John Mcgarry
Biographic Data
| ID | 213620 |
|---|---|
| NAME | John Mcgarry |
| GIVEN NAMES | John |
| FAMILY NAME | Mcgarry |
| SIGNATURE | MCGARRY J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Queen's University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5590-7115 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 63 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 488 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 56 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 7 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1988 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
The Politics of Domination: Taking, Keeping, and Losing Control over Other Peoples
“The Politics of Domination” examines the subordination and repression of one or more peoples by another people and its elites. It is focused less on historic cases of imperialism and colonialism than on recent or current cases within states and autonomous regions. Domination is seen as an intentional strategy, not an unintended consequence of a dominant people’s numbers or power. Correspondingly, the book identifies domination regimes by the “st…
The Politics of Domination: A Response to Agarin, Guelke, Lustick, and Yehuda
I am grateful to Ethnopolitics for hosting this symposium on The Politics of Domination, and particularly to the other participants for their willingness to contribute. All the participants make po
Explaining the Politics of Domination
Governing elites have long used their preferred ethnic community, normally the one they belong to, to dominate other communities. In such cases, they organise their community against its rivals and...
Systemic Racism in South Africa: Humanity Lost
The Attorney General and contempt of court – some political and constitutional concerns
The Attorney General for England and Wales is the Government's Senior Law Officer who, inter alia, initiates certain kinds of legal proceedings. She is also a politician: a member of the House of Commons or the House of Lords and appointed to Government by the Prime Minister. This paper considers the Attorney General's role in initiating contempt proceedings against fellow politicians. I detail a number of cases where politicians have been involv…
Disguising ethnic domination as accommodation or integration
This article examines how and why regimes that dominate particular ethnic communities on behalf of a dominant one disguise themselves by claiming to practice accommodation (consociational power-sharing and territorial autonomy) or integration (equal citizenship with respect for private cultural differences). It also explains how to distinguish authentic accommodation and integration from the sham forms used by these regimes. The article seeks to …
The UN in 21st Century Cyprus: Meditration, Mediation-Lite and Beyond
For decades, the UN has failed to mediate a settlement in Cyprus because of a general and profound weakness: it is unable, outside of unity and resolve in the Security Council, to offer direct incentives to parties in conflict that would shape their calculus towards conflict resolution, or to control the actions of third parties in a way that would incentivize conflict resolution or prevent disincentives. In the resulting vacuum, the prospects fo…
A Consociationalist Response
It is gratifying to receive such thoughtful responses to our work from three distinguished commentators. Allison and I are also grateful to the editors of Ethnopolitics for hosting this symposium.O
Classical Consociational Theory and Recent Consociational Performance
Lijphart’s classical consociational theory, developed between the 1960s and 1975, was based largely on the experience of four western European cases. He argued that the success of consociations depended on the preparedness and ability of elites to cooperate, and that the prospects for success were facilitated by the presence of certain historical and structural factors, including a tradition of accommodation and a “multiple balance of power”. In …
Connor's communist control polities: Why ethno‐federalism does not explain the break‐up of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia
When the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia broke apart, several prominent academics argued that this was because they were federations (or ‘ethno‐federations’ as they put it). This article uses Walker Connor's magnum opus on Marxist–Leninist strategy and practice in communist states to show the flaws in these analyses. Connor's work shows that it is more plausible to link the fate of the three communist states to their anti‐federalist p…
Power-Sharing: Empirical and Normative Challenges
Centripetalism, Consociationalism and Cyprus: The “Adoptability” Question
