Power-Sharing in Europe: Past

Practice, Present Cases, and Future

Directions Soeren Keil
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FEDERALISM AND INTERNAL CONFLICTS
SERIES EDITORS: SOEREN KEIL · EVA MARIA BELSER

Power-Sharing in Europe
Past Practice, Present Cases,
and Future Directions
Edited by
Soeren Keil · Allison McCulloch
 Federalism and Internal Conflicts

Series Editors
Soeren Keil
School of Law, Policing and Social Sciences
Canterbury Christ Church University
Canterbury, UK

Eva Maria Belser

University of Freiburg
Freiburg, Switzerland
This series engages in the discussions on federalism as a tool of internal
conflict resolution. Building on a growing body of literature on the use of
federalism and territorial autonomy to solve ethnic, cultural, linguistic and
identity conflicts, both in the West and in non-Western countries, this
global series assesses to what extent different forms of federalism and ter-
ritorial autonomy are being used as tools of conflict resolution and how
successful these approaches are.
We welcome proposals on theoretical debates, single case studies and
short comparative pieces covering topics such as:
– Federalism and peace-making in contemporary intra-state conflicts
– The link between federalism and democratization in countries facing
intra-state conflict
– Secessionism, separatism, self-determination and power-sharing
– Inter-group violence and the potential of federalism to transform
conflicts
– Successes and failures of federalism and other forms of territorial
autonomy in post-conflict countries
– Federalism, decentralisation and resource conflicts
– Peace treaties, interim constitutions and permanent power sharing
arrangements
– The role of international actors in the promotion of federalism
(and other forms of territorial autonomy) as tools of internal con-
flict resolution
– Federalism and state-building
– Federalism, democracy and minority protection
For further information on the series and to submit a proposal for consid-
eration, please get in touch with Ambra Finotello ambra.finotello@palgrave.
com, or series editors Soeren Keil soeren.keil@canterbury.ac.uk and Eva
Maria Belser evamaria.belser@unifr.ch

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15730
 Soeren Keil • Allison McCulloch
Editors

Power-Sharing
in Europe
Past Practice, Present Cases, and Future Directions
Editors
Soeren Keil Allison McCulloch
School of Law, Policing and Social Department of Political Science
Sciences Brandon University
Canterbury Christ Church University Brandon, MB, Canada
Canterbury, UK

Federalism and Internal Conflicts

ISBN 978-3-030-53589-6    ISBN 978-3-030-53590-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53590-2

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
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 Acknowledgments

Completing this book has been quite a journey. A project like this one is
the labor of many people, and we are ever so grateful for their hard work
and dedication. We are thankful to our authors and their invaluable con-
tributions, and also for their patience and their willingness to revise, amend
and develop their chapters once we had provided feedback. At Palgrave,
we would like to thank Ambra Finotello and Anne-Kathryn Burchley-­
Brun, who have supported this project from the beginning. We also thank
the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments.
The original idea for this book came from a workshop in Brussels in
2018, organized by Timofey Agarin and the Exclusion amid Inclusion
research team on Political Representation in Diverse Societies. We are very
grateful to Timofey for bringing us together and laying the foundations
for this project.
Soeren Keil would like to thank his co-editor for the enjoyable work on
this book as well as his colleagues at Canterbury Christ Church University,
in particular Professor David Bates, Dr. Sarah Lieberman and Dr. Paul
Anderson. He would also like to thank Professor Jelena Dzankic for her
humor and support, Dr. Zeynep Arkan for being a wonderful friend, and
Professor Bernhard Stahl for endless discussions on foreign policy, EU
integration and good beer and food.
Allison McCulloch first would like to thank Soeren who has been an
excellent co-editor; it’s been a pleasure to work together on this project.
She would also like to thank Dr. Siobhan Byrne, Dr. Joanne McEvoy, Dr.
Cera Murtagh and Dr. Timofey Agarin: ongoing discussions and collabo-
rations with each continue to inform and enrich my understanding of

v
vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

power-sharing. Long-distance writing sessions with Dr. Jennifer Beaudry

were a source of motivation and inspiration.
We would both like to extend a special thank you to Aidan Trembath
who provided excellent research assistance.
As academics, we get to work with our colleagues all over the world,
share our thoughts and ideas and comment on each other’s work. While
doing this, we get to read and learn about new cases, and understand bet-
ter those cases familiar to us, all while also enjoying the possibility of writ-
ing and making our own contribution. Yet, working on projects such as
this book would not be possible without the support of our families.
Often, they carry the burden of living with an academic—who are notori-
ous for working long hours and becoming more anti-social as they get
older. We hope that we did not become more anti-social over the course
of editing this book, but we appreciate the time, the support, the cups of
tea, the biscuits, cakes and cookies and the love we have been given from
them during the process. Soeren Keil would like to particularly thank his
brother Andreas Keil and his family, his partner Claire Parker and their
daughter Malindi Parker as well as Thomas, Lilly and Athena for their
welcomed distractions and permanent need for love. Allison McCulloch
would like to thank her partner David Winter and their son Xavier
McCulloch for all their love and support. Josie and Fionn also provided
their own kind of support in the form of early mornings, long walks and
lots of treats.
Finally, we dedicate this book to some of the most important people in
our lives: the people who raised us and shaped our values, beliefs, work
ethics and commitment. None of this would be possible without our par-
ents, Peter and Regina Keil and Elizabeth and Ray Prevost.
 Contents

1 Introduction: Power-Sharing in Europe—From

Adoptability to End-Ability  1
Allison McCulloch

2 Consociationalism in the Netherlands: Polder Politics

and Pillar Talk 19
Matthijs Bogaards

3 Power-Sharing in Austria: Consociationalism,

Corporatism, and Federalism 43
Peter Bussjäger and Mirella M. Johler

4 The Politics of Compromise: Institutions and Actors

of Power-Sharing in Switzerland 67
Sean Mueller

5 Power-Sharing in Belgium: The Disintegrative Model 89

Patricia Popelier

6 Power-Sharing and Party Politics in the Western Balkans115

John Hulsey and Soeren Keil

vii
viii Contents

7 Toward Inclusive Power-Sharing in Northern Ireland:

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back141
Cera Murtagh

8 South Tyrol’s Model of Conflict Resolution: Territorial

Autonomy and Power-Sharing171
Elisabeth Alber

9 A Consociational Compromise? Constitutional Evolution

in Spain and Catalonia201
Paul Anderson

10 Why Has Cyprus Been a Consociational Cemetery?227

John McGarry

11 Conclusion: The Past, Present and Future of Power-­

Sharing in Europe257
Soeren Keil and Allison McCulloch

Index275
 Notes on Contributors

Elisabeth Alber is a senior researcher and program head at the Eurac

Research Institute for Comparative Federalism in Bozen/Bolzano, South
Tyrol, Italy. She researches on comparative federalism and decentral-
ization processes, territorial autonomies and minority rights, and
deliberative democracy and participatory constitution-making. As a
visiting scholar, she has worked in Germany, the USA, Spain, Australia,
Overseas France and North Macedonia. Most recently, she also acts as a
consultant for international organizations in Moldova, Ukraine and
Myanmar.
Paul Anderson is Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at
Canterbury Christ Church University, UK. His main research interests
include territorial politics, autonomy and secessionist movements and fed-
eralism/decentralization as tools of conflict resolution. He is a co-lead of
the UACES Research Network (2020–2023) ‘(Re)Imagining Territorial
Politics in Times of Crisis.’
Matthijs Bogaards is a Associate Professor in the Department of Political
Science at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. He has
previously held faculty positions in Germany and the UK. His research
focuses on democracy in divided societies, regime change, political institu-
tions and terrorism.
Peter Bussjäger is a professor at the Institute of Public Law, State and
Administrative Science at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. He is also

ix
x NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

the head of the Institute of Federalism in Innsbruck and member of the

State Court of the Principality of Liechtenstein.
John Hulsey is Associate Professor of Political Science at James Madison
University, USA. Hulsey’s research focuses on party politics in divided
societies, state-building after civil wars, state capture, ethnopolitics, the
politics of the Balkans and of Eastern Europe, the politics of empire, and
the European Union. His work has been published in Democratization,
International Peacekeeping and Communist and Post-Communist Studies.
He holds a PhD from Indiana University Bloomington.
Mirella M. Johler holds degrees in political science and law from the
University of Innsbruck. She has worked in several scientific projects on
federalism and comparative constitutional law.
Soeren Keil is Reader in Politics and International Relations at Canterbury
Christ Church University, UK. He is also a visiting professor at Centre
International de Formation Europeene (CIFE) in Nice, France. His
research focuses on the use of territorial autonomy as a tool of conflict
resolution, the political systems of the Western Balkan states and the pro-
cess of EU enlargement. His recent publications include The
Europeanisation of the Western Balkans—A Failure of EU Conditionality?
(Palgrave 2019, co-edited with Jelena Dzankic and Marko Kmezic) and
Federalism and Conflict Resolution (forthcoming with Palgrave, co-
authored with Paul Anderson).
Allison McCulloch is Associate Professor of Political Science at Brandon
University, Manitoba, Canada. Her research considers the politics of
deeply divided societies, with a specific emphasis on the design of political
power-sharing (consociational) institutions. This includes how
power-sharing governments handle political crises, the incentive struc-
tures for ethnopolitical moderation and extremism that power-­sharing
offers, and how power-sharing arrangements can be made more inclusive
of identities beyond the ethnonational divide. She is the author of Power-­
Sharing and Political Stability in Deeply Divided Societies and co-editor of
Power Sharing: Empirical and Normative Challenges (with John McGarry).
John McGarry is Canada Research Chair in the Department of Political
Studies, Queen’s University (Kingston, Ontario, Canada). He is also the
Senior Advisor on Governance and Power-Sharing to the UN
Secretary-General’s Good Offices Mission in Cyprus. His research focuses
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xi

on the politics of deeply divided places and on how power-­sharing and

autonomy can be used as tools of conflict resolution. His recent publica-
tions include Power-Sharing: Empirical and Normative Challenges (2017,
co-edited with Allison McCulloch).
Sean Mueller is an assistant professor at the Institute of Political Science,
University of Lausanne. His position is funded entirely by the Swiss
National Science Foundation (‘Eccellenza’ grant, 2020–25). Before that,
he was a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Bern and editorial
assistant of the Swiss Political Science Review. He holds a PhD in Politics
and Government from the University of Kent/UK (2013) and an
MA from the University of Fribourg/CH (2006). His main research
areas are Swiss and comparative federalism as well as subnational
politics and multilevel governance more broadly.
Cera Murtagh is Assistant Professor of Irish Politics and Comparative
Politics at Villanova University in the USA. Her research concerns conflict
and peace and gender politics, focusing particularly on the mobilization of
civic political parties and movements in deeply divided societies. Her work
has been published in a number of journals including International
Political Science Review and Nations and Nationalism. Murtagh has previ-
ously worked as a research fellow at Queen’s University Belfast on an
Economic and Social Research Council project entitled Exclusion amid
Inclusion: Power-Sharing and Non-Dominant Minorities. She holds a
PhD and an MSc from the University of Edinburgh. She has also worked
as a political journalist in Edinburgh and political researcher in the Scottish
Parliament.
Patricia Popelier is Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of
Antwerp in Belgium and Director of the research group on Government
and Law. She is Vice-President of the International Association of
Legislation; convenor of the standing research group on subnational
constitutions in federal and quasi-federal systems of the International
Association of Constitutional Law; member of the scientific commit-
tees of EURAC—Institute for Federalism (Bolzano), Sofia Legal
Science Network (SLSN) and Ossevatorio AIR (Rome); co-promoter
of the interdisciplinary Centre of Excellence TRUSTGOV; and mem-
ber of several editorial boards, including the journal Theory and
Practice of Legislation (TPLeg) and the book series Law and Cosmopolitan
Values and Diversitas.
 List of Figures

