BEYOND THE SECTARIAN DIVIDE - THE SOCIAL BASES AND POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES OF NATIONALIST AND UNIONIST PARTY COMPETITION IN NORTHERN-IRELAND

The Northern Irish party system is plausibly represented as two system s, in which party competition occurs within nationalist and unionist b locs. Social and ideological divisions within these blocs constrain pa rties' electoral strategies and thus facilitate or inhibit cross-commu nal compromise. Using Northern Irish Social Attitudes data, various ac counts of these intra-communal divisions are tested and their politica l implications assessed. Contrary to expectations concerning the effec ts of cross-communal contact, neighbourhood integration is found to ha ve no relationship with partisanship although, consistent with politic al socialization theory, young people on both sides of the divide are more likely than those who are older to support the more recently intr oduced parties. Most significantly, however, there are noticeable asym metries in the patterns of cleavage within the unionist and nationalis t blocs. Among Protestants, left-right ideology has a far stronger imp act than constitutional position on patterns of partisanship; and soci al class has considerably stronger effects than does denomination. Mos t Protestants, whatever their partisanship, also express strongly unio nist constitutional preferences. In clear contrast, on the nationalist side party support is polarized along constitutional lines, there is no cross-cutting ideological division over economic inequality, and a majority of Catholics adopt a moderate stance on nationalism. It is ar gued in consequence, that within the unionist bloc the pattern of intr a-communal party competition militates against constitutional compromi se as a solution to 'the troubles', whereas among nationalists the uni dimensional structure of competition for electoral support and the dis tribution of attitudes towards the constitutional issue are likely to have influenced the adoption of compromise strategies by Sinn Fein.