Consociationalism in the context of "Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina"

The Northern Ireland Assembly (Irish: Tionól Thuaisceart Éireann; Ulster Scots: Norlin Airlan Assemblie), often referred to by the metonym Stormont, is the devolved unicameral legislature of Northern Ireland. It has power to legislate in a wide range of areas that are not explicitly reserved to the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and to appoint the Northern Ireland Executive. It sits at Parliament Buildings at Stormont in Belfast.

The Assembly is a unicameral, democratically elected body comprising 90 members known as members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs). Members are elected under the single transferable vote form of proportional representation (STV-PR). In turn, the Assembly selects most of the ministers of the Northern Ireland Executive using the principle of power-sharing under the D'Hondt method to ensure that Northern Ireland's largest voting blocs, British unionists and Irish nationalists, both participate in governing the region. The Assembly's standing orders allow for certain contentious motions to require a cross-community vote; in addition to requiring the support of an overall majority of members, such votes must also be supported by a majority within both blocs in order to pass.

The Northern Ireland Executive (Irish: Feidhmeannas Thuaisceart Éireann, Ulster Scots: Norlin Airlan Executive) is the devolved government of Northern Ireland, an administrative branch of the legislature – the Northern Ireland Assembly, situated in Belfast. It is answerable to the assembly and was initially established according to the terms of the Northern Ireland Act 1998, which followed the Good Friday Agreement (or Belfast Agreement). The executive is referred to in the legislation as the Executive Committee of the assembly and is an example of consociationalist ("power-sharing") government.

The Northern Ireland Executive consists of the first minister and deputy first minister and various ministers with individual portfolios and remits. The main assembly parties appoint most ministers in the executive, except for the Minister of Justice who is elected by a cross-community vote. It is one of three devolved governments in the United Kingdom, the others being the Scottish and Welsh governments.

A dominant-party system, or one-party dominant system, is a political occurrence in which a single political party continuously dominates election results over running opposition groups or parties. Any ruling party staying in power for more than one consecutive term may be considered a dominant party (also referred to as a predominant or hegemonic party). Some dominant parties were called the natural governing party, given their length of time in power.

Dominant parties, and their domination of a state, develop out of one-sided electoral and party constellations within a multi-party system (particularly under presidential systems of governance), and as such differ from states under a one-party system, which are intricately organized around a specific party. Sometimes the term "de facto one-party state" is used to describe dominant-party systems which, unlike a one-party system, allows (at least nominally) democratic multiparty elections, but the existing practices or balance of political power effectively prevent the opposition from winning power, thus resembling a one-party state. Dominant-party systems differ from the political dynamics of other dominant multi-party constellations such as consociationalism, grand coalitions and two-party systems, which are characterized and sustained by narrow or balanced competition and cooperation.

Power sharing is a practice in conflict resolution where multiple groups distribute political, military, or economic power among themselves according to agreed rules. It can refer to any formal framework or informal pact that regulates the distribution of power between divided communities. Since the end of the Cold War, power-sharing systems have become increasingly commonplace in negotiating settlements for armed conflict. Two common theoretical approaches to power sharing are consociationalism and centripetalism.

At the state level, "power sharing is intended to hold the existing state together with the active participation and support of its minorities, unlike strategies of genocide, expulsion, partition and control".

The first minister and deputy first minister of Northern Ireland are the joint heads of government of Northern Ireland, leading the Northern Ireland Executive and with overall responsibility for the running of the Executive Office.

Despite the titles of the two offices, the two positions have the same governmental power, resulting in a diarchy; the deputy first minister is not subordinate to the first minister. Created under the terms of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, both were initially nominated and appointed by members of the Northern Ireland Assembly on a joint ticket by a cross-community vote, under consociational principles. That process was changed following the 2006 St Andrews Agreement, such that the first minister now is nominated by the largest party overall, and the deputy first minister is nominated by the largest party from the next largest community block (understood to mean "Unionist", "Nationalist", or "Other").

An ethnic conflict is a conflict between two or more ethnic groups. While the source of the conflict may be political, social, economic or religious, the individuals in conflict must expressly fight for their ethnic group's position within society. This criterion differentiates ethnic conflict from other forms of struggle.

Academic explanations of ethnic conflict generally fall into one of three schools of thought: primordialist, instrumentalist or constructivist. Recently, some have argued for either top-down or bottom-up explanations for ethnic conflict. Intellectual debate has also focused on whether ethnic conflict has become more prevalent since the end of the Cold War, and on devising ways of managing conflicts, through instruments such as consociationalism and federalisation.