Fig. 4.1 Religious-linguistic cross-cuttingness at canton-level, 1900

vs. 2000 72
Fig. 4.2 Cross-cuttingness between wealth and culture, 2016/17 72
Fig. 4.3 Cross-cuttingness between urbanity, wealth and religion,
2016/1773
Fig. 4.4 Combined SVP and SP seat shares, 1919–2019. (Note: Own
figure based on data from the BFS 2019) 81
Fig. 11.1 Functional adaptation in European power-sharing cases 262

xiii
 List of Maps

Map 2.1 The Netherlands 20

Map 3.1 Austria 43
Map 4.1 Switzerland and its 26 cantons 67
Map 5.1 Communities and Regions in Belgium 89
Map 6.1 Western Balkans 116
Map 7.1 Northern Ireland 142
Map 8.1 South Tyrol 171
Map 9.1 Spain 201
Map 10.1 Cyprus 227

xv
 List of Tables

Table 4.1 The ten popular votes held at the national level in Switzerland
in 2018 77
Table 4.2 Government composition of the 26 cantons, September
2019 [seats] 79

xvii
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Power-Sharing in Europe—

From Adoptability to End-Ability

Allison McCulloch

1   Introduction
The publication of a single-case study monograph on elite accommoda-
tion in the Netherlands—more than 50 years ago now—sparked what
would become one of the most enduring, contentious and debated
research programs in Comparative Politics and International Relations. At
the heart of The Politics of Accommodation: Pluralism and Democracy in
the Netherlands, Arend Lijphart shows how the combination of three fac-
tors—the joint effort on the part of political leaders from different com-
munities to resolve conflict and maintain peace, the participation of the
leaders of all blocs in any such settlement, and the invocation of the prin-
ciple of proportionality in the substance of the settlement—worked
together to facilitate and maintain democracy amid division and pluralism
(Lijphart 1968: 111). While he did not apply the term ‘consociationalism’
to this mode of governance until subsequent publications, including a
World Politics article a year later (Lijphart 1969), Lijphart’s thesis has

A. McCulloch (*)
Department of Political Science, Brandon University, Brandon, MB, Canada
e-mail: mccullocha@brandonu.ca

© The Author(s) 2021 1

S. Keil, A. McCulloch (eds.), Power-Sharing in Europe, Federalism
and Internal Conflicts,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53590-2_1
2 A. MCCULLOCH

remained remarkably consistent over 50 years: “cooperation at the elite

level could overcome the conflict potential inherent in […] deep cleav-
ages” (2008: 2). Over time, this mode of government began to cohere
into precise institutional form to include the concurrent use of grand
coalitions, proportionality rules, veto rights and group autonomy provi-
sions (Lijphart 1977). Sharing power between majority and minority
groups through these four intersecting institutions, it is claimed, encour-
ages them to govern together with a “spirit of accommodation”
(Lijphart 1968).
Constitutional designers and external conflict mediators have tended to
support Lijphart’s starting assumption, seeing power-sharing as a pre-
ferred institutional strategy for mediating ethnic, linguistic, religious and
national divisions. While consociationalism may have originated as a
descriptive device to explain democratic stability in the Netherlands—and
later Switzerland, Austria and Belgium—it has, beginning in the 1980s
and especially since the 1990s, taken a distinctly prescriptive turn. A ‘new
wave’ of consociational cases—often emerging out of violent conflict and
adopted with international mediation support—appeared across Europe
and around the world (Taylor 2009). For those places where conflict ends
via negotiation and there are no clear victors, external mediators in par-
ticular see some form of power-sharing as being able to reconcile contrast-
ing norms of territorial integrity and self-determination, as enhancing
internal and regional security, and as promoting democracy and minority
rights (McCulloch and McEvoy 2018). At an empirical level, there appears
to be a power-sharing dividend: it supports the end of violent conflict, it
reduces group-based insecurities, and it supports minority inclusion in
democratic processes.
Not everyone agrees. Indeed, consociationalism remains hotly con-
tested today. These concerns are well-rehearsed elsewhere, but in brief,
they follow three main tracks:

1. Consociationalism is difficult to adopt: Majorities and minorities will

bring divergent institutional preferences to any negotiation on the con-
tours of the state with majority leaders favoring majoritarianism and
minority elites preferring consociation and other forms of power-shar-
ing. This inability to agree on what shape the state should take makes
consociational settlements “as rare as the arctic rose” (Horowitz
2002: 197).
 1 INTRODUCTION: POWER-SHARING IN EUROPE—FROM ADOPTABILITY… 3

2. Consociationalism has difficulty functioning: Consociation is often seen

as a dysfunctional form of democracy as it brings together disparate and
reluctant power-sharing partners, who may be divided not only by eth-
nicity, nationality, language or religion but also by ideology. This makes
the consensus that consociationalists seek very hard to find, with immo-
bilism, legislative deadlock and ethnic outbidding as more
likely outcomes.
3. Consociationalism is difficult to modify, and even harder to move beyond:
Consociation is often seen as “sticky,” that is, by locking in ostensibly
divisive identities, it is thought to block the transition to a more “nor-
mal” majoritarian politics. Parties are either not willing to change a set
of rules under which they benefit or, because they have so little in com-
mon in terms of how they envision the role of the state, they cannot
agree on new institutional arrangements. This implies an inability to
reform or exit consociational arrangements.

The ongoing debates over consociation, power-sharing and how to

design inclusive political institutions amid deep division thus remain as
salient today as they did 50 years ago. We contribute to these debates
through the application of a temporal lens on the past, present and future
of consociationalism in Europe. With these concerns front of mind, we
seek in this volume to query the performance of power-sharing in European
states across three dimensions: adoptability, functionality and what we
might call end-ability.

2   Power-Sharing from Start to Finish

Consociationalism represents a specific type of power-sharing institutional
design. Power-sharing is best employed as an umbrella term to capture
“those rules that, in addition to defining how decisions will be made by
groups within the polity, allocate decision-making rights, including access
to state resources, among collectivities competing for power” (Hartzell
and Hoddie 2003: 320). Understood in this way, power-sharing includes
not only consociationalism but also federalism, another institutional
approach deployed in many of the European cases considered in this vol-
ume. Both consociationalism and federalism combine institutions of
shared-rule and self-rule, and both can take a variety of institutional forms.
The four consociational institutions can be designed either according to a
logic of predetermination or self-determination. Predetermined—or
4 A. MCCULLOCH

corporate—consociation “accommodates groups according to ascriptive

criteria, such as ethnicity or religion” (McGarry and O’Leary 2007: 675),
often in the form of ethnic quotas and reserved seats. Self-determined—or
liberal—consociation “rewards whatever salient political identities emerge
in democratic elections, whether these are based on ethnic or religious
groups, or on subgroup or transgroup identities” (McGarry and O’Leary
2007: 675). This includes the allocation of executive posts on the basis of
parties’ legislative seat-share, the use of qualified majority rules and opt-in
clauses for autonomy provisions.
Federalism, too, can appear in various institutional configurations.
Federations vary according to the number and composition of the sub-
units, the extent of competencies allocated to the subunits versus the
amount of power retained by the center, as well as by whether competen-
cies are allocated on a symmetrical or asymmetrical basis. Consociationalism
and federalism share a number of conceptual affinities but they remain
empirically distinct. Federalism often exists outside the consociational
framework, and not all consociations enact federal rules. While our pri-
mary focus in this volume is on consociational power-sharing, we also
consider the relationship between consociationalism and federalism in our
selected cases.
In this volume, we consider how consociationalism is adopted, how it
functions and how it ends (McCulloch and McEvoy 2020). To start, we
are interested in adoptability. By adoptability, we mean the conditions
under which parties agree to share power or come to see power-sharing as
an acceptable arrangement for mediating and resolving their collective dis-
putes (McGarry 2017). As noted above and as Paul Anderson and John
McGarry show in this volume (see Chaps. 9 and 10 respectively), getting
to consociational agreement is no small feat. Beyond the asymmetrical
preferences majorities and minorities might bring to the table, adoptabil-
ity also highlights how agreement on political institutions is only one of
many moving parts in a comprehensive settlement. That is, the acceptabil-
ity of power-sharing institutions is often contingent on the parties agree-
ing to other conflict-related matters; in Chap. 10, for example, McGarry
demonstrates in the case of Cyprus, it is the inability to resolve self-­
determination and security matters (such as the ongoing presence of
Turkish troops on the island) that contributes to holding up reunification
efforts. As McGarry notes in his chapter, “it is not just that a consociation
may need a comprehensive settlement that involves agreement on multiple
disputes, but [it is] how these other disputes are settled [that] will affect
 1 INTRODUCTION: POWER-SHARING IN EUROPE—FROM ADOPTABILITY… 5

