Deliberating the reform of power-sharing institutions: Evidence from a mini-public in Northern Ireland

Consociational governing arrangements are often prescribed for deeply divided societies. The Belfast/Good Friday Agreement of 1998 established devolved power-sharing institutions in Northern Ireland, helping to bring to an end three decades of ethno-national conflict. While many recognise the Agreement’s contribution to the fundamental goal of peace, devolved power-sharing in Northern Ireland has been far from a case study of good governance. The institutions have proven vulnerable to collapse on multiple occasions and consequential policy outputs remain scarce. More than two decades since their creation, survey evidence shows that there is appetite among citizens from across the political spectrum for the institutions to be reformed in some way. However, it is less clear what specific reforms the public would like to see introduced and, crucially, whether potential reforms are likely to receive cross-community support. In this paper, we present evidence from a deliberative mini-public held in Northern Ireland in 2022. After receiving information from independent experts about the nature of the current system and different ways in which it may be reformed, namely towards a voluntary coalition or qualified voluntary coalition model, a diverse sample of citizens was asked to discuss and weigh up the main options. We use pre- and post-surveys to demonstrate the ways in which citizens’ attitudes towards different models of power-sharing change or stay the same after learning about and discussing the issues. This quantitative evidence is supplemented with qualitative data from small-group discussions to help identify the reasons underlying participants’ views. The findings will help to inform the contemporary debate about institutional reform in Northern Ireland, as well as deepen our understanding more generally of the nature of public attitudes towards established consociational arrangements.