North needs to move beyond enforced power-sharing
Some 17 years since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement are these political structures preventing “normal” politics?
Enforced power-sharing has had the unintended consequence of corrupting the very notion of democracy. Under the D’Hondt model, the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive have become a permanent grand coalition government. Everybody is in government and nobody is in opposition.
The principle of mutual consent established under the 1998 Good Friday Agreement means that political parties in the North must share power. All political parties have access to power because all decisions must ...
