The Purest Form of Democracy

In 1960 Northern Ireland did not have true democracy, a wealthy man had more votes than a poor man, Gerrymandering (the fixing of electoral boundaries in such a way that is very biased) was commonplace and Catholics were frequently discriminated against by the government.

The Northern Ireland of today is very, very different. We now have one man, one vote, no gerrymandering and no group is discriminated against. In fact, Northern Ireland has the best democracy on planet Earth. Let me explain, due to the Troubles there is “power sharing” in NI, what this means is that seats area allocated on the basis of what percentage of the popular vote your party gets. This exists in many liberal democracies around the world and it’s called proportional representation, but there is a key difference between those countries and Northern Ireland. In other nations if party A receives 51% of the vote, party B receives 36% of the vote and party C receives 13% of the vote; party A forms the government as it has a majority. It can form the government on its own, with all government positions being taken by Party A. In Northern Ireland, seats are not only allocated by proportional representation but so are government positions. Here the party with the most votes gets the office of First Minister, the second party gets Deputy First Minister and all other government offices are split along similar lines. This allows for many parties to be in government.

The reason for this being the purest form of democracy is this; the current UK government is a coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats who received 36% and 23% of the vote respectively which means that 59% of people have their voice represented by government, this leaves 41% of people with no say whatsoever, as the party they voted for is not part of the government. In Northern Ireland, on the other hand, five parties are represented in government; DUP, Sinn Féin, UUP, SDLP and Alliance. Together these parties represent 92% of the vote in Northern Ireland, this means only 8% of people are not represented in government. Surely this is a far more democratic system than the one that the Westminster government is elected on?

But there is one major set-back to this form of government. In an election whereby one party forms the government and therefore controls all the ministries, if they miss-handle a particular department but do a good job in another department then things can balance themselves out in time for the next election. In a government where there are multiple parties, if a party fails at controlling their department they are less able to pick themselves up in other areas. As a result of this the parties are less willing to take tough decisions and this slows down the legislative process.

Another problem for power sharing is there are many opposing ideologies in government, ranging from socialism to strong conservatism; this also slows down the legislative process. It also means that one party can’t come in and radically change the country as Labour did in 1945 or the Conservatives did in 1979. This progress slightly, which can cause problems, but it does not stop progress altogether.

So although I do believe that Northern Ireland’s form of democracy is possibly the purest on the planet, I don’t necessarily think it’s the best. It has its problems as I’ve explained; but considering the situation in NI, it’s exactly what we need.