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In contrast to many democracies that lament the rise of professional politicians, 'amateur' politicians have typically dominated federal politics in Canada. What explains this general lack of political experience among Canadian members of parliament (MPs)? This study tests three hypotheses on career development by analysing individual-level data on over 1000 MPs elected to the Canadian Parliament between 1993 and 2015. Conceptualising politics as a career path in its own right, it finds that at the key stages of establishing, maintaining and disengaging from a federal political career, there are specific challenges facing candidates and MPs in the Canadian context that are not significantly ameliorated by the possession of prior political experience. This leaves little incentive for individuals to work in the field of politics itself before standing for federal office.

With echoes of the dividing lines of the United Kingdom's 2016 referendum, a majority of voters in Northern Ireland supported pro-Remain candidates in the 2019 European Parliament election. However, whereas the results in many parts of the UK reflected a highly polarised electorate, voters in Northern Ireland appeared more receptive to compromise: a majority of their newly elected MEPs expressed support for the Withdrawal Agreement negotiated by the UK government with the EU – the only constituency in the UK where this was the case. The comfortable re-election of Diane Dodds and Martina Anderson affirmed the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Féin as the dominant unionist and nationalist parties respectively. However, a surge in support for the Alliance Party, which saw Naomi Long win a seat at the expense of the Ulster Unionist Party, marked a notable shift towards the ethno-national centre-ground: one in five first preference votes went to a candidate aligned with neither nationalism nor unionism. This report contextualises the election campaign and considers the implications of the results.

As voters across Northern Ireland went to the polls on 5 May 2016, it was by no means obvious that they were participating in a landmark election. The preceding campaign was largely lacklustre, voters were left uninspired, and competition for votes was primarily conducted along predictable ethno-national lines. The Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Féin retained their positions as the dominant unionist and nationalist parties respectively, while the Ulster Unionist Party and Social Democratic and Labour Party struggled to retain their existing support, let alone expand it. The cross-community Alliance Party remained stagnant in fifth place. However, these ostensive signs of continuity with previous elections mask deeper signs of substantive change. The establishment of Northern Ireland's first official opposition within current structures and the publication of a draft Programme for Government framework within a month of the election are indicative of a new era in consociational power sharing. Meanwhile, the growth in support for smaller parties, a further fall in voter turnout and an audible debate around social issues suggest at least a partial decline in the salience of the ethno-national dimension in the electoral arena.

AbstractDeliberative minipublics are becoming increasingly popular, with both scholars and practitioners highlighting their potential to bolster public approval of political decision-making. Yet, it remains unclear whether minipublics are able to do so in contexts where the public itself is deeply divided – a concern which becomes only more relevant as levels of polarization are said to rise across the globe. In this study, we argue that polarized citizens may perceive minipublics and their outcomes as less legitimate than more moderate citizens. We use original survey data from Northern Ireland (n= 932), a highly polarized society where a minipublic was organized on the contentious issue of the region's constitutional future. We find that higher levels of ideological polarization and, to an extent, affective polarization are associated with lower levels of perceived minipublic legitimacy among the wider public, although effects are small. This offers novel insights into the role of minipublics in polarized settings.

Many deliberative democrats herald the potential of minipublics to help improve the quality of democratic decision-making. Yet these democratic innovations present a paradox: how can the use of minipublics be perceived as legitimate by the maxi-public when most citizens cannot participate? In this article, we address this question in the context of Lafont's argument that minipublics amount to 'shortcuts' in the democratic process. We challenge this argument by hypothesising that non-participants perceive minipublics to be legitimate when they perceive minipublic participants to be like them – and when they perceive politicians to be unlike them. Similarly, we expect that the relative importance of descriptive similarity will be related to the issue in question. We test our hypotheses in the deeply divided context of Northern Ireland, where a minipublic was held on the salient and contentious question of the polity's constitutional future. Survey evidence confirms that 'like me' perceptions constitute a significant predictor of minipublic legitimacy perceptions. Our results have implications for the communication of minipublic features to the broader public, for the use of minipublics alongside conventional decision-making processes, and for further empirical research.

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.

AbstractHow 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.