Veto Rights and Vital Interests: Formal and Informal Veto Rules for Minority Representation in Deeply Divided Societies

ABSTRACT

In consociational theory, veto rights are a primary means by which ethnic groups defend their vital interests. Yet, the uses and effects of vetoes are variable. Sometimes, the veto is protective, used as a policy of last resort to facilitate inter-group cooperation and community protection. At other times, the veto is a blocking mechanism, used against minority interests or to immobilise the legislative agenda. What accounts for this variation in veto outcomes? In this article, we set out a new framework for assessing veto variability and apply the framework to three consociations – Northern Ireland, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and North Macedonia. We argue that whether a veto trajectory is blocking or protective is contingent on the interplay between three dynamics: formal institutional rules; informal forms of dispute resolution, and; the wider political environment in which these formal and informal rules intersect. Our findings aim to refine extant consociational theory, which has largely under-conceptualised these variations in veto trajectories.

KEYWORDS:

• Veto rights
• consociationalism
• Northern Ireland
• Bosnia and Herzegovina
• North Macedonia

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We employ the term ‘veto trajectory’ as a way to capture the overall pattern of veto usage, rather than as a way to refer to specific instances of veto enactment.

2 Consociationalism, which supports joint governance between divided groups, typically entails the concurrent adoption of four political institutions: executive power-sharing (e.g., grand coalitions), segmental autonomy (territorial and/or cultural), proportionality and veto rights (Lijphart 1977).

3 Corporate consociation pre-determines which groups receive political representation whereas liberal consociation allows election results to shape how power is shared and by whom (McGarry & O’Leary 2007).

4 Further changes to the PoC in the New Decade, New Approach agreement include: a prohibition on using it to thwart investigation into MLA behaviour; its application only after the Second Stage for Executive and Private Members Bills; and the introduction of a 14-day waiting period following the veto, during which time the PoC’s compatibility with equality requirements is assessed (NIO 2020).

5 Bosnia is well-known for its inability to agree new constitutional reforms; veto rules are no exception. All political parties concur that veto rules should be modified, but they cannot agree on how. Serbs, in particular, as the constituent nation that sees this institution as a guarantee of their existence, are unwilling to agree to any changes that they perceived to threaten their ability to protect their vital interests.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Economic and Social Research Council [grant number ES/P003036/1].

Notes on contributors

Allison McCulloch

Allison McCulloch is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Brandon University, Canada. She is the editor-in-chief of the journal Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, the author of Power-Sharing and Political Stability in Deeply Divided Societies and the co-editor of Power-Sharing: Empirical and Normative Challenges. Her current research considers how power-sharing arrangements can be designed to be more inclusive of identities beyond the ethnonational divide. She is also interested in how power-sharing governments handle political crises, the incentive structures for ethnopolitical moderation that power-sharing offers, and how external actors support the adoption and maintenance of power-sharing governance.

Aleksandra Zdeb

Aleksandra Zdeb is a post-doctoral Research Fellow at Queen’s University Belfast. She has a PhD from the University of Graz, Austria. Her doctoral research explores the question of agency and structure in the power-sharing institutions at the central and local levels in Bosnia and Herzegovina. She has published on the topics of consociational power-sharing, post-conflict reconstruction at the local level and on sub-state politics in Nationalities Papers, Ethnopolitics, and Swiss Political Science Review. Email: [email protected]