Most assessments of power-sharing institutions focus on their functionality, that is, on their prospects for delivering peace, stability, and prosperity. This article focuses instead on the prior question of “adoptability,” that is, on whether particular power-sharing institutions can be accepted (agreed to) in the first place. While the adoptability question is scarcely touched on in the academic literature, it is just as important as the functi…
Politics of Ethnic Conflict Regulation: Case Studies of Protracted Ethnic Conflicts
Why Northern Ireland’s Institutions Need Stability
Northern Ireland’s consociational institutions were reviewed by a committee of its Assembly in 2012–13. The arguments of both critics and exponents of the arrangements are of general interest to scholars of comparative politics, power-sharing and constitutional design. The authors of this article review the debates and evidence on the d’Hondt rule of executive formation, political designation, the likely impact of changing district magnitudes for…
Territorial Pluralism: Managing Difference in Multinational States
Territorial pluralism is a form of political autonomy designed to accommodate national, ethnic, or linguistic differences within a state. It has the potential to provide for the peaceful, democratic, and just management of difference. But given traditional concerns about state sovereignty, nation-building, and unity, how realistic is it to expect that a state’s authorities will agree to recognize and empower distinct substate communities? Territo…
Introduction: Affinity and divergence
The underlying presumption of a reconstruction the notion of the juridico-political is organized into four analytical parts. Each part concentrates upon a particularly indicative element, within the notion of the juridico-political, through which to trace a theoretical process of reconstruction and, thus, specific aspects of affinity and divergence. The pertinence arises, in the first path of reflection, through the consideration of the concept o…
The Foundation of the Juridico-Political: Concept Formation in Hans Kelsen and Max Weber
Hans Kelsen and Max Weber are conventionally understood as initiators not only of two distinct and opposing processes of concept formation, but also of two discrete and contrasting theoretical frameworks for the study of law. The Foundation of the Juridical-Political: Concept Formation in Hans Kelsen and Max Weber places the conventional understanding of the theoretical relationship between the work of Kelsen and Weber into question. Focusing on …
The Reconstruction of the Juridico-Political: Affinity and Divergence in Hans Kelsen and Max Weber
Hans Kelsen and Max Weber are conventionally understood as the original proponents of two distinct and opposed processes of concept formation generating two separate and contrasting theoretical frameworks for the study of law. The Reconstruction of the Juridico-Political: Affinity and Divergence in Hans Kelsen and Max Weber contests the conventional understanding of the theoretical relationship between Kelsen’s legal positivism and Weber’s sociol…
Reconstruction of the Juridico-Political: Affinity and Divergence in Hans Kelsen and Max Weber
Power-Sharing Executives: Consociational and Centripetal Formulae and the Case of Northern Ireland
Power-sharing coalitions in deeply divided places can take centripetal or consociational forms. Respectively, these aim to foster moderation and inclusivity by restricting coalitions to moderate parties or proportionately to incorporate the main political forces. Using the case of Northern Ireland (1973–2015), this article assesses the merits of a particular consociational coalition, based on sequential and proportional allocation rules, by contr…
Reconstruction of the Juridico-Political: Affinity and Divergence in Hans Kelsen and Max Weber
Books by our Readers
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Is Presidentialism Necessarily Non-collegial
Ulrike Theuerkauf believes that ethnically diverse societies are better served by parliamentarianism than by presidentialism. This is indeed the generally accepted view in comparative political sci
Must Pluri-national Federations Fail
This article questions the widely held assumption that pluri-national federations are likely to break down or break apart. It shows that the case against pluri-national federalism needs to be substantively qualified, and then outlines the conditions that facilitate successful pluri-national federations. The argument is preliminary in nature, but suggests a more balanced and nuanced account of the durability of pluri-national federations than is a…
Consociational Theory and Peace Agreements in Pluri-National Places: Northern Ireland and Other Cases
This paper examines consociational theory, primarily as developed by Arend Lijphart,1 and its relevance in the context of pluri-national places. A pluri-national place has more than one mobilized national community and can be a state, a place within a state, or a place that crosses state borders. Some of its people may identify with no nation, preferring, perhaps, to identify with groups that cross-cut national lines, or they may identify with mo…
