Consociation and Self-Determination Disputes: The Evidence from Northern Ireland and Other Recent Cases

Abstract

This chapter examines the relevance of Arend Lijphart’s theory of consociation to self-determination disputes. A self-determination dispute is an empirically testable phenomenon that revolves around discrete national identities and rival nationalist movements. The division over nationality is the key political division. The region’s dominant political parties, and its popular civic associations, are nationalist in character and support the classical political goals of self-determination: autonomy, with or without links to national kin in other states, or independence, or irredentism. A self-determination dispute does not suggest that everyone in the region is a nationalist, or embraces nationalism with the same intensity. It does not imply that national identities are fixed, although it suggests they are durable and unlikely to fuse, assimilate, or dissolve into one common identity within the foreseeable future. Contrary to what is suggested by the title of this volume, self-determination disputes are ubiquitous, occurring within and throughout each continent.