Earlier last semester I visited the seat of Northern Ireland’s power: the Stormont Estate. Rather than entering a place full of busy activity, as one would expect in the legislature, I encountered an eerie silence that hung over the entire compound. Hallways were empty and offices were deserted. Visitors could explore Stormont as they wished, including its surrounding woodlands and park. Despite the beauty, there was something very disconcerting about a region’s main government buildings being abandoned. It was only later that I realized Northern Ireland has not had a functioning government since early 2017, when inter-party bickering led to the collapse of the executive and subsequent dissolution of the legislature. Despite holding elections, the new legislature has been unable to form a new executive, and Stormont continues to languish.
Critical to understanding the collapse of Stormont is the concept of sharing. The Good Friday Agreement of 1998, which marked the end of the Troubles and has since been hailed as one of the most successful peace agreements in a deeply divided society, took a monumental step towards establishing peace by declaring Stormont a government of shared power. Essentially, the two main parties to the conflict, the unionists and nationalists, are equally represented in the executive. No doubt (in theory) it would seem there is little room for such a model to fail—after all, it’s been ingrained into most of us since our kindergarten days that sharing is caring, no? And yet, the reality is vacant government buildings and public servants who continue to receive a full salary while doing absolutely nothing, earning the ire of the citizens of Northern Ireland.
The problem with power-sharing in Northern Ireland is that ‘extreme’ parties, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and Sinn Féin, have taken control of unionist and nationalist politics and thus brought back to the forefront many contentious cultural issues between the two groups. A large part of the breakdown of power-sharing talks in the past year has been the DUP’s refusal to compromise on Irish language legislation, which Sinn Féin has asserted must be a part of any agreement to restore the government. Specifically, it seeks to give the Irish language equal status as English, which would mean the use of Irish in courts, the right to education in Irish, bilingual signage across the region, and the appointment of an Irish language commissioner. Amusingly, DUP’s leader Arlene Foster famously responded by arguing that a Polish language act ought to come before an Irish language act, since more people currently speak Polish than Irish in the region.
As key cultural dividing issues such as language are politicized, ‘ethnic outbidding’ becomes commonplace and the DUP and Sinn Féin perpetuate stalemates by pursuing an unaccommodating hard-line rhetoric. Oddly enough, such uncompromising stances have kept the two parties in power, which suggests at least a majority of the population believe political stalemate over these issues serves their interests. That being said, many of the students I have interacted with show a very different perspective on the issue. Most students I met argue that older generations place far too much emphasis on maintaining the distinction between unionists and nationalists. A local politics student once voiced his frustrations with the government in class, angrily asserting that no administration cannot successfully manage the messy politics of Northern Ireland if they cannot understand that contemporary issues do not have to fall along sectarian lines. Another asserted that an Irish language act really doesn’t matter all that much when both Scotland and Wales have their own language acts protecting local languages. With the politics of antagonism so ingrained in interactions between the DUP and Sinn Féin, cooperation between the two over core concerns, or even bipartisan issues, appear unlikely.
This brings us back to the issue of sharing. If two conflicting parties with vastly differing views and uncompromising stances are offered equal majorities and mutual vetoes, can anything really be accomplished besides constant squabbling and repeated stalemates? In a shared society, both sides must have equal respect for each other to facilitate compromise—something that is sorely lacking between the DUP and Sinn Féin. No reciprocal sacrifices will occur while the two parties continue to bicker like children and alienate members of the opposition. As much as I believe in the value of sharing, no sharing can successfully occur in Northern Ireland while no shared values between parties exist. Maybe…sharing isn’t always caring?