John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary 1 Consociational Theory, Northern Ireland’s Conflict, and its Agreement. Part 1: What Consociationalists Can Learn from Northern Ireland I did not draw my principles from my prejudices, but from the nature of things. 2 ‘What a wonderful place the world would be’, cry the devotees of each way of life, ‘if only everyone were like us’. We can now see the fallacy in this fre- quently expressed lament: it is only the presence in the world of people who are different from them that enables adherents of each way of life to be the way they are. 3 CONSOCIATIONAL THEORY, DEVELOPED BY AREND LIJPHART AND other scholars, is one of the most influential theories in comparative political science. Its key contention is that divided territories, be they regions or states, with historically antagonistic ethnically, religiously or linguistically divided peoples, are effectively, prudently, and some- times optimally, governed according to consociational principles. Consociations can be both democratic and authoritarian, 4 but © The Authors 2006. Journal compilation © 2006 Government and Opposition Ltd Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. 1 The authors thank the editors of Government and Opposition, and its two anony- mous referees, for their very helpful suggestions. McGarry thanks the Carnegie Corporation of New York for funding his research, O’Leary thanks the Lauder endowment, and both authors thank the United States Institute of Peace. 2 Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, ‘Preface’, in Anne M. Cohler, Basia C. Miller and Harold S. Stone (eds), The Spirit of the Laws, Cambridge, Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 1989 (first publication, 1748), p. xliii. 3 Michael Thompson, Richard Ellis, Aaron Wildavsky, Cultural Theory, Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1990, p. 96. 4 See Brendan O’Leary, ‘Consociation: Refining the Theory and a Defence’, International Journal of Diversity in Organisations, Communities and Nations, 3 (2003), pp. 693–755, and ‘Debating Consociation: Normative and Explanatory Arguments’, in Sid Noel (ed.), From Power-Sharing to Democracy: Post-Conflict Institutions in Ethnically Divided Societies, Toronto, McGill-Queens University Press, 2005, pp. 3–43.