The Northern Ireland Conflict: Consociational Engagements
The book collects some of the major essays, past and new, of two of the leading authorities on the Northern Ireland conflict. The essays cover a wide range of topics, from the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, and the management of Northern Ireland by successive Labour and Conservative governments between 1974 and 1997, to an analysis of the 1998 Agreement, and the issues of policing and human rights reform in the aftermath of that agreement. The bo…
Consociational Theory, Northern Ireland's Conflict, and its Agreement. Part 1: What Consociationalists Can Learn from Northern Ireland
In the first of two articles the authors show what consociational theory may learn from the case of Northern Ireland, namely, the importance of external agencies in making and implementing consociational settlements, the relations between consociational and self-determination settlements, the ‘complexity’ of internal settlements, the merits of STV (PR) in electoral arrangements, innovations in using proportional representation decision rules to a…
Consociational Theory, Northern Ireland's Conflict, and its Agreement 2.-What Critics of Consociation Can Learn from Northern Ireland
In the second of two articles the authors show what integrationist critics of consociational theory can learn from the case of Northern Ireland, namely, that consociation may be more realistic than integration, that a ‘grand coalition’ may have more virtue than the ‘minimum-winning’ variety, that consociations can be both liberal and democratic, and that PR-STV has considerable advantages over integrationists’ preferred electoral system, the Alte…
Demographic engineering: The State-Directed Movement of Ethnic Groups as a Technique of Conflict Regulation
In this article I examine the state-directed movement of ethnic groups. Such movements include the settlement of majority groups in peripheral regions inhabited by minorities, the relocation of minority groups within the state, and the expulsion of minorities from the state. An important theme of the article is that, while such policies have been implemented for centuries, modern state-directed movements are closely linked to the growth of nation…
Must Pluri-national Federations Fail
This article questions the widely held assumption that pluri-national federations are likely to break down or break apart. It shows that the case against pluri-national federalism needs to be substantively qualified, and then outlines the conditions that facilitate successful pluri-national federations. The argument is preliminary in nature, but suggests a more balanced and nuanced account of the durability of pluri-national federations than is a…
Political Settlements in Northern Ireland and South Africa
The article examines comparisons between Northern Ireland's recent peace process and agreement and similar developments in South Africa. On the one hand, the analogy has been used to explain Northern Ireland's conflict and the type of prescription it requires. On the other, it has been employed to suggest ways in which agreement might be achieved in Northern Ireland, or, more recently, why agreement has been reached. These uses of the analogy ign…
Five fallacies: Northern Ireland and the liabilities of liberalism
Five fallacies in the misinterpretation of conflict in Northern Ireland, which are characteristic of liberal readings of ethno-national conflicts, are identified and criticized in this article: (i) blaming the conflict on extremist political and religious élites; (ii) assuming that the conflict has fundamental economic and material foundations; (iii) assuming that the conflict flows from archaic religious or non-religious political cultures; (iv)…
Power-Sharing Executives: Consociational and Centripetal Formulae and the Case of Northern Ireland
Power-sharing coalitions in deeply divided places can take centripetal or consociational forms. Respectively, these aim to foster moderation and inclusivity by restricting coalitions to moderate parties or proportionately to incorporate the main political forces. Using the case of Northern Ireland (1973–2015), this article assesses the merits of a particular consociational coalition, based on sequential and proportional allocation rules, by contr…
Centripetalism, Consociationalism and Cyprus: The “Adoptability” Question
Most assessments of power-sharing institutions focus on their functionality, that is, on their prospects for delivering peace, stability, and prosperity. This article focuses instead on the prior question of “adoptability,” that is, on whether particular power-sharing institutions can be accepted (agreed to) in the first place. While the adoptability question is scarcely touched on in the academic literature, it is just as important as the functi…
Why Northern Ireland’s Institutions Need Stability
