John Garry

Why do conciliatory political appeals sometimes polarise rather than moderate electoral competition in divided societies? Existing accounts of consociational power-sharing explain how hardline parties can become credible negotiators, but they say less about how voters respond when the leaders of displaced moderate parties attempt to broaden support beyond their traditional community. I argue that leaders’ cross-ethnic appeals function as reassurance signalling: they reduce perceived threat to the outgroup while simultaneously weakening perceptions of defensive credibility among co-ethnics. Voters therefore update leader evaluations in opposite directions relative to a party’s inherited reputation. Using survey data from the 2022 Northern Ireland Assembly election, I compare leader evaluations to party baselines across identity groups. A leader who emphasised cross-community accommodation was evaluated more favourably by the opposing community and less favourably by co-ethnics, while leaders emphasising intra-group defence did not exhibit this pattern. The findings suggest moderation in divided societies redistributes support across groups rather than uniformly increasing approval, providing a behavioural mechanism within post-tribune party competition.

Research priority-setting exercises (RPSEs) in healthcare use evidence gathered from stakeholders, such as academics and practitioners, to generate a rank-ordered list of research priorities on a particular theme [1–6]. As RPSEs become more systematic and transparent, funders can increasingly consult the produced priority lists to avoid making arbitrary or (unconsciously) biased funding decisions [7]. In […]

Funding organisations typically wish to achieve a number of goals when making decisions about how to allocate their scarce resources. When deciding which particular research questions to prioritise, they need their decision-making process to be transparent and systematic in order to offset any possible suspicion of arbitrariness or unconscious favouritism. They also want the questions […]

Peaceful transitions in power, after elections or referendums, depend upon the acceptance of the outcomes of the contests by those who have lost – a phenomenon known as ‘losers’ consent’. Achieving losers’ consent is arguably most acute in contested sovereignty referendums. A public opinion strategy is required by those who advocate changing the sovereign status of a territory and who are subject to three constraints: (i) their wish to maximise losers’ consent, (ii) their need to retain their support base, and (iii) their need to persuade undecided voters. The strategy involves generating, based on findings from specially designed studies of public opinion, an optimised version of the alternative to the status quo – and advocating that version before the referendum. The strategy in action is illustrated with potential referendums on Irish unification, a ‘typical’ case because it poses the core challenges – on timing, content and persuasion – addressed by our strategy.

A pessimistic view of the potential of deliberative mini-publics to effectively contribute to democratic decision making on highly contested issues in deeply divided places asserts that (1) deliberative quality would be low due to the bitterness prompted by discussion of divisive issues, and (2) levels of opinion change would be low given the stubbornly enduring nature of political attitudes in divided places. We empirically examined this pessimistic view using a quasi-experiment involving mini-publics on two separate issues in Northern Ireland: (1) the contentious ethno-national question of Northern Ireland’s constitutional status, and (2) the much less contested and non-ethno-national issue of social care. Contrary to the pessimistic view, we find evidence that from the perspective of the participants themselves, deliberative quality was higher in the mini-public on an ethno-national issue. However, in line with the pessimistic view, levels of self-reported opinion change were significantly lower in the ethno-national mini-public. Overall, the findings highlight the potential for carefully designed deliberative mini-publics to address divisive ethno-national issues: they provide a space for participants to engage with such issues in open and respectful discussion—even if the prospects for attitudinal change are more limited.

We suggest a new democratic decision-making (or recommendation-making) device for divided societies that may be added to the democratic toolkit. Imaginative Policy Surveys in divided societies seek to combine the advantages of conventional attitude surveys (ability to generalise to the wider population) with some of the advantages of deliberative mini-publics (citizens learn about policy options and consider the perspective of members of the ethno-national out-group). Imaginative Policy Surveys consist of a conventional survey design with two added features: videos providing information and arguments and an imagined policy dialogue with an out-group member. We test the feasibility, effect and perceived legitimacy of Imaginative Policy Surveys in the deeply divided context of Northern Ireland, drawing on evidence from two experiments. We conclude that Imaginative Policy Surveys in divided societies are feasible, have a slight positive pro-compromise effect, and are perceived to be a legitimate decision-making mechanism to an equal extent by rival ethno-national groups.

We designed and conducted a (virtual) deliberative forum in the Republic of Ireland (N=50) on issues relating to potential Irish unification. We found that our participants, both before and after deliberation, preferred an integrated model of Irish unity in which Northern Ireland would be dissolved (the 'integrated model') to a model of unity in which Northern Ireland persists as a devolved entity but now within a united Ireland (the 'devolved NI model'). We found that deliberation on procedural matters produces a substantial increase in support for specifying the particular model of a united Ireland on offer before any referendum. We also found that deliberation results in a very substantial decrease in support for holding an immediate referendum (within two years), and substantially increased support for a five-to-ten-year time frame. Overall, our findings suggest that public attitudes to models of Irish unity do not change upon learning and deliberation (with robust public preference for the integrated model), implying that if an Irish government's preferred Irish unity model is not in line with Irish public opinion it faces a challenge in shaping the public's views; however, attitudes to process do change as a result of deliberation (in the direction of favouring pre-referendum specification and a non-immediate referendum), implying that the more the public think about these issues, the more likely they are to favour the government providing clarity on the choice before any medium-term referendum.

How much public and elite support is there for the use of a citizens’ assembly – a random selection of citizens brought together to consider a policy issue – to tackle major, deadlock-inducing disagreements in deeply divided places with consociational political institutions? We focus on Northern Ireland and use evidence from a cross-sectional attitude survey, a survey-based experiment and elite interviews. We find that the general public support decision-making by a citizens’ assembly, even when the decision reached is one they personally disagree with. However, support is lower among those with strong ideological views. We also find that elected politicians oppose delegating decision-making power to an ‘undemocratic’ citizens’ assembly, but are more supportive of recommendation-making power. These findings highlight the potential for post-conflict consociations to be amended, with the consent of the parties, to include citizens’ assemblies that make recommendations but not binding policy.