Bi-confessionalism in a confessional party system - the Northern Ireland alliance party

Abstract

In a comparative context a bi-polar conflict is rare, especially when it takes the form of a conflict between two intractably opposed and self-sufficient communities ranged around a single, all-pervasive, cleavage. As issues capable of compromise remain unresolved in the political system due to their sub-ordination to the dominant problem, they reinforce one another and serve to exacerbate polarisation. Extremism and anti-system oppositions are likely to flourish and be encouraged by the tendency of the two communities to isolate their respective followers from conflicting stimuli. This process is achieved by further intensifying the saliency of the dominant cleavage, hence making any prospect of change in the system, however small, even more remote (Dahl, 1973)... ...Political research in Northern Ireland is normally structured towards quantifying conflict and dissonance rather than consensus and convergence. Budge and O'Leary's 1966 survey showed, for example, that party leaders consistently over-estimated the intransigence of their supporters; there is no reason to suppose that this is not still the case today within both communities. While limited in scope and range, the survey of Alliance candidates suggests that ascertaining the existence of a third political tendency in Ulster and measuring its extent and depth should have a major priority for future social science research. As has recently been suggested, `instead of talking just about Protestants and Catholics, researchers should ask themselves more often; which Protestants and which Catholics? (Whyte, 1976, p. 596).