Northern Ireland’s consociational institutions were reviewed by a committee of its Assembly in 2012–13. The arguments of both critics and exponents of the arrangements are of general interest to scholars of comparative politics, power-sharing and constitutional design. The authors of this article review the debates and evidence on the d’Hondt rule of executive formation, political designation, the likely impact of changing district magnitudes for…
Asymmetry in Federations, Federacies and Unitary States
Democracy’ in Northern Ireland: Experiments in self–rule from the Protestant Ascendancy to the Good Friday Agreement
Pierre van den Berghe has argued that democracy in divided societies can take five different forms: Herrenvolk democracy, ethnic democracy, liberal democracy, multicultural democracy and consociational democracy. My article argues that each of van den Berghe’s five versions of democracy, or relatives of them, has been experimented with in pre–partition Ireland and Northern Ireland. While all have clear limits, the one that is most suited to North…
The Political Regulation of National and Ethnic Conflict
Stabilising Northern Ireland's Agreement
A Consociationalist Response
It is gratifying to receive such thoughtful responses to our work from three distinguished commentators. Allison and I are also grateful to the editors of Ethnopolitics for hosting this symposium.O
Police reform in Northern Ireland
2000). Police reform in Northern Ireland. Irish Political Studies: Vol. 15, No. 1, pp. 173-182
The Anglo‐irish Agreement and the Prospects for Power Sharing in Northern Ireland
Explaining ethnonationalism: The flaws in Western thinking
The first half of this article presents five related explanations of ethnonational conflict which flow from western political thought, particularly from liberalism, utilitarianism and Marxism. These explanations are that ethnonational conflict is: related to social primitiveness, promoted by social segregation, caused by manipulative self‐interested elites, rooted in material interests, and caused by discrimination. The second half of the article…
The UN in 21st Century Cyprus: Meditration, Mediation-Lite and Beyond
For decades, the UN has failed to mediate a settlement in Cyprus because of a general and profound weakness: it is unable, outside of unity and resolve in the Security Council, to offer direct incentives to parties in conflict that would shape their calculus towards conflict resolution, or to control the actions of third parties in a way that would incentivize conflict resolution or prevent disincentives. In the resulting vacuum, the prospects fo…
The prospects for consociational democracy in South Africa
(1989). The prospects for consociational democracy in South Africa. The Journal of Commonwealth & Comparative Politics: Vol. 27, No. 1, pp. 3-22
Classical Consociational Theory and Recent Consociational Performance
Lijphart’s classical consociational theory, developed between the 1960s and 1975, was based largely on the experience of four western European cases. He argued that the success of consociations depended on the preparedness and ability of elites to cooperate, and that the prospects for success were facilitated by the presence of certain historical and structural factors, including a tradition of accommodation and a “multiple balance of power”. In …
Disguising ethnic domination as accommodation or integration
This article examines how and why regimes that dominate particular ethnic communities on behalf of a dominant one disguise themselves by claiming to practice accommodation (consociational power-sharing and territorial autonomy) or integration (equal citizenship with respect for private cultural differences). It also explains how to distinguish authentic accommodation and integration from the sham forms used by these regimes. The article seeks to …
Connor's communist control polities: Why ethno‐federalism does not explain the break‐up of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia
When the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia broke apart, several prominent academics argued that this was because they were federations (or ‘ethno‐federations’ as they put it). This article uses Walker Connor's magnum opus on Marxist–Leninist strategy and practice in communist states to show the flaws in these analyses. Connor's work shows that it is more plausible to link the fate of the three communist states to their anti‐federalist p…
Proving our points on Northern Ireland (and giving reading lessons to Dr. Dixon)
Is Presidentialism Necessarily Non-collegial
Ulrike Theuerkauf believes that ethnically diverse societies are better served by parliamentarianism than by presidentialism. This is indeed the generally accepted view in comparative political sci
The Anglo‐irish Agreement and the Prospects for Power Sharing in Northern Ireland
The prospects for consociational democracy in South Africa
(1989). The prospects for consociational democracy in South Africa. The Journal of Commonwealth & Comparative Politics: Vol. 27, No. 1, pp. 3-22
