EQUALITY, PLURALITY AND DEMOCRACY - JUSTIFICATIONS OF PROPOSED CONSTITUTIONAL SETTLEMENTS OF THE NORTHERN-IRELAND CONFLICT

Recent proposals for constitutional settlement of the Northern Ireland conflict have converged around the principles of equality, pluralism and democracy. The central philosophical problem is how to interpret and apply these principles. This article studies six settlement proposals from the New Ireland Forum Report of May 1984 to the Downing Street Declaration of December 1993. It argues that neither unionist integrationist nor regionalist proposals meet pluralist egalitarian principles on the constitutional issue. It identifies three approaches which meet these criteria. One, embodied in the Anglo-Irish Agreement and in one reading of the Downing Street Declaration takes equality to mean equal opportunity to have majority choice implemented, democracy to involve majority voting and pluralism to involve an undefined accommodation between the traditions. Another, embodied in a proposal for shared authority, argues for equality in the national character and cultural substance of the state, democracy as liberal self-determination for both majority and minority, and pluralism as absolute equality between the traditions. A third, embodied in an emancipatory reading of the Downing Street Declaration, takes equality as equal rights to consent to or veto any proposed settlement, democracy as a participatory process of dialogue and pluralism as agreement between the traditions as to a fair settlement. The article argues that a majoritarian concept of democracy sits uneasily with pluralist and egalitarian principles.