather than split political
experience into the idealised part and the despised part, with projection policing the
boundary and projecting negative constructions, emotions and evaluations onto the

13 Identity, Ideology and Conflict
14 See Consociational Theory, chapter 17.
5
other-identity. In the ambivalent mode the political and social field and the identities
that populate it are construed, felt towards and evaluated as complex and multi-
faceted. Identities are respected even if their political orientation is contrary to one’s
own. Now, the handling of complexity, the shifting of perspective and the enactment
of bargaining and compromise becomes possible. The friend-enemy political culture
has been displaced by an adversarial political culture – one that supports
accommodation between adversaries. In a footnote in my essay I quote the “chuckle
brothers”, Paisley and McGuinness, saying as much. Describing their relationship as a
“work-in” and not a “love-in”, Paisley used terms such as “courteous, honest, straight
and forthright” to describe their meetings. McGuinness, for his part, commented that
there has "not been one angry word” and that they have "a cordial, civilised, positive
working relationship" although for most of their lives they had "detested" each other.
And, now, a quote that sums up a lot of my argument and the qualitative distinctions I
have been briefly sketching in. McGuinness: "He (Paisley) clearly showed himself to
be someone who, along with the rest of us, had crossed the Rubicon. We are now in a
new world."15
It is that shift to “a new world” that we are all trying to analyse. My fundamental
point is that unless you take political culture systematically into account, although not
exclusively - rather, recursively, as it were - your analysis will be unduly limited. My
related point is that a devolved regional government organized according to
consociational principles could not alone deliver such a transformation. This is
another area where my argument begins to contest with McGarry and O’Leary’s.
They regard consociational arrangements as necessary, but not sufficient. My own
formulation here is to see consociational arrangements – and the incentives they
generate – as “efficient”, but not strictly “necessary”. This can generate some
confusion, I recognize, but there is a difference. McGarry and O'Leary paraphrase my
“efficient” as “helpful”.16 My own position is that, because of its incentive structure,
which McGarry and O’Leary explain with delicate precision, a phrase like “very
helpful” would be a better paraphrase for “efficient”. I have to wonder about

15 See Consociational Theory, page 246, footnote 18.

16 See Consociational Theory, page 375.
6
necessary, however; that strikes me as a claim too far. Can we really claim that only a
consociational arrangement could have produced a cessation of the troubles?
Although not the sole reason, one reason I raise this is the set of qualifications that
McGarry and O'Leary themselves introduce. They carefully qualify their endorsement
of consociationalism as follows:
“[i]n short, while consociation was and is vital for a political settlement in
Northern Ireland, it had to be supplemented by key bi-national institutions that
squarely addressed the national dimension of the conflict between British
nationalists, known as unionists, and Irish integrationists, known as nationalists.
Consociation was a necessary, but insufficient, requirement for a stable
agreement.”17
Thereafter, they itemise four features of the Good Friday Agreement that all “departed
from traditional consociational accords”; namely the North-South Ministerial Council,
the British-Irish Governmental Conference, recognition of the people of Ireland’s
right to national self-determination and recognition of the principle of consent and the
British-Irish Council.18 Subsequently, with reference to the testing endgame, they
highlight issues of security and, implicitly, of trust in the new security arrangements
regarding policing, decommissioning and paramilitary organizations, amongst
others.19 As they put it: “[i]n Northern Ireland, the rival parties disagreed more
strongly on security questions than on the design of the political institutions”20
Throughout their discussion they recognise the significant, indeed critical, roles
played by “external” actors such as the UK and Irish governments and the United
States and the European Community. This long list of qualifications highlights that a
friend-enemy political culture, once established and instituted, is very difficult to
displace. This is the case because, so I argue, there is an internal, recursive relation



19 See Consociational Theory, page 18 for the full list.

20 Consociational Theory, page 18
7
between political initiatives for change and the political cultures that resist change
and, also, that support change.
Later I go on to raise a central question, at least for me:

What if it is the very fault-lines of political culture that established the need for
those security-enhancing features that “departed from traditional consociational
accords”; such features as the federal and confederal aspects of the Good Friday
Agreement, and the parallel need for a trust-inducing, or at least anxiety-
reducing, handling of security in the endgame period? Indeed, what if the
Assembly, as a consociational device, is not so much a “necessary” component
of a successful transition, but rather an efficient component of such, but only
under propitious political cultural conditions?
Jurg Steiner makes an argument akin to my own in his chapter when he comments
that:
“I miss, however, a systematic treatment of the culture variable, which is a
prominent part of consociational theory. From its very beginning, the theory had
both an institutional and a cultural part”.21
In passing I should note that Steiner takes on board McGarry and O’Leary’s
“necessary but not sufficient” claim. However, the overlooking of political culture is a
major reason why mere institutional arrangements are not sufficient for Steiner.
Steiner references Lijphart’s specification of a “spirit of accommodation” in which

leaders (think of Paisley and McGuinness) “must be willing and capable of bridging
the gaps between the mutually isolated blocs” and goes on to discuss the need for “the
right kind of accommodative culture” as a complement to institutional arrangements.
He points to Iraq as a good example of a consociational arrangement in which “the
right kind of accommodative culture” is lacking. Later, he turns to Habermas and
deliberative democracy as a means of specifying in some detail the critical features of
such an “accommodative culture”.22