The Political Regulation of National and Ethnic Conflict
Explaining ethnonationalism: The flaws in Western thinking
The first half of this article presents five related explanations of ethnonational conflict which flow from western political thought, particularly from liberalism, utilitarianism and Marxism. These explanations are that ethnonational conflict is: related to social primitiveness, promoted by social segregation, caused by manipulative self‐interested elites, rooted in material interests, and caused by discrimination. The second half of the article…
Five fallacies: Northern Ireland and the liabilities of liberalism
Five fallacies in the misinterpretation of conflict in Northern Ireland, which are characteristic of liberal readings of ethno-national conflicts, are identified and criticized in this article: (i) blaming the conflict on extremist political and religious élites; (ii) assuming that the conflict has fundamental economic and material foundations; (iii) assuming that the conflict flows from archaic religious or non-religious political cultures; (iv)…
Proving our points on Northern Ireland (and giving reading lessons to Dr. Dixon)
The Problems with Partition
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Political Settlements in Northern Ireland and South Africa
The article examines comparisons between Northern Ireland's recent peace process and agreement and similar developments in South Africa. On the one hand, the analogy has been used to explain Northern Ireland's conflict and the type of prescription it requires. On the other, it has been employed to suggest ways in which agreement might be achieved in Northern Ireland, or, more recently, why agreement has been reached. These uses of the analogy ign…
Demographic engineering: The State-Directed Movement of Ethnic Groups as a Technique of Conflict Regulation
In this article I examine the state-directed movement of ethnic groups. Such movements include the settlement of majority groups in peripheral regions inhabited by minorities, the relocation of minority groups within the state, and the expulsion of minorities from the state. An important theme of the article is that, while such policies have been implemented for centuries, modern state-directed movements are closely linked to the growth of nation…
Police reform in Northern Ireland
2000). Police reform in Northern Ireland. Irish Political Studies: Vol. 15, No. 1, pp. 173-182
Minority nationalism and the changing international order
Globalization, European Integration, and the Northern Ireland Conflict
Examines the impact of globalization and EU integration on the Northern Ireland conflict and its resolution. While they have not diluted the identities of opposing factions, or the intensity of their political agendas, they have greatly increased the opportunities for effective diplomacy on the part of national government. The Anglo‐Irish cooperation that ultimately produced the Good Friday Agreement may have been made easier as a result of sover…
Northern Ireland, Civic Nationalism, and the Good Friday Agreement
This chapter takes issue with what has been described as the integrationist, nation‐building, or civic nationalist approach to the Northern Ireland conflict. It shows that the problem with this approach is that there are two national communities in Northern Ireland, and no sign that either of them is prepared to accept the other's identity or state. The chapter argues that what Northern Ireland needs are political institutions, like those in the …
Northern Ireland and the Divided World: Post-Agreement Northern Ireland in Comparative Perspective
Written by a leading group of scholars in the field, this unique volume examines post‐Agreement Northern Ireland from a comparative perspective. It shatters the myth that Northern Ireland is ‘a place apart’ – its conflict the result of peculiarly local circumstances. The book is divided into two sections. The first includes theoretical chapters that centre on the concepts of consociationalism, social transformation, and integrationism. The second…
Northern Ireland and the divided world: The Northern Ireland conflict and the Good Friday Agreement in comparative perspective
Introduction: The Comparable Northern Ireland PART ONE: GENERAL AND THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES 2. Northern Ireland: Consociation or Social Transformation? 3. Comparative Political Science and the British-Irish Agreement 4. Northern Ireland's Agreement: Clear, Consociational and Risky 5. Northern Ireland, Civic Nationalism and the Good Friday Agreement 6. Unsung Heroes? The role of peace and conflict resolution organisations in the Northern Ireland …
Democracy’ in Northern Ireland: Experiments in self–rule from the Protestant Ascendancy to the Good Friday Agreement