the prospects for consociational adoption and maintenance.” To under-

stand why it is that consociation is difficult—but, it should be stressed, not
impossible—to adopt, we thus need to understand the adoptability of the
agreement itself, both in terms of the agreement’s constituent parts as well
as the wider environment in which power is to be shared.
We also consider the functionality of the different power-sharing sys-
tems in our selected cases. Functionality can be understood as the ability
to ‘get things done,’ a vital precondition for any institutional package. As
Joanne McEvoy and Eduardo Aboultaif (2020) suggest, “a functional
power-sharing system is one that proves useful for its intended purpose,
ostensibly to promote elite cooperation, help the state transition to
democracy and secure peace.” McGarry employs the term ‘performance’
in similar fashion, defining it as “the ability of consociations to be adopted,
maintained and to secure peaceful stability” (2019: 540). Functionality
assumes that power-sharing institutions work as intended and do not
experience regular legislative logjams or decision-making vacuums. A con-
cern with functionality gets to the heart of the debate over what a conso-
ciation is designed to do: keep peace or deliver democracy? Especially in
new-wave cases, consociationalism is often seen as a vehicle for ending
violence and securing peace. Yet, peace and democracy are connected. As
McEvoy argues, “if power-sharing governments are unable to provide suf-
ficient levels of good governance, the whole post-agreement edifice will
likely be at stake” (2017: 211). In other words, peace alone cannot be a
measure for the success of power-sharing, although it is vital for power-­
sharing to succeed at all.
While it has a reasonably strong track record at ending violence and
shoring up peace, there are reasons to be skeptical of consociational func-
tionality as it relates to democracy and good governance. Coalition-­
building between former adversaries can be a protracted process, and
parties, in the absence of trust, may lean on their veto powers, curtailing
the legislative agenda. Indeed, sometimes, consociation has been shown
to incentivize a brinkmanship-style politics, with parties seeking to extract
concessions from the other side (Roeder and Rothchild 2005; Jarstad
2008). This may result in legislative deadlock and other forms of immobil-
ism. Yet, at other times, consociation’s fear-reducing ability aligns with
politicians’ power-seeking nature to induce compromise. Consociationalism
offers a number of confidence-building measures which encourage parties
to take up their share of power and to remain in their governing posts and
6 A. MCCULLOCH

get on with the business of governing (Martin 2013; Mattes and Savun
2009; McGarry and O’Leary 2006).
Our volume highlights both moments of compromise and moments of
breakdown, sometimes within a single case. In Chap. 7, for example, Cera
Murtagh considers 20 years of consociationalism in Northern Ireland, the
trajectory of which is characterized by “crisis,” “setbacks,” “tumult” and
“staggered progress.” Yet, in likening the peace process to “two steps for-
ward, one step back,” she also sees “critical openings” for greater inclu-
sion, equality, and social justice amid crisis moments. The slow gains in
these areas are detailed in Chap. 7. The “two steps forward, one step
back” analogy will surely resonate with John Hulsey and Soeren Keil,
who, in Chap. 6, also see mixed performance in the consociational experi-
ences in the three Balkan states of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and
North Macedonia. Seeing consociationalism as key to facilitating peace
after violent conflict, Hulsey and Keil nonetheless also expose its role in
limiting political competition and in enabling state capture. Indeed, the
cases considered in this volume suggest that consociation has a mixed
track record on functionality, with many contemporary systems—espe-
cially those adopted after violent internal conflict—persisting in a kind of
bounded instability whereby periods of political stability and the routines
of day-to-day governing are punctuated by grave moments of crisis and
brinkmanship, with a looming threat of institutional collapse or even
renewed violence. To understand why, we need to explore both the insti-
tutional design of power-sharing rules themselves as well as how such
institutional choices translate into political processes and outcomes in
divided settings.
How a consociational system is adopted and how it operates over time
is also connected to how it might eventually end. We thus also turn our
attention to the “end-ability” of consociationalism (McCulloch and
McEvoy 2020). By end-ability, we mean the ability of a polity to reform
its power-sharing rules and to move beyond such a system if and when the
governing partners agree to do so. A concern with end-ability stems from
an ongoing debate regarding consociational longevity. Whereas earlier
scholars, including Lijphart (1977) and Daniel Elazar, saw consociational-
ism as inherently flexible—with Elazar arguing about consociationalism
that “these processes are subject to change with relative ease when the
conditions that generated them change” (1985: 23)—others suggest an
inherent ‘stickiness’ to the system. As Donald Horowitz suggests, conso-
ciational rules “tend to rigidify conflicts and do not lend themselves to
 1 INTRODUCTION: POWER-SHARING IN EUROPE—FROM ADOPTABILITY… 7

renegotiation. Most agree that consociational institutions, once estab-

lished, are sticky” (Horowitz 2014: 12). John Nagle (2019) offers a more
colorful analogy for how consociationalism can get stuck by introducing
the concept of “zombie power-sharing.” As he sees it, in many places,
including Lebanon, Northern Ireland and Bosnia, consociationalism has
“long since ceased functioning in a way healthy to the body politic, but yet
it somehow remains dominant.” This ‘zombification,’ he suggests, means
“it is almost impossible to change, reform or accommodate new policies.”
The cases considered in this volume illuminate both sides of this debate.
In Chaps. 2 and 3, Matthijs Bogaards and Peter Bussjäger and Mirella
M. Johler demonstrate, respectively, the gradual transition away from con-
sociationalism in the Netherlands and Austria. By contrast, Bosnia and
Herzegovina’s experiences at the European Court of Human Rights
embody the concern expressed by Horowitz and others regarding a lack
of exit from consociationalism (Boldt 2012; Agarin et al. 2018). Repeated
rulings from the court suggesting the rules for the tripartite presidency
and House of Peoples, both of which require ethnic affiliation with one of
the three constituent peoples (Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats), were discrimi-
natory have done little to move the country away from strict corporate
consociation rules. The early consociational experience in Cyprus, dis-
cussed in Chap. 10, demonstrates a worst-case scenario, with violence,
occupation and partition following the collapse of the power-sharing gov-
ernment in 1963. To understand why and when consociation is difficult to
reform, modify or end, we need to explore the social, political and institu-
tional conditions under which reforms—or indeed, peaceful exit—are
considered feasible.

3   Organization of the Book

In this volume, we are interested in two broad questions, which we have
selected in order to provoke theoretical and empirical insights about
power-sharing in Europe:

• How do consociations come in and out of being?

• How do consociations work, that is, how do they resolve political
crises and other forms of deadlock between power-sharing partners?

We take up these questions through a series of country case studies, all

from the European continent, organized in loose chronological fashion.
8 A. MCCULLOCH

In Part I, we consider past cases of consociation (Netherlands, Austria), in

Part 2, we consider contemporary consociations (Belgium, Switzerland,
the Balkans, South Tyrol and Northern Ireland), and, in Part 3, we turn
our attention to possible future cases (Cyprus and Spain). Europe is an apt
focal point for such an inquiry. First, Europe represents the so-called
birth-place of consociational theory as a research program. Starting with
the four ‘classic’ cases of consociationalism—the Netherlands, Austria,
Switzerland and Belgium—exploration of European cases has set out
many of the propositions still being tested today, including on questions
of adoptability, functionality and end-ability. This is also true of the ‘new
wave’ cases in which Northern Ireland, Bosnia and North Macedonia fac-
tor large, but where conditions are notably different from the classic cases.
A focus on European cases allows us to consider whether the same theo-
retical propositions about how consociation ‘works’ still hold in new cases
as compared to the classic cases. Second, while consociational systems are
found all around the globe, there is a high concentration of consociational
cases in Europe. This allows us to highlight how and why the cases con-
verge or diverge, while holding other case attributes constant. This is not
to suggest that consociation is necessarily or distinctly European but a
specific focus on these cases allows us to isolate and identify those factors
that help to explain consociational performance at distinct stages, includ-
ing adoption, function and exit.
Further, a focus on these cases allows us to investigate the relationship
between types of power-sharing, namely between consociationalism and
federalism. With the exception of the Netherlands, all the cases considered
in this volume entail some degree of territorial autonomy. This takes a
variety of forms, including devolution to a region where power is then
shared (e.g., Northern Ireland, South Tyrol), federal systems of govern-
ment (Austria, Bosnia, Belgium, Switzerland, Spain and as proposed in
Cyprus), and decentralization processes in municipalities where national
minorities become local majorities (North Macedonia, Kosovo). The rela-
tionship between territorial autonomy, federalism and consociationalism,
we suggest, is far from straight-forward. Consociationalism and federalism
can, at times, work in tandem to support a politics of accommodation and
compromise while at other times they make it difficult to reach agreement,
even lowering the costs of non-agreement, thus affecting functionality
prospects (see Caluwaerts and Reuchamps 2015: 279).
We start, in the first part of the book, with two countries that were early
adopters of consociational processes but which have both since moved
 1 INTRODUCTION: POWER-SHARING IN EUROPE—FROM ADOPTABILITY… 9

on—at least institutionally—toward other forms of power-sharing or con-

sensus democracy. In Chap. 2, Matthijs Bogaards suggests that there are
two stories to tell about the Netherlands, one about the rise and fall of
consociationalism and one about the “allegedly emancipative power of
pillars.” As to the second story, Bogaards contrasts the skepticism of pil-
larization in American political science with a decidedly more favorable
understanding of it in Dutch sociology, showing how these competing
perspectives played out in relation both to de-pillarization and to the pros-
pect of an ‘Islamic pillar’ in the 1990s. Bogaards’ analysis suggests a need
to re-evaluate the role of pillarization in consociational theory. As to the
first story, he suggests that there is no clearly delineated end-date to Dutch
consociationalism—that is, “no mirror of the Pacification of 1917.” Rather
than a wholesale and immediate transformation of the system, there was a
gradual transition away from consociationalism, prompted in part by de-­
pillarization. A similar process plays out in Austria, where, while the high-
water mark of consociationalism between 1945 and 1966 is easier to
identify, the actual decline of consociational policy-making occurred grad-
ually from the 1960s into the 1980s. In Chap. 3, Peter Bussjäger and
Mirella M. Johler detail Austria’s experience with “multi-dimensional
power-sharing” by tracing the interconnections between consociational-
ism, federalism and corporatism. They explain the ability of consociation-
alism to give way to a more competitive style of politics through these
interconnections, in particular demonstrating how the federal power-­
sharing structure served as a kind of institutional safety net allowing politi-
cal elites to move beyond the post-war ‘grand bargain.’ Both cases seem to
recall early theorizing on how consociationalism can help to develop “suf-
ficient mutual trust at both elite and mass levels to render itself superflu-
ous” (Lijphart 1977: 228). What Bogaards and Bussjäger and Johler show
in these cases is that this unfolded in a gradual, evolutionary fashion.
While the Netherlands and Austria give some credence to the ability to
move beyond consociationalism, their experiences may be less generaliz-
able to the contemporary period. Given that consociationalism has not
proven to be the “transient arrangement” anticipated in early consocia-
tional theory (Elazar 1985: 31), new-wave cases may have more to learn
from places such as Switzerland, where power-sharing has successfully
adapted to new challenges and to shifting political and societal circum-
stances, than from the Netherland and Austria, where consociationalism
proved temporary. Indeed, the cases considered in Part II have all had
extended periods of consociational practice, but none show immediate
10 A. MCCULLOCH

