Malachi O'Doherty

Power-sharing was devised as a system to ensure representation of a minority community in the governing of Northern Ireland. It was needed by the ‘catholic/nationalist’ community which was otherwise put upon and disadvantaged. The system did not work for most of the time between its being devised and the time at which ‘catholics/nationalists’ ceased to be a minority, but that was because the context of political violence made government here impossible. Essentially the IRA vetoed power-sharing through its campaign and its demand for full Irish unity.
Power-sharing may also become necessary in the future to protect a ‘protestant/unionist’ community. But it may be no coincidence that the period in which it fails to function is when these communities are almost equally balanced.
In circumstances in which competing ideologies approach balance, as in GB through most of my life, the system which works best, or at least well enough to avert the threat of revolution, is majority rule. The competing forces battle it out in debate and the result is decided by the vacillating minority or middle ground.
But for us being locked into a power-sharing system now, this might work here better than it ever has before. Neither SF nor the DUP would be able to govern alone and would have to form coalitions with each other or with other parties. This would force both to compromise on hard principle – which would be a good thing. A system of majority rule, which produced conflict when it was ossified for fifty years, might now be the system that would work for the erosion of sectarian blocs.
Yet both of these blocs would have to agree to it and neither, it seems would be able to consent to being governed, if only for periods, by the other. However much Labour and the Tories hate each other in England and Wales, they do consent to being governed by each other, do agree to that being better than not being governed at all.
We, unfortunately, are free to exercise that option of not being governed at all.