21 Consociational Theory, page 196.

22 Consociational Theory, chapter 9.
8
As already outlined, my terminology is different, but runs in parallel. I argue that

political cultures organised by the friend-enemy distinction and its logic of antithesis
and exclusion disfigured the history of Northern Ireland and the lives of its citizens
over great swathes of time and place since 1920, and, of course, before then as well. (I
believe McGarry and O’Leary agree here, at least in part; that is they agree that the
conflict itself is a product of conflicting political cultures and the practices and
mentalities they encode and organise. So political culture is in play as a source of the
troubles. In their response to my essay they also point to their own work on “the local
dominance of friend-enemy politics (to use Schmittian expressions) in Ulster from the
colonial era”.) 23
Throughout that history, in many significant institutions and contexts it was “proper”
to construct the field of political identities and relations by drawing from the
ideological repertoire of common-sense understandings regarding self and other, (to
draw) those presumptions and constructions that were organised by the friend-enemy
distinction and its entailed set of exclusivist mentalities and practices. However – and
this is a significant claim - if the friend-enemy distinction operated as the master
signifier of political identity, it was always shadowed by an alternative, adversarial
form. These alternate forms of political culture(s), adversarial yet inclusivist,
recurrently claimed propriety; that is competed to establish themselves as the proper
set of mentalities and practices drawn upon for the organisation of political identities
and relations. As outlined earlier, crucial features of this alternate form of political
culture are the manner in which it supports negotiation and compromise –what we
could also term, following Steiner, “deliberation”. Typically, of course, throughout
the history of Northern Ireland the adversarial culture was defeated as the friend-
enemy political culture re-asserted its predominance.
So, the leading issue is how to achieve a political culture that supports and promotes a
spirit of accommodation. McGarry and O'Leary agree with this aspect of my
argument when they comment:

23 Consociational Theory, p. 372. The reference is to their book The Politics of
Antagonism: Understanding Northern Ireland. Here, the sub-‐title is cited as
Explaining Northern Ireland.
9
'We have no quarrel with one of these (Cash’s) formulations, namely

"The ultimate issue under consideration within the debates about
consociationalism is change at the level of political identities and within
political cultures; can the friend-enemy discourse be tamed and domesticated
through elite-level bargaining or can it be displaced?' Cash suggests that
Northern Ireland has moved from a friend-enemy political culture to an
adversarial political culture (and that this is a good thing). We would say, by
contrast, that Northern Ireland is moving from an adversarial political culture,
associated with Westminster-style majoritarian institutions, toward a more
accomodationist culture, based on consensual and consociational
institutions (and that this is a good thing).'24
I won't dwell on the little shift in formulations between the two parallel sentences;
from "has moved" in their account of my account to "is moving" in their own case.
Suffice to say that in my chapter and elsewhere I emphasise that this movement has a
long history and is a fraught process that is working itself out piece-meal, with
reversals and within a restricted, but hopefully expanding, scope. Indeed, my
discussion is less totalising than theirs in this respect, I would argue. I also note that in
Northern Ireland mere domestication through elite-level bargaining could never
succeed, for the very reason that the consociational institutions could never be total
institutions, due to their status as devolved or subordinate institutions of government.
The resulting, inevitable exposure to the routines of adversarial politics emanating
from both British and Irish institutions, and their interaction with local democratic
traditions and initiatives, has created a situation that both requires and promotes
displacement (throughout the society), rather than domestication (solely by political
elites), of the friend-enemy distinction as master signifier.
Let me dwell on one aspect of this statement by McGarry and O'Leary What are we to
make of their statement:
"We would say, by contrast, that Northern Ireland is moving from
an adversarial political culture, associated with Westminster-style majoritarian

24 Consociational Theory, page 372.
10
institutions, toward a more accomodationist culture, based on consensual and

consociational institutions".
Does anyone recognize the troubles as well-described by that phrasing,
“an adversarial political culture, associated with Westminster-style majoritarian
institutions”? It seems to me that this is quite symptomatic of the way in which
political culture is discounted by McGarry and O'Leary, while political institutions by
themselves are given undue, effectively sole primacy. Their rationalist,
methodological principle
- “Resort to political culture as explanatory only in the last instance” 25 –
effectively screens out what C. Wright Mills termed “the sociological imagination”.
We could extend this to the “anthropological imagination”, which has a long history
in Northern Ireland and has rendered complex accounts of social institutions and
processes marked by the friend-enemy distinction.
In conclusion, I hope it is clear that I am discussing a recursive, reiterative process of

structuration in which institutions and cultures are internally related. Hence my
argument that a consociational institution accompanied by those several supplements
and departures “from traditional consociational accords” that McGarry and O’Leary
regard as also “necessary”, further requires, as well, Lijphart’s “spirit of
accommodation” or my “propitious political cultural conditions”.
John Cash

25 My paraphrase.
11

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John

Consociational Theory and Powersharing in Northern Ireland:

Northern Ireland conflict, p. 362.

Cultural Interpretations” they make a couple of interesting statements.4 First: “These

Failing to systematically address political culture in explanations of the troubles and

Perhaps I should indicate that I am neither a consociationalist nor an integrationist, to

What I would advocate, however, is a transformation of political culture(s), such that

As I argue in my essay in the Consociational Theory book, typically, political cultures

continuity/discontinuity (for or against Unionism, Nationalism or Republicanism, for

Later I go on to raise a central question, at least for me:

Steiner references Lijphart’s specification of a “spirit of accommodation” in which

As already outlined, my terminology is different, but runs in parallel. I argue that

'We have no quarrel with one of these (Cash’s) formulations, namely

institutions, toward a more accomodationist culture, based on consensual and

In conclusion, I hope it is clear that I am discussing a recursive, reiterative process of

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