signs of abandoning their power-sharing systems. In Chap. 4, Sean Mueller

provides a comprehensive overview of power-sharing politics in Switzerland.
Like Austria, power-sharing in Switzerland is multi-­dimensional; as Mueller
explains, it is hard to find a Swiss institution that does not share power in
one form or another. Combining consociationalism, federalism, direct
democracy, bicameralism and a distinctly Swiss-style of collegialism, Swiss
power-sharing is the product of both ‘grand design’ and evolutionary
practice. Rather than presenting as ‘sticky,’ there appears to be a kind of
inherent flexibility to the Swiss system, with Mueller highlighting key
moments of power-sharing reform. While power-­sharing broadly has its
origins in the promulgation of the 1848 constitution, the system has
proven adaptable, with new rules introduced at various points, including
in 1874, 1891, 1918, 1959 and 2003. Thus, unlike in Austria and the
Netherlands, where consociationalism was able to gradually fade away,
power-sharing in Switzerland has proven remarkably resilient and adaptive.
If and when “de-consociationalization” (Helms et al. 2019) comes to
Switzerland, it is unlikely to entail the abandonment of power-sharing writ
large. As with Austria, federalism and collegialism provide an institutional
safety net for ensuring broad inclusion of the different linguistic, ideologi-
cal and territorial communities (though, it must be said, not everyone is
able to partake of this inclusion, with 25% of Swiss residents unable to gain
citizenship and voting rights). Any threat to collegial decision-making
comes instead from the “double polarization” of the party system, with
recent elections showing not only the left and right poles gaining in elec-
toral strength but also widening in distance from one another. The more
ideologically polarized the party system, the more difficult it becomes to
reach consensus in government. How adaptative Swiss power-sharing will
be in the face of these new developments remains an ongoing process.
Whereas federalism has functioned as an institutional safety net in
Switzerland and Austria, the same cannot be said for Belgium. Here, not
only has the country become more consociational and federal over time,
federalism and consociationalism also threaten to work at cross-purposes.
This is what Patricia Popelier demonstrates in Chap. 5. As she sees it, the
Belgian federal structure “both reinforces and undermines the consocia-
tional regime.” Federalism’s mandate of self-rule and group autonomy,
she explains, “reinforces regional identity, committing citizens to one
group or another.” While this should support consociational decision-­
making, it instead takes away “the will to cooperate and compromise.” A
combination of decentralist dynamics and anti-consociational sentiment
 1 INTRODUCTION: POWER-SHARING IN EUROPE—FROM ADOPTABILITY… 11

has thus brought Belgium to the brink of dissolution. Nonetheless,

Popelier shows that Belgium remains “viable” as a unit, but only at the
cost of complexity. Compounding these centrifugal tendencies, however,
has been the rise of party polarization with growing support for the far
right in Flanders and far left in Wallonia. As in Switzerland, it risks becom-
ing difficult to make consociation work with parties attempting to co-­
govern across multiple divides, including ethno-linguistic, territorial and
ideological cleavages.
Tensions between federalism and consociationalism also play out in
Bosnia and Herzegovina, which rivals Belgium in terms of its institutional
complexity. As John Hulsey and Soeren Keil see it in Chap. 6, it is the
combination of strict corporate consociational power-sharing rules and a
radically decentralized federal system that serves as a barrier to political
change in Bosnia, especially as it concerns the composition of coalition
governments at the state-wide level. Conceding that consociationalism
helped to end the war and to keep the peace over the last 25 years, they
nonetheless worry that it has also shaped political competition “in ways
that discourage accountability through alternation in power.” They sug-
gest that the shape of the federal structure (which divides the country into
two Entities, Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia and
Herzegovina, and further devolves power to ten cantons in the Federation,
all held together loosely by a central state with minimal competencies) is
partly to blame. The federal apparatus makes it difficult to form state-level
governing coalitions without the support of major ethnic actors from the
entities and cantons, thus reinforcing the ethnic status quo and stifling
competition. They observe a similar process in Kosovo, where open com-
petition, at least in the Serb community, is undermined. There, the corpo-
rate rules on Serb representation in Kosovo’s central state institutions
combines with autonomy provisions for Serb enclaves to put the ethnic
Serb party, the Serb List (Srpska Lista), at a double advantage: the party is
able to both dominate the reserved seats at the center and control political
processes in North Kosovo. The Serb List consequently has few rivals,
leaving Kosovar Serbs with little to no electoral choice other than the List.
Hulsey and Keil are slightly more optimistic about the state of political
competition in North Macedonia where party turnover in coalition gov-
ernments is more frequent. They attribute this to North Macedonia’s
more liberal consociational rules and to its comparatively low degree of
decentralization. As they argue in Chap. 6, “liberal consociationalism
might not only be better for non-ethnic groups and identities to find
12 A. MCCULLOCH

accommodation in the system, but it might also increase competition

within ethnic groups and thereby offer a balance between the need for
inclusion and power-sharing amongst groups on the one side and party
competition and voter choice on the other side.” Alongside these con-
trasting institutional choices in the three cases, Hulsey and Keil also
acknowledge that the extent of violent internal conflict has some explana-
tory value for consociational functionality. North Macedonia, while not
immune to the violence that accompanied the breakup of Yugoslavia, was
able, unlike Bosnia and Kosovo, to avoid the worst manifestations of it.
This also helps to explain North Macedonia’s more flexible form of con-
sociational power-sharing. Especially in the wake of violent conflict and
profound mistrust, parties are liable to seek corporate guarantees of their
share in power, as they did in Bosnia and Kosovo; in the absence of pro-
tracted violent conflict, liberal rules may suffice, as they have done in
North Macedonia (McCulloch 2014).
Internal violent conflict has also played a significant role in Northern
Ireland, both in terms of bringing the region to consociationalism as a way
to end its 30-year armed conflict, but also in terms of influencing its func-
tionality over time. More than 20 years on from the signing of the Good
Friday Agreement, as Cera Murtagh explains in Chap. 7, progress, by
which she means the ability of the system to facilitate broad inclusion
beyond the main groups to the conflict, remains “far from unidirectional”
and “vulnerable to regression.” The legacy of the conflict looms large,
with major sticking points between the parties relating to how to deal with
the past, from arms decommissioning and the release of political prisoners
to the establishment of independent commissions to investigate Troubles-­
related deaths (e.g., the Historical Investigations Unit or the Independent
Commission on Information Retrieval) (for more on independent com-
missions, see Walsh 2017). Cultural issues related to the conflict, includ-
ing flags and parades, also remain contentious. But as Murtagh evaluates,
“amidst the tumult, there have been advances,” such as the completion of
arms decommissioning, the devolution of justice and policing and more
recent advances on cultural and moral issues, such as the extension of mar-
riage equality and abortion rights, bringing the region into legislative line
with the rest of the UK as well as the Republic of Ireland. Symbolic ges-
tures have also been forthcoming, including Sinn Féin’s Martin
McGuinness shaking hands with Queen Elizabeth and the Democratic
Unionist Party’s Peter Robinson and Arlene Foster attending Gaelic
Athletic Association games. Importantly, there has been a willingness to
 1 INTRODUCTION: POWER-SHARING IN EUROPE—FROM ADOPTABILITY… 13

use crisis moments to open the door to institutional reforms, including

modifications to the method for electing the First Minister and deputy
First Minister, reducing the total number of executive portfolios and seats
in the Assembly, creating an official opposition and restructuring of the
Petition of Concern veto mechanism (Murtagh and McCulloch 2019).
While many of these reforms necessitated a willingness to cooperate on
the part of the power-sharing partners, political changes of this magnitude
have also been assisted by Northern Ireland’s status as a regional consocia-
tion. Indeed, it is difficult to see how the local parties could arrive at some
of these decisions without the well-timed and constructive mediation
efforts of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, who, as co-­
guarantors of the Good Friday Agreement, have a clear stake in support-
ing power-sharing in the region. The two governments have used their
powers as co-guarantors to convene and mediate inter-party talks to facili-
tate dialogue, defuse tensions and redirect energies toward crisis resolu-
tion (McCulloch and McEvoy 2019). It is not that the stakes are low in
regional consociations; rather, they are able to deploy a set of deadlock-­
breaking mechanisms not always available to other consociations. That is,
in some regional consociations, the wider state can operate in a mediatory
capacity if and when the regional power-sharing partners find themselves
in a stalemate.
South Tyrol represents another regional consociation where the “ter-
ritorial scale of the arrangement” helps to facilitate cooperation between
communities (Wolff 2004). South Tyrol is heralded as a consociational
success story by both scholars and practitioners. In Chap. 8, Elisabeth
Alber outlines three factors for this success: mutual trust, time and adapt-
ability. As she explains, “creating mutual trust takes time. Even in the
presence of favourable conditions, as in the case of South Tyrol, it took
much more time than expected to implement the detailed autonomy and
power-sharing arrangements.” In addition to the time it takes to build
trust, time is also critical for the development of institutional capacity,
especially in the context of linguistic differences. As she notes, the system
has to manage the logistics of a trilingual public sphere, necessitating, for
example, translating German terminology into Italian legal codes and
training civil service personnel in German, Italian and Ladin.
Adaptability, meanwhile, which Albers defines as “the institutional and
procedural capacity of a system for adaptive evolution,” remains an ongo-
ing process in South Tyrol. Despite the corporate consociational features
of its power-sharing system, Alber sees the system as both internally and
14 A. MCCULLOCH

externally adaptive, though, as she admits, the time may have come for
further adaptation. A novel attempt at “participatory consociational-
ism”—the establishment of an Autonomy Convention that carried out its
work over 2016–2017 and which sought input from citizens, civil society
and politicians—highlighted the challenges of adaptability. It showcased
both the willingness of the different communities to come together in
deliberative forums in search of a common vision for the region but also
the extent to which that shared vision remains at least somewhat elusive.
Indeed, divergent opinions remain across a range of salient issues, includ-
ing the institutional framework itself, with German-speakers preferring
expanded institutional competences for the province and Italian-speakers
preferring a relaxation of the proportionality rules (Larin and Röggla
2019). The lessons Alber outlines from South Tyrol could well be read as
a dictum for the other cases considered in this volume and yet, as our
authors demonstrate, trust, time and adaptability are often in short supply
in divided places.
Looking toward the future, what might the cases considered in Part III
learn from the experiences of past and present consociations? Could, for
example, a regional consociation be in the cards for Catalonia? Paul
Anderson, in Chap. 9, does not seem too optimistic about such prospects,
suggesting that it is currently “outside the realm of feasible solutions to
the constitutional impasse.” If we understand adoptability as “the extent
to which the groups support the establishment of a power-sharing polity”
(McEvoy and Aboultaif 2020) then Anderson is right to be pessimistic. As
he explains, consociationalism requires an elite willingness to make it
work, a willingness largely absent in the Spanish state. The Spanish gov-
ernment maintains a hostility to plurinational solutions to the conflict, at
least in part out of a fear of a cascading effect amongst the other autono-
mous communities. Whereas the UK and Italy eventually came around to
accepting power-sharing solutions for Northern Ireland and South Tyrol,
respectively, the same cannot—yet?—be said for Spain. Nor does Catalonia
have a kin state to help encourage the parties toward power-sharing, as the
Republic of Ireland and Austria were able to do for the other regional
consociations considered in this volume (though it should be noted that
not all kin states play a conducive role in conflict settlement, as experiences
in the Balkans highlight). A third unfavorable factor relates to the diver-
gent opinions on independence within Catalonia itself. For Catalan sepa-
ratists, consociationalism risks being too integrationist and signaling defeat
for the independence project. For those who reject independence, conso-
ciationalism represents too strong a medicine. If consociationalism is not
 1 INTRODUCTION: POWER-SHARING IN EUROPE—FROM ADOPTABILITY… 15

