Getting things done?: Process, performance, and decision-evasion in consociational systems

Do consociations suffer an immobilism problem and under what conditions? In this article, I contrast two perspectives: consociation’s propensity to ‘get things done’ versus its tendency to ‘kick the can down the road’. Employing a case-study approach to the Northern Ireland Assembly, I present a threefold measurement of consociation’s decision load capacity, assessing the issues which receive legislative assent, those blocked by formal vetoes in the legislative process, and those issues which do not make it onto the legislative agenda at all, whether due to non-decision-making or to outsourcing to actors outside the system. Consociations, I argue, are prone to deliver a sparse legislative agenda, characterised by the resolution of ‘safe issues’, and the evasion of more contentious issues.