Pierre van den Berghe has argued that democracy in divided societies can take five different forms: Herrenvolk democracy, ethnic democracy, liberal democracy, multicultural democracy and consociational democracy. My article argues that each of van den Berghe’s five versions of democracy, or relatives of them, has been experimented with in pre–partition Ireland and Northern Ireland. While all have clear limits, the one that is most suited to North…
Political Settlements in Northern Ireland and South Africa
The chapter offers a comparative evaluation of Northern Ireland's Agreement and the one reached in South Africa, and underlines the differences between them. It argues that the analogy between Northern Ireland and South Africa should be read in different ways than it is by nationalist and unionist integrationists, and by social transformationists. It explains that the Northern Ireland conflict has important exogenous dimensions that are missing i…
Five Fallacies: Northern Ireland and the Liabilities of Liberalism
This chapter criticizes five popular arguments central to the thinking of liberal integrationists: (i) extremist political and religious elites are responsible for conflicts; (ii) conflicts have fundamental economic and material foundations; (iii) conflicts flow from archaic religious and non-religious political cultures; (iv) segregation is the key social and structural cause of conflict; and (v) individual discrimination is the primary motor of…
The Nature of the Agreement
The chapter provides a comprehensive constitutional and political evaluation of the Agreement of 1998. It explains that the Agreement is consistent with the four central pillars of consociational democracy, but it also addressed the self-determination dispute at the heart of the conflict through a number of complex federal and confederal elements, involving both parts of Ireland, and Ireland and Great Britain. The chapter has an appendix which ex…
The Conservative Stewardship of Northern Ireland 1979–97: Sound-bottomed Contradictions or Slow Learning?
The chapter gives an evaluation of the inconsistencies in the conservatives' approach to Northern Ireland under Prime ministers Thatcher and Major. It applauds the Conservatives eventual recognition that intergovernmental cooperation with Dublin was essential to the successful management of the conflict - even if it took some ministers nearly two decades to relearn what Conservative prime minister Heath had appreciated in 1973.
Globalization, European Integration, and the Northern Ireland Conflict
The chapter examines the effect of a number of changes in the international order on the Northern Ireland conflict. Its central argument is that while globalization and European integration have done little to transform Northern Ireland's rival identities in the way that some integrationists hope or claim, the internationalisation of Northern Ireland's conflict has had important and positive effects on conflict management.
The Protection of Human Rights under the Belfast Agreement
The chapter addresses a fundamental aspect of Northern Ireland's Agreement: the need to institutionalise rights protections. While a Bill of Rights should uphold traditional liberal norms of freedom and individual equality, an appropriately designed Bill also needs to entrench the basic political compromise at the heart of the Agreement. It should protect (or at least not endanger) the principles of inclusive power-sharing; proportionality; commu…
The Limits to Coercive Consociationalism in Northern Ireland
The chapter, initially published in 1989, reviews efforts by the UK and Irish governments to achieve a settlement in Northern Ireland during the late 1980s. It bears the impress of its time; normatively consociational, but somewhat bleak in its assessments. It contains an appraisal of constitutional options facing policymakers.
Comparing Northern Ireland
The chapter discusses the use of the comparative method by Northern Ireland's political partisans and academics. It shows how analogies with other conflicts have been used by partisans to further their political agendas. These analogies are tied to important international norms, and their use by Northern Ireland's politicians are an attempt to influence international opinion, as well as cement group solidarity. The second part of the chapter summ…
The Politics of Policing Reform in Northern Ireland
This chapter builds on the arguments presented in John McGarry and Brendan O'Leary, Policing Northern Ireland: Proposals for a New Start (Belfast: Blackstaff 1999), arguments that were widely seen as influencing the findings of the Independent Commission on Policing (the Patten Commission). The chapter analyses the Commission's report and the controversy surrounding its implementation by Secretary of State Peter Mandleson. It discusses the relati…
Political science (51 works) · Law (47 works) · Sociology (47 works) · Politics (39 works) · Irish and British Studies (28 works) · Law (26 works) · Political economy (24 works) · Northern ireland (20 works) · Ethnology (19 works) · Economics (15 works)