at the top of any of the parties’ institutional wish lists, what might a con-
sociational lens offer for breaking the constitutional impasse? As Anderson
proposes, the parties would benefit from some movement in the direction
of consociational philosophy, even if the actual remedy falls short of con-
sociation itself. This may mean moving toward a more plurinational fed-
eration, one that might involve asymmetrical powers for those who seek
them, or a return to consensus democracy, but with the addition of more
deliberative democratic features, as a way to reinvest Catalan separatists
into the Spanish governing structure. Anderson’s chapter offers important
insights into the challenges of adoptability, where even seeing power-­
sharing as a viable option remains a formidable hurdle.
The challenge of adoptability plays out differently—but no less
acutely—in Cyprus. While Cyprus embodies the typical demographic sce-
nario seen as unconducive to consociational adoption—a bipolar divide
with a very large majority community—as John McGarry explains, the
Greek Cypriots’ reluctance to agree to a power-sharing deal goes beyond
demographic calculations. As he notes in Chap. 10, “no party in Cyprus,
Greek Cypriot or Turkish Cypriot, has ever sought to conclude a power-­
sharing deal without a comprehensive settlement.” Instead, reaching a
comprehensive settlement to reunify the two parts of the island also
requires reaching agreement on other core issues, including security, self-­
determination and property restitution and a perception that—decades
after de facto partition—any reunification deal on the table has to be “bet-
ter than the status quo.” Here, it is not just agreement on the contours of
the power-sharing relationship that continues to challenge adoption;
instead, it is the circumstances under which such an agreement becomes
viable that holds up the process.
Beyond highlighting the challenges of adoption and adoptability,
Cyprus also offers stark lessons about functionality and, unlike in the
Netherlands and Austria, how consociational experiments can come to an
abrupt and violent, rather than peaceful and gradual, end. The early
attempt at consociational power-sharing between 1960 and 1963, also
covered in Chap. 10, was widely seen as ineffective—as McGarry notes,
the words most frequently used to describe it include ‘dysfunctional’ and
‘unworkable.’ The reasons are layered: it was an agreement imposed on
the local actors, reflecting the power balance between Turkey and Greece,
rather than between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots; it enacted a
form of dis-proportional representation and strong veto powers for
Turkish Cypriots, to which the Greek Cypriots were opposed; and it was
16 A. MCCULLOCH

implemented alongside competing goals of security and self-­determination,

most manifestly in terms of enosis and taksim. This early experience offers
an important lesson for contemporary attempts to revisit consociational
processes in Cyprus (and elsewhere): weak adoptability (e.g., “when one
or more of the groups have less than majority support for the deal”) begets
dysfunctionality, even if the adoption problem can be overcome (McEvoy
and Aboultaif 2020). Dysfunctional outcomes, in turn, risk the abrupt and
possibly even violent end to power-sharing. Adoptability, functionality and
end-ability are, ultimately, intimately related.
In what follows, the authors trace the ups and downs of sharing power
in their respective cases. They point to a range of variables affecting power-­
sharing adoption, including: the acceptability of consociationalism
amongst would-be power-sharing partners; the wider set of issues and
grievances power-sharing is meant to address; and the role of external
actors in imposing or supporting such adoption. They also consider the
range of factors that affect power-sharing functionality, not least of all the
conditions under which it comes to be adopted. Other factors affecting
performance include the role of violent internal conflict; the relationship
between consociationalism and other institutional responses, especially
territorial ones, such as federalism and regional consociations; and the
design of the rules themselves, especially whether they hew toward liberal
or corporate manifestations. Indeed, the distinction between liberal and
corporate consociation matters not only for the extent of political compe-
tition the system can support, as Hulsey and Keil demonstrate in Chap. 6,
but also for the extent of inclusion for “women, gender minorities, sexual
minorities, racial and ethnic minorities and linguistic minorities not
included in power-sharing pacts and those who simply do not identify with
the main ethnic groups or with ethnicity at all” (Murtagh, Chap. 7).
Finally, the chapters also illuminate how consociationalism ends, some-
times abruptly, sometimes gradually, how sometimes power-sharing gets
‘stuck’ with parties seemingly unable to move beyond—let alone reform—
it, and how modifications to the existing rules can sometimes support
more functional power-sharing over the long term. These lessons are
recapped by Soeren Keil and Allison McCulloch in the conclusion (Chap.
11). We may not definitively resolve debates more than 50 years in the
making, but the chapters that follow offer careful and nuanced analysis of
the complexities of power-sharing across a wide range of European cases,
adding more theoretical and empirical evidence to our collective under-
standing of how consociations come in and out of being and how
they function in practice.
 1 INTRODUCTION: POWER-SHARING IN EUROPE—FROM ADOPTABILITY… 17

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 CHAPTER 2

Consociationalism in the Netherlands:

Polder Politics and Pillar Talk

Matthijs Bogaards

M. Bogaards (*)
Department of Political Science, Central European University,
Vienna, Austria
e-mail: BogaardsM@ceu.edu

© The Author(s) 2021 19

S. Keil, A. McCulloch (eds.), Power-Sharing in Europe, Federalism
and Internal Conflicts,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53590-2_2
20 M. BOGAARDS

Map. 2.1 Map of the Netherlands. Source: https://d-maps.com/carte.

php?num_car=4114&lang=en

1   Introduction
The Netherlands is the first case of consociationalism. It was the first
country where cooperation among political elites was identified as a cru-
cial factor in maintaining a stable system in a divided society, making
democracy possible. And, if the so-called Pacification of 1917 is viewed as
 2 CONSOCIATIONALISM IN THE NETHERLANDS: POLDER POLITICS… 21

the starting point, it is also the first country in modern history to become
consociational, predating other classic cases such as Austria, Lebanon, and
Switzerland. For these reasons alone, much can be learned from an analy-
sis of the origins, functioning, challenges, and transformation of consocia-
tionalism in the Netherlands.
This chapter has two stories to tell. The first is about politics: the rein-
vention of traditions of compromise and tolerance, the staying power of
consensus institutions, and the phenomenon of “polder politics,” described
as “an institutional structure and a spirit of peaceful deliberation aimed for
consensus in which all parties are more or less equal, do not force a one-­
sided conclusion and pragmatically acknowledge (societal) pluriformity”
(Te Velde 2010: 206).1 A relatively recent term from the 1990s, “polder
politics” is used by some to complain about backroom dealing, slow
decision-­making, and the inability to push through what are deemed badly
needed reforms, and by others to celebrate a non-adversarial style of policy
making (Hendriks and Toonen 2001).
The second, much less familiar story, is about the Netherlands as a
divided society and the alleged emancipative power of pillars. In compara-
tive politics, reinforcing cleavages of class, religion, and ideology are seen
as a threat to political stability and social harmony. Before Lijphart intro-
duced “consociationalism” in the 1960s, American political science even
held that democracy might be impossible in societies organized around
deep divisions, including the Netherlands (see Bogaards 2000). Less well
known is that several Dutch sociologists at the time emphasized the posi-
tive role of pillarization in the emancipation of the Catholics, Calvinists,
and Socialists (Daalder 1985). This positive evaluation of a segmented
form of pluralism became visible again in the 1990s when a debate emerged
about the social integration of immigrants in general and Muslim immi-
grants in particular (Maussen 2012). However, Lijphart’s recommenda-
tion of an “Islamic pillar” was heavily criticized and important questions
were raised about the desirability and feasibility of separate organizations
for and by immigrants.
This chapter starts with the socio-political side of the consociational
model: a divided society. It contrasts two approaches to pillarization, one
negative and rooted in (American) political science, the other positive and
grounded in (Dutch) sociology. In the second part, the chapter then
reviews the debate about a new ethnic (Moroccan, Turkish) or religious

1
All translations from Dutch are by the author.
22 M. BOGAARDS

(Muslim) pillar in the 1990s to show the lasting power of the emancipative
interpretation of pillarization. The final part of the chapter looks at the
political side of the consociational model, placing and tracing Dutch
democracy in three of Lijphart’s typologies of democracies. Depending on
the yardsticks used, the analysis highlights continuities or changes. The
conclusion reflects on the contemporary relevance of the Dutch case for
thinking about communal organization and politics in divided societies.

