Week 5: Democracy in Divided Societies PDF

Week 5: Democracy in Divided Societies PROF. NIALL Ó DOCH ARTAIGH 1.Government in a Divided Society: The Good Friday Agreement and the Northern Ireland Executive Parliament Buildings, Stormont (opened in 1932) Today we will cover 1. Legitimacy, order & the tyranny of the majority 2. T...

Week 5: Democracy in Divided Societies PROF. NIALL Ó DOCH ARTAIGH 1.Government in a Divided Society: The Good Friday Agreement and the Northern Ireland Executive Parliament Buildings, Stormont (opened in 1932) Today we will cover 1. Legitimacy, order & the tyranny of the majority 2. The origins of Northern Ireland: Sovereignty, Legitimacy, and Partition 3. The Good Friday Agreement of 1998 4. The Northern Ireland Executive 5. Strand Two: The North-South Dimension Reading Required reading Coakley, John (2018) Ch.13 Northern Ireland and the British dimension. In Coakley and Gallagher Politics in the Republic of Ireland, 6th edition. The first half of the chapter provides useful background. The material we focus on begins on page 332. Additional readings Nagle, John (2018). Between conflict and peace: An analysis of the complex consequences of the Good Friday Agreement. Parliamentary Affairs, 71(2), 395-416. O'Leary, Brendan (2019) Ch. 3.5 The Making, Meaning(s), and Tasks of the 1998 Agreement. In his A Treatise on Northern Ireland, Vol. 3. Oxford University Press. Especially pp.178-204; 207-210; 216-219. 1. Legitimacy, order & the tyranny of the majority The problem of order ◦ How are different opinions, preferences and interests reconciled ◦ …to the degree necessary to maintain social order ◦ Given our conflicting interests and preferences why do societies not collapse into a ‘war of all against all’ (Hobbes 1651) ◦ A key question for political and social theorists A monopoly of coercion “A state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory” Max Weber (1921) Economy and Society  ◦ ‘The belief that a particular political order is just and valid’ Legitimacy ◦ ‘The acceptability or appropriateness of a ruler or political regime to its members’ “the strongest is never strong enough to be master, unless he transforms strength into right and obedience into duty” Rousseau 1762, The Social Contract Nationalism, democracy, and legitimacy ◦ Democracy is not the same as legitimacy: it is one way to legitimise rule ◦ An unelected monarchy might have high levels of legitimacy (traditional legitimation) ◦ A dictatorship might have high levels of legitimacy (legitimated by economic growth) ◦ Democracy is not the only way for a regime to legitimate itself – ie to convince the ruled that the political order is just and valid Leinster House The limits of democratic legitimacy ”The tyranny of the majority” John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859 Permanent exclusion of minorities The danger of permanent exclusion in a democracy Situations in which majority groups "… appear to have gained power for the indefinite future... were responsible for much of the instability in the post-colonial world in the first ten years of independence" Don Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, p.629 Nationalist legitimacy ‘nationalism has been, and remains, the dominant mode of political legitimacy and collective subjectivity in the modern era’ Malešević, S. (2019) Grounded Nationalisms: a Sociological Analysis. Cambridge University Press. Sidebar: Descriptive Legitimacy and Normative legitimacy This lecture is concerned only with descriptive legitimacy: how rulers try to show that their rule is rightful and whether people regard their rulers as legitimate or not. There is also a normative concept of political legitimacy. Debates on normative legitimacy ask the question: what gives a state the right to rule and the right to compel people to obey. It's concerned with what is right and what is wrong. It is not necessary to know anything about normative legitimacy for the purposes of this lecture but if you are interested in learning more you will find a detailed discussion here: Peter, Fabienne, "Political Legitimacy", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.),