Abstract
Using data gathered from interviews with political journalists, Government Information Officers and Special Advisers (SpAds), this chapter examines the role of these communication elites in Northern Ireland’s mandatory consociational democracy. In particular, we consider how their communication roles are affected by the consociational design of the Northern Ireland government, and how this in turn affects the communication of departmental and executive policy in Northern Ireland. While in some ways, these actors function similarly to those working elsewhere in Westminster model democracies, this political context adds complexity to their roles. For example, on the one hand, SpAds promote partisan issues to the media and reinforce ‘party fiefdoms’; on the other, they play an important diplomatic role in inter-party negotiation and conflict resolution between the five ideologically opposed parties in government. We suggest that an analysis of the government communication sphere provides a good indication of the kinds of issues and inherent contradictions which exist in post-conflict consociational democracies, meaning that scholars may gain insight into the functioning of these institutions by examining the communicative role and relationships of political communication elites.
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Notes
- 1.
Since the writing of this paper, the Northern Ireland government has collapsed and elections to the new legislature are scheduled for 2 March 2017—see the following link for an overview of the events leading to this and to new elections: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-38612860.
- 2.
As with the other ‘nations’ in the UK (Scotland and Wales ) the Labour government in 1998 enacted legislation to devolve power over most domestic political decision-making to the national/regional legislature. The UK government did reserve power over several matters; foreign policy, defence and macro-economic policy.
- 3.
Since the writing of this paper, provision has been made for an official opposition within the Assembly and an official opposition now exists; however, the constitutional arrangement with its consociational guarantees remains in place.
- 4.
For a fuller explanation, see Roche, J. and Barton, B. (2013) (eds) The Northern Ireland Question: Myth and Reality. Tonbridge: Wordzworth.
- 5.
- 6.
In effect this means that the largest party in the Assembly gets ‘first pick’ of which departments to manage, with the next largest getting second pick, and so on.
- 7.
Since the time of data collection, the number of government departments in Northern Ireland has been reduced from 12 to 9.
- 8.
Our data is gathered before this period (2012–2013).
- 9.
Now called the Executive Office.
- 10.
As Horowitz (2014, pp. 16–17) notes: “The most likely route to serious change for a stalled consociation lies in some unpredictable crisis not necessarily related to the conflict that produced the consociational regime – a shock that makes stalemate intolerable, neutralizes minority objections, and renders quick action necessary. This is typical of agenda-setting events, and it provides an advantage to those who have solutions ready and are merely waiting for problems to develop that can make their solutions attractive. [However] Like most events that trigger major institutional changes, this kind of event may have too much urgency to allow much deliberation .”
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Rice, C., Somerville, I. (2018). Dialogue, Democracy and Government Communication: Consociationalism in Northern Ireland. In: Jakala, M., Kuzu, D., Qvortrup, M. (eds) Consociationalism and Power-Sharing in Europe. International Political Theory. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67098-0_6
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