2   Pillars as Problem

Consociational theory, following early work by American scholars such as
Almond, posits that when “a society is divided by sharp cleavages with no
or very few overlapping memberships and loyalties—in other words, when
the political culture is deeply fragmented—pressures toward moderate
middle-of-the-road attitudes are absent” (Lijphart 1969: 208–209).
Although “it remains a matter of debate to what degree the Netherlands
did have cross-cutting cleavages or not” (Daalder 1984: 113), there is
little doubt that Dutch society was organized in “pillars,” defined by the
sociologist Kruijt (1957: 15) as “legally equal blocs of social organizations
and subcultures based on a belief system within a larger, plural, but racially
and ethnically mostly homogenous democratic society (nation).”2
Catholics, Protestants, Calvinists, Socialists and Liberals read their own
newspapers, listened to their own radio programs, watched their own tele-
vision programs, spent their leisure time with their own kind of people in
their own associations—including sports clubs—maintained separate trade
unions, sent their children to their own schools, even universities—with
liberal and Socialist offspring meeting in public schools—and voted for
their own parties. The degree and extent of pillarization can be measured.
Kruijt (1957) distinguishes between: (1) the institutional level of pillariza-
tion or the number of social activities for which pillar organizations exist;
(2) the participation rate or the membership of pillar organizations
expressed as a percentage of all persons eligible from that particular group;
(3) the internal degree of integration or the extent to which the various

2
A similar notion is that of “segmented pluralism,” defined by Lorwin (1971: 141) as “the
organization of social movements, educational and communications systems, voluntary asso-
ciations, and political parties along the lines of religious, socio-economic, and political
affiliations.”
 2 CONSOCIATIONALISM IN THE NETHERLANDS: POLDER POLITICS… 23

parts of a pillar are integrated. Some pillars were more “pillarized” than
others, with the Catholic pillar seen as the prototype (Thurlings 1978).
The number of pillars is contested—Lijphart is alone in sometimes detect-
ing a fourth, Liberal pillar (Pennings 1990: 71).3 Finally, there were
important local differences and changes over time (Blom 2000).
Lijphart (1968a, 1975) devotes several chapters of his case study of the
Netherlands to mapping pillarization. His main aim is to demonstrate the
absence of the cross-cutting cleavages that would explain political stability
in American pluralist theory of the time. Or at least, partly. The two
Christian pillars were socio-economically diverse and this softened the
class cleavage. Lijphart’s account of pillarization is not the only one. At
least five other interpretations can be identified (See Daalder 1985;
Pennings 1990). First, those who see pillarization as a defensive mecha-
nism, as a “church strategy against secularization” (Rigthart 1986: 174)
or, in the words of Bornewasser (1988: 1987), “as a modern means to a
traditional end: to protect the faithful against the dangers of a moderniz-
ing world.” Second, those who see it as a control theory, which sees pil-
larization as a deliberate elite strategy to sharpen societal divisions to
entrench their own positions of power (Van Doorn 1956; Van Schendelen
1978, 1984). A fragmented culture calls for leadership and political lead-
ers have cleverly exploited this. Until the changes of the mid-1960s, politi-
cal elites benefited from stable electoral support (Houska 1985) and a
deferential and passive citizenry that came with the encapsulation of their
followers in pillars. Third, Neo-Marxist readings are even more critical,
blaming pillars for dividing the working class (See Stuurman 1983). The
fourth and fifth interpretations of pillarization are more positive as they
focus on pillars as promotors of emancipation and modernization respec-
tively. They will be discussed in the next section.

3   Pillars as Promoters of Emancipation

and Modernization

The argument that pillarization furthered the “emancipation” of reli-

giously and socio-economically defined groups that suffered from histori-
cal disadvantages can already be found with Kruijt (1956: 43), who judged

3
More often, though, Lijphart writes about three pillars, the third “general” pillar com-
bining Socialists and Liberals, differently from most of the literature which sees the Socialists
as the third pillar.
24 M. BOGAARDS

the struggle for emancipation through pillarization a “just” cause. The

most famous statement is by Verweij-Jonker (1962). In her analysis of
four emancipatory movements, she concentrates on the Catholic and
Calvinist subcultures and on workers and women.4 With the exception of
women, all groups organized in their own political party, which stood at
the apex of a pillar structure that prominently included media and trade
unions. All four emancipatory movements were united in their desire for
“freedom,” even though this meant different things to the different
groups. The Catholics were long considered “second class citizens”
(Bakvis 1981: 24) who, until the mid-1800s, could not practice their reli-
gion freely and were underrepresented in the professions, administration,
and politics. The Calvinists always had been in a minority position with
respect to the dominant Protestants. Success was defined as emancipation,
which in turn meant equal opportunities, and was seen as proof of integra-
tion (Verweij-Jonker 1962: 122).5
The book by Hendriks (1971, see also Janse 1985), The Emancipation
of the Calvinists, is a good example. It tells the story of how mostly poor
and simple, religiously conservative (Calvinist) masses, increasingly out of
touch with the more progressive dominant state church, used religious
zeal to overcome their marginal position in society. The goal of their leader
Abraham Kuyper was “to end discrimination” (p. 13). The Calvinists are
described as an “ethnocentric emancipation minority,” which means that
the aim is integration, not assimilation, with the group’s distinctive traits
recognized as meriting equal treatment (p. 251). This resembles the early
definition of emancipation by Van Doorn (1958: 202) as “the principal
and practical attainability of equal positions.” Much the same narrative has
been developed for the Catholics (see especially Goddijn 1957;
Thurlings 1978).6
Finally, pillarization has been interpreted as a specific form of modern-
ization. In the view of Ellemers (1984: 140), pillarization “became a self-
perpetuating mechanism … It became the accepted way of dealing with
problems of modernization.” In other words, the Dutch modernized

4
Following Bakvis (1981), the collection of Protestant Churches known in the Netherlands
as “Gereformeerden” is identified as “Calvinist” here. “Protestant” refers to the
“Hervormde kerk.”
5
In the 1960 census, Catholics made up 40 per cent of the population, Protestants (Dutch
Reformed) 28 per cent, and Calvinists 9 per cent (Daalder 1966: 215).
6
A practical opportunity presented by pillarization is the multiplication of positions,
thereby increasing participation (Lorwin 1971: 157).
 2 CONSOCIATIONALISM IN THE NETHERLANDS: POLDER POLITICS… 25

within and through their pillar organizations. Ellemers (1984) even links
pillarization to national integration, although Pennings (1990: 83) quali-
fies this claim by writing about “segmented integration: a process of orga-
nizational and mental scaling up within their own circle.”
In the middle of the 1960s a rapid process of depillarization got under
way. The boundaries between the pillars became blurry, their internal
coherence weakened, secularization reduced the role of the church, while
voters and citizens became restive (Van Mierlo 1986). For example, survey
data show that if the majority of respondents in 1966 still thought that
youth organizations and broadcasting channels should be organized on
the basis of religion, four years later this had decreased to a minority
(Middendorp 1979: 183). Interestingly, though, denominational schools
remained very popular. The parliamentary elections of 1967 are seen as a
watershed because of increased electoral volatility and the success of a new
party, D66, established on a platform of democratic change. Although
Daalder (1996: 5) detects a “self-destructing logic” in the process of pil-
larization, by which he means the proliferation of sectoral organizations
that increasingly worked together within sectors and across pillars, no
claim is made that consociationalism itself contributed to or resulted in the
weakening of socio-cultural divisions. Depillarization was a societal pro-
cess, not a political one, though it had political consequences.
Already at the time of writing in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the
literature on pillarization saw this phenomenon as largely historical and
unlikely to be repeated in any form in the future. Emancipation was seen
as completed (Verweij-Jonker 1962). Once modernization had reached a
certain stage, “the old principles failed to solve newly emerging problems”
(Ellemers 1984: 142). New social movements were too diverse, internally
heterogeneous and openly anti-institutional. In the phrase of Hellemans
(1985: 253), “the old movements are depillarizing and the new move-
ments do not pillarize any more.” It is therefore ironic that pillarization,
at least in public debate, made a come-back in the 1990s in the context of
policies targeted toward non-Western migrants and their descendants.7

7
In 2006, out of a total population of 16.5 million, 1,722,500 were classified as non-
Western. Of these 364,000 were Turkish, 332,000 Surinamese, 323,000 Moroccan, and
129,400 were from the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba (Nicolaas and Sprangers 2006: 25).
26 M. BOGAARDS

4   An Islamic Pillar?

At the end of 1991, beginning of 1992, the issue of an Islamic pillar was
discussed in the media. The main question was whether an “Islamic pillar”
was a desirable form of social organization and would foster the integra-
tion of Muslims in Dutch society.8 This debate was kicked off by an inter-
view with Lijphart in the leading Dutch quality newspaper, which was
published under the title “‘Give Muslims Separate Schools’: Prof. Lijphart
Advocates the Use of Pillarization for Integration” (Versteegh 1991). In
this newspaper interview, Lijphart showed himself to be a proponent of
pillarization of ethnic minorities from foreign descent, especially of
Moroccan and Turkish guest-workers and their children. This should hap-
pen through the establishment of their own schools and other pillar orga-
nizations. Lijphart is quoted as being even more in favor of schools based
on nationality, that is, Moroccan and Turkish schools instead of schools
based on faith, as “national differences are more important than those
based on belief systems, although they sometimes coincide” (Versteegh
1991). In such Moroccan and Turkish schools, what is known as “educa-
tion in their own language” should have an important role as an expres-
sion of their culture. In national politics, ethnic parties would play only a
minor role, but in the big cities, where ethnic minorities are present in
larger numbers, they should be more involved in local government,
according to Lijphart.
The sociologist and Christian-Democrat Zijderveld (1991) came out
strongly opposed to ethnic pillars because these would lead to “ghettoiza-
tion.” Instead, Zijderveld favored pillarization on a religious basis, that is,
an Islamic pillar. No education in the minority language and culture, but
Islamic schools and an Islamic party. It is this notion of an Islamic pillar,
also supported by Lijphart, which dominated the debate. The proponents
formulated their plea as a call for action. Minorities have the right to their
own organizations, but not the duty to form a new pillar, stressed Lijphart
(1992a). This is an especially sensitive issue because of Lijphart’s involve-
ment with South Africa in the early 1980s, at a time that the South African
government tried to come up with new ways to legitimate apartheid.9 The
formula of “separate but equal” has lost all credibility as it all too often
8
On a Muslim pillar in Belgium, see Torrekens (2019).
9
Lijphart now regrets using the term “voluntary apartheid” in a positive manner to
describe distinct lines of cleavage between subcultures, one of the favorable factors for con-
sociational democracy (Bogaards 2015: 91).
 2 CONSOCIATIONALISM IN THE NETHERLANDS: POLDER POLITICS… 27

turns out to mask “exclusion and inequality.” In a reaction published

under the title “Against Forced Pillarization,” Lijphart (1992a) stresses
that group formation should be voluntary and that individual members of
an ethnic or religious group should be free to join any group or organiza-
tion. A few years later, Lijphart (1995) wrote powerfully about the advan-
tages of the self-determination of segments and the downside of
predetermination.10
The aim of renewed pillarization, paradoxical as this may sound, is inte-
gration. The lesson that Zijderveld draws from Dutch history can be sum-
marized as “integration through emancipation in isolation.” The
assumption, more implicit than explicit, is that a minority pillar will lead to
emancipation and integration through the same process that worked for
Catholics and Calvinists a century ago. That pillarization at the end of the
past century would have the same effect as in the beginning of the past
century is, however, hotly contested. For one thing, how would an Islamic
pillar function in a depillarized society? Some contend that new, smaller
pillars can very well exist in a depillarized society (Ellemers 1998: 431),
but others are more skeptical.11 Sunier (1999), for example, sees Muslim
mobilization limited to the religious sphere in a depillarized society with a
welfare state. The historian Rigthart (1992: 14) accuses Lijphart of “sloppy
and a-historical thinking.” That Catholic and Calvinist subcultures even-
tually integrated into modern Dutch society is despite—rather than
because of—pillarization, posits Rigthart (1992: 15). Pillarization is not a
means of integration and especially nowadays would lead to the opposite:
the long-term isolation of ethnic minorities (see also In ’t Veld 1992;
Chavannes 1991). This concern was shared by secular politicians, who
feared “parallel societies” and disintegration (Van Dam 2011: 113).

