HOROWITZ, Donald L <br/><br/>
Explaining the Northern Ireland Agreement :  the sources of an unlikely constitutional consensus 

 -  2002 
<br/><br/> Advocates of one or another set of institutions for new democracies have typically neglected question of adoptability. The omission is especially evident in institutional prescriptions for the reduction of ethnic conflict in severely divided societies. These have been advanced with little regard for obstacles likely to be encountered in the process of adoption. Yet adoption is problematic. Processes of negotiation and exchange open the possibility of mixed outcomes reflecting the asymmetric preferences of majorities and minorities. The Northern Ireland reflectiong the asymmetric preferences of majorities and minorities. The Northern Ireland Agreement was produced suggests that the coherent outcome in Northern Ireland was the result of some very special conditions conducive to a consensus on institution that spanned party lines. These conditions are unlikely to be widely replicable, and the fact of consensus does not imply that the agreed institutions are apt for the divided society whose problems they are intended to ameliorate