10
The terms liberal and corporate consociationalism capture the same distinction. Also,
there is a clear preference for liberal consociationalism here (what Lijphart called self-deter-
mination). See further McCulloch (2014).
11
Turning the causal arrow around, Bracke (2013: 224) suggests that the discourse on
Islam and Dutch society after 1989 reflects a cultural shift that hastened depillarization. In
this reading, there were limits to the inclusiveness of the social-cultural side of consociation-
alism: whereas Christian and ideological pillars were allowed, a new Muslim pillar would not
be tolerated and the advantages enjoyed by the (remnants) of the old pillars would be denied
to the newcomers. This is an interesting thesis, but not more than that at the moment as
empirical evidence is lacking. If correct, it would reveal a deliberate limit to the inclusiveness
of consociational democracy, though different from the militant consociational democracy
Bogaards (2020) sees in Belgium’s cordon sanitaire around the extreme right.
28 M. BOGAARDS

Christian politicians and scholars have a different view.12 Probably the

first argument in favor of a Muslim pillar in the Netherlands was made by
Klop (1982) in the magazine of the research institute of the Christian
Democratic Party, the author’s employer. Referring to the experience of
the Calvinists and using similar terminology, Klop (1982: 531) argues that
Muslims should enjoy the same “right to a gradual development within
their own circle,” calling upon the government to facilitate the emergence
of an “open pillar” and warning that if Muslims in the Netherlands are
denied the facilities enjoyed by other religions during pillarization, the
result might be a “closed” pillar of Muslims that turn away from a society
that does not allow them to practice their religion to the full. At the end
of the millennium, Klop (1999: 8) repeated his plea for “open pillars as a
way to integrate non-Western migrants” although he recognizes that this
model is not being widely followed by the people it is intended for.
The main contributors to the exchange were Dutch academics. The
debate was about Dutch citizens with a migrant background, not with
them. This fits a pattern: “The call for a separate Islamic pillar reflects
more the need for spokesmen and contacts of current administrations than
a desire coming from the Muslim population itself” (Leezenberg 2006:
196). Also, little attention was paid to the feasibility of new minority pil-
lars. Shadid and Van Koningsveld (1995) highlight four factors that com-
plicate the emergence of an Islamic pillar. First, they doubt that a
sufficiently large number of Muslims will be ready to identify with and
become active in an Islamic pillar. Tellingly, the overwhelming majority of
Muslim parents send their children to public and Christian schools, not to
Muslim schools. Second, the internal heterogeneity of the Muslim com-
munity in the Netherlands would lead one to expect the emergence of
several Muslims pillars. Third, the pool of religious, social, and political
leaders is limited. Parties that appeal to voters with a migration back-
ground only appeared on the scene in the second decade of the new mil-
lennium.13 NIDA was formed in 2013 and since 2014 is represented in the
city council of the country’s second largest city, Rotterdam. On its

12
As late as 2003, the small protestant Christian Union party could devote its annual con-
gress to the question of “integration and pillarization: reflections on the multicultural soci-
ety,” featuring prominent discussions of an Islamic pillar (ChristenUnie, various
authors 2003).
13
Before Turkish and Moroccan politicians made their careers within mainstream parties,
which stayed “away from individuals who are ‘too ethnic’” (Michon and Vermeulen
2013: 610).
 2 CONSOCIATIONALISM IN THE NETHERLANDS: POLDER POLITICS… 29

website, the party characterizes itself as “an emancipation movement

inspired by Islam.”14 In 2014, two members of the national parliament
with a Turkish background split from the Labour Party and formed
DENK. The party presents itself “as an emancipation movement of people
with a migration background,” but its votes mostly come from Turkish-
Dutch and Moroccan-Dutch voters (Otjes and Krouwel 2019: 1153).
Finally, Shadid and Van Koningsveld (1995) argue that Islam is a religion,
not a church, and therefore lacks the organizational core around which
the Catholic pillar was built.15 Pillarization left behind an opportunity
structure that could be used by new groups (Duyvené de Wit and
Koopmans 2005: 57). However, there is very little evidence of the emer-
gence of an Islamic pillar, concludes Rath (1999: 59): “there is no ques-
tion of an Islamic pillar in the Netherlands, or least one that is in any way
comparable to the Roman Catholic or Protestant pillars in the past.”
So far, the story has focused on the sociological perspective. That is no
coincidence: the political aspects of a Turkish/Moroccan/Islamic pillar
were either neglected or treated as a corollary. The political complement
of pillarization is only addressed by In ’t Veld. The problems caused by
pillarization seem to be forgotten, as is the self-negating prediction that
was necessary to hold the country together. However, according to con-
sociational theory, the political pluralism brought about by the new pillar
would require political accommodation. And indeed, Lijphart’s plea for
minority parties and the involvement of minorities in local government in
the big cities seems to hint at a wholesale recommendation of the conso-
ciational package: segmental pluralism plus its political accommodation.
Hoogenboom and Scholten (2008) are the only scholars to systemati-
cally connect the two sides of the coin in their analysis of the impact of the
legacy of pillarization on the organization of migrants in the Netherlands.16

14
See: http://www.nidarotterdam.nl/onze-oproep/.
15
For an early overview of the organization(s) of Muslims in the Netherlands, see Rath
et al. (1996).
16
Vink (2007) offers a similar overview of the development of government policies toward
non-Western migrants. He likewise notes the absence of a Muslim pillar and the very limited
efforts, at best, to create one. In his attempt to debunk the “pillarization myth,” however, he
ignores the debate about the desirability of a Muslim pillar from the early 1990s and also
omits any mention of the earlier sociological literature on pillars as a force of emancipation.
For an even more comprehensive attempt to dispel the “myth” of pillarization and de-pillar-
ization, which begins and ends with the recommendation to stop using the term, see Van
Dam (2011).
30 M. BOGAARDS

They do so by, first, examining the evidence for the emergence of an

Islamic pillar (distinct outlook, exclusive organizations, integration of
Islamic organizations into one pillar, key role for pillar elites) and, second,
the rules of the game. Hoogenboom and Scholten identify three episodes
in policy toward Dutch citizens with a non-Western background: migrants
as socio-cultural minorities (up to 1989), migrants as socio-economic
minorities (1989–2001), and migrants as socio-cultural individuals (since
2001). The first period was heavily influenced by the legacy of pillariza-
tion, with Dutch policies actively promoting exclusive migrant organiza-
tions based on the ideal of “identity-based integration” (integratie met
behoud van eigen identiteit). In other words, new Dutch citizens would
integrate into Dutch society while cultivating the differences that set them
apart. This followed the logic of “group-based emancipation” (p. 114). In
the second period, the focus shifted to socio-economic issues but the end-­
effect, if not goal, remained the same: socio-cultural emancipation. Only
in the third period did socio-cultural differences become a problem, a
problem for socio-economic success and for integration. Using the lan-
guage of bonding and bridging, Scholten and Holzacker (2009: 94) show
how the early appreciation of Dutch government policy for migrants
bonding in their own culture and organizations has turned into the con-
viction that bonding is “an obstacle to bridging and a threat to national
cohesion.” In the Netherlands, it is quite common nowadays to talk about
the failure of multiculturalism.17
For each period, Hoogenboom and Scholten (2008), in addition to
analyzing governmental policy toward migrants, also examine the seven
rules of the game that Lijphart (1968a) deemed typical of the politics of
accommodation. Tellingly, they refer to these as the “rules of the pillariza-
tion game,” as if political behavior logically follows from the functional
demands of pillarization. And in their account, there is indeed a striking
similarity: the logic of pillarization and the consociational rules of the
game vis-à-vis non-Western immigrants prospered and withered together.18

17
In their comparative study, Wright and Bloemraad (2012: 90), though, find “no evi-
dence that multiculturalism hinders socio-political integration, at least among first genera-
tion migrants, and much to suggest it fosters political inclusion.”
18
This leads Tillie (2008: 153–155) to call for a return to some of Lijphart’s rules of the
game, especially businesslike politics and pragmatic tolerance, to make a multicultural soci-
ety work.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
this expedition, along with another vessel styled the Greenwich, he
was saluted with the unwelcome sight of two powerful pirate vessels
sailing into the bay, one being of 30, and the other of 34 guns.
Though he was immediately deserted by the Greenwich, the two
pirates bearing down upon him with their black flags, did not daunt
the gallant Macrae. He fought them both for several hours, inflicting
on one some serious breaches between wind and water, and
disabling the boats in which the other endeavoured to board him. At
length, most of his officers and quarter-deck men being killed or
wounded, he made an attempt to run ashore, and did get beyond the
reach of the two pirate vessels. With boats, however, they beset his
vessel with redoubled fury, and in the protracted fighting which
ensued, he suffered severely, though not without inflicting fully as
much injury as he received. Finally, himself 1733.
and the remains of his company succeeded
in escaping to the land, though in the last stage of exhaustion with
wounds and fatigue. Had he, on the contrary, been supported by the
Greenwich, he felt no doubt that he would have taken the two pirate
vessels, and obtained £200,000 for the Company.[723]
The hero of this brilliant affair was a native of the town of
Greenock, originally there a very poor boy, but succoured from
misery by a kind-hearted musician or violer named Macguire, and
sent by him to sea. By the help of some little education he had
received in his native country, his natural talents and energy quickly
raised him in the service of the East India Company, till, as we see,
he had become the commander of one of their goodly trading-
vessels. The conflict of Juanna gave him further elevation in the
esteem of his employers, and, strange to say, the poor barefooted
Greenock laddie, the protégé of the wandering minstrel Macguire,
became at length the governor of Madras! He now returned to
Scotland, in possession of ‘an immense estate,’ which the journals of
the day are careful to inform us, ‘he is said to have made with a fair
character’—a needful distinction, when so many were advancing
themselves as robbers, or little better, or as truckling politicians. One
of Governor Macrae’s first acts was to provide for the erection of a
monumental equestrian statue of King William at Glasgow, having
probably some grateful personal feeling towards that sovereign. It
was said to have cost him £1000 sterling. But the grand act of the
governor’s life, after his return, was his requital of the kindness he
had experienced from the violer Macguire. The story formed one of
the little romances of familiar conversation in Scotland during the
last century. Macguire’s son, with the name of Macrae, succeeded to
the governor’s estate of Holmains, in Dumfriesshire,[724] which he
handed down to his son.[725] The three daughters, highly educated,
and handsomely dowered, were married to men of figure, the eldest
to the Earl of Glencairn (she was the mother of Burns’s well-known
patron); the second to Lord Alva, a judge in the Court of Session; the
third to Charles Dalrymple of Orangefield, near Ayr. Three years
after his return from the East Indies, Governor Macrae paid a visit to
Edinburgh, and was received with public as 1733.
well as private marks of distinction, on
account of his many personal merits.
An amusing celebration of the return of the East India governor
took place at Tain, in the north of Scotland. John Macrae, a near
kinsman of the great man, being settled there in business, resolved to
shew his respect for the first exalted person of his hitherto humble
clan. Accompanied by the magistrates of the burgh and the principal
burgesses, he went to the Cross, and there superintended the
drinking of a hogshead of wine, to the healths of the King, Queen,
Prince of Wales, and the Royal Family, and those of ‘Governor
Macrae and all his fast friends.’ ‘From thence,’ we are told, ‘the
company repaired to the chief taverns in town, where they repeated
the aforesaid healths, and spent the evening with music and
entertainments suitable to the occasion.’[726]
 The tendency which has already been Dec. 6.
alluded to, of a small portion of the Scottish
clergy to linger in an antique orthodoxy and strenuousness of
discipline, while the mass was going on in a progressive laxity and
subserviency to secular authorities, was still continuing. The chief
persons concerned in the Marrow Controversy of 1718[727] and
subsequent years, had recently made themselves conspicuous by
standing up in opposition to church measures for giving effect to
patronage in the settlement of ministers, and particularly to the
settlement of an unpopular presentee at Kinross; and the General
Assembly, held this year in May, came to the resolution of rebuking
these recusant brethren. The brethren, however, were too confident
in the rectitude of their course to submit to censure, and the
commission of the church in November punished their contumacy by
suspending from their ministerial functions, Ebenezer Erskine of
Stirling, William Wilson of Perth, Alexander Moncrieff of Abernethy,
and James Fisher of Kinclaven.
The suspended brethren, being all of them men held in the highest
local reverence, received much support among their flocks, as well as
among the more earnest clergy. Resolving not to abandon the
principles they had taken up, it became necessary that they should
associate in the common cause. They accordingly met at this date in
a cottage at Gairney Bridge near Kinross, and constituted themselves
into a provisional presbytery, though 1733.
without professing to shake off their
connection with the Established Church. It is thought that the taking
of a mild course with them at the next General Assembly would have
saved them from an entire separation. But it was not to be. The
church judicatories went on in their adopted line of high-handed
secularism, and the matter ended, in 1740, with the deposition of the
four original brethren, together with four more who took part with
them. Thus, unexpectedly to the church, was formed a schism in her
body, leading to the foundation of a separate communion, by which a
fourth of her adherents, and those on the whole the most religious
people, were lost.
An immense deal of devotional zeal, mingled with the usual alloys
of illiberality and intolerance, was evoked through the medium of
‘the Secession,’ The people built a set of homely meeting-houses for
the deposed ministers, and gave them such stipends as they could
afford. In four years, the new body appeared as composed of twenty-
six clergy, in three presbyteries. It was the first of several occasions
of the kind, on which, it may be said without disrespect, both the
strength and the weakness of the Scottish character have been
displayed. A single anecdote, of the truth of which there is no reason
to doubt, will illustrate the spirit of this first schism. There was a
family of industrious people at Brownhills, near St Andrews, who
adhered to the Secession. The nearest church was that of Mr
Moncrieff at Abernethy, twenty miles distant. All this distance did
the family walk every Sunday, in order to attend worship, walking of
course an equal distance in returning. All that were in health
invariably went. They had to set out at twelve o’clock of the Saturday
night, and it was their practice to make all the needful preparations
of dress and provisioning without looking out to see what kind of
weather was prevailing. When all were ready, the door was opened,
and the whole party walked out into the night, and proceeded on
their way, heedless of whatever might fall or blow.

Our Scottish ancestors had a peculiar way 1734. Jan.

of dealing with cases of ill-usage of women
by their husbands. The cruel man was put by his neighbours across a
tree or beam, and carried through the village so enthroned, while
some one from time to time proclaimed his offence, the whole being
designed as a means of deterring other men from being cruel to their
spouses.
We have a series of documents at this date, illustrating the regular
procedure in cases of Riding the Stang [properly, sting—meaning a
beam]. John Fraser, of the burgh of regality 1734.
of Huntly, had gone to John Gordon, bailie
for the Duke of Gordon, complaining that some of his neighbours
had threatened him with the riding of the stang, on the ground of
alleged ill-usage of his wife. The first document is a complaint from
Ann Johnston, wife of Fraser, and some other women, setting forth
the reality of this bad usage: the man was so cruel to his poor spouse,
that her neighbours were forced occasionally to rise from their beds
at midnight, in order to rescue her from his barbarous hands. They
justified the threat against him, as meant to deter him from
continuing his atrocious conduct, and went on to crave of the bailie
that he would grant them a toleration of the stang, as ordinarily
practised in the kingdom, ‘being, we know, no act of parliament to
the contrary.’ If his lordship could suggest any more prudent
method, they said they would be glad to hear of it ‘for preventing
more fatal consequences.’ ‘Otherwise, upon the least disobligement
given, we must expect to fall victims to our husbands’ displeasure,
from which libera nos, Domine.’ Signed by Ann Johnston, and ten
other women, besides two who give only initials.
Fraser offered to prove that he used his wife civilly, and was
allowed till next day to do so. On that next day, however, four men
set upon him, and carried him upon a tree through the town, thus
performing the ceremony without authority. On Fraser’s complaint,
they were fined in twenty pounds Scots, and decerned for twelve
pounds of assythment to the complainer.[728]

The execution of the revenue laws gave 1735. Sep.

occasion for much bad blood. In June 1734,
a boat having on board several persons, including at least one of
gentlemanlike position in society, being off the shore of Nairn with
‘unentrable goods,’ the custom-house officers, enforced by a small
party from the Hon. Colonel Hamilton’s regiment, went out to
examine it. In a scuffle which ensued, Hugh Fraser younger of
Balnain was killed, and two of the soldiers, named Long and
Macadam, were tried for murder by the Court of Admiralty in
Edinburgh, and condemned to be hanged on the 19th of November
within flood-mark at Leith.
An appeal was made for the prisoners to the Court of Justiciary,
which, on the 11th of November, granted a 1735.
suspension of the Judge-admiral’s sentence
till the 1st of December, that the case might before that day be more
fully heard. Next day, the Judge-admiral, Mr Graham, caused to be
delivered to the magistrates sitting in council a ‘Dead Warrant,’
requiring and commanding them to see his sentence put in execution
on the proper day. The magistrates, however, obeyed the Court of
Justiciary. Meanwhile, four of those who had been in the boat, and
who had given evidence against the two soldiers on their trial, were
brought by the custom-house authorities before the Judge-admiral,
charged with invading and deforcing the officers, and were acquitted.
On the 5th December, the Court of Justiciary found that the
Judge-admiral, in the trial of Long and Macadam, had ‘committed
iniquity,’ and therefore they suspended the sentence indefinitely. On
a petition three weeks after, the men were liberated, after giving
caution to the extent of 300 merks, to answer on any criminal charge
that might be exhibited against them before the Court of Justiciary.
[729]

Dancing assemblies, which we have seen Nov. 18.

introduced at Edinburgh in 1723, begin
within the ensuing dozen years to be heard of in some of the other
principal towns. There was, for example, an assembly at Dundee at
this date, and an Edinburgh newspaper soon after presented a copy
of verses upon the ladies who had appeared at it, celebrating their
charms in excessively bad poetry, but in a high strain of compliment:
‘Heavens! what a splendid scene is here,
How bright those female seraphs shine!’ &c.

From the indications afforded by half-blank names, we may surmise

that damsels styled Bower, Duncan, Reid, Ramsay, Dempster, and
Bow—all of them names amongst the gentlefolks of the district—
figured conspicuously at this meeting—
‘Besides a much more numerous dazzling throng,
Whose names, if known, should grace my artless song.’

The poet, too, appears to have paid 2s. 6d. for the insertion of his
lines in the Caledonian Mercury.
From this time onward, an annual ball, given by ‘the Right
Honourable Company of Hunters’ in the Palace of Holyroodhouse, is
regularly chronicled. At one which took place on the 8th January
1736—the Hon. Master Charles Leslie being 1735.
‘king,’ and the Hon. Lady Helen Hope being
‘queen’—‘the company in general made a very grand appearance, an
elegant entertainment and the richest wines were served up, and the
whole was carried on and concluded with all decency and good order
imaginable.’ A ball given by the same fraternity in the same place, on
the ensuing 21st of December, was even more splendid. There were
two rooms for dancing, and two for tea, illuminated with many
hundreds of wax-candles. ‘In the Grand Hall [the Gallery?], a table
was covered with three hundred dishes en ambiqu, at which sate a
hundred and fifty ladies at a time ... illuminated with four hundred
wax-candles. The plan laid out by the council of the company was
exactly followed out with the greatest order and decency, and
concluded without the least air of disturbance.’
On the 27th January 1737, ‘the young gentlemen-burghers’ of
Aberdeen gave ‘a grand ball to the ladies, the most splendid and
numerous ever seen there;’ all conducted ‘without the least confusion
or disorder.’ The anxiety to shew that there was no glaring
impropriety in the conduct of the company on these occasions, is
significant, and very amusing.[730]

The reader of this work has received—I fear not very thankfully—
sundry glimpses of the frightful state of the streets of Edinburgh in
previous centuries; and he must have readily understood that the
condition of the capital in this respect represented that of other
populous towns, all being alike deficient in any recognised means of
removing offensive refuse. There was, it must be admitted,
something peculiar in the state of Edinburgh in sanitary respects, in
consequence of the extreme narrowness of its many closes and
wynds, and the height of its houses. How it was endured, no modern
man can divine; but it certainly is true that, at the time when men
dressed themselves in silks and laces, and took as much time for
their toilets as a fine lady, they had to pass in all their bravery
amongst piles of dung, on the very High Street of Edinburgh, and
could not make an evening call upon Dorinda or Celia in one of the
alleys, without the risk of an ablution from above sufficient to
destroy the most elegant outfit, and put the wearers out of conceit
with themselves for a fortnight.
The struggles of the municipal authorities at sundry times to get
the streets put into decent order against a 1735.
royal ceremonial entry, have been adverted
to in our earlier volumes. It would appear that things had at last
come to a sort of crisis in 1686, so that the Estates then saw fit to
pass an act[731] to force the magistrates to clean the city, that it might
be endurable for the personages concerned in the legislature and
government, ordaining for this purpose a ‘stent’ of a thousand
pounds sterling a year for three years on the rental of property. A
vast stratum of refuse, through which people had made lanes
towards their shop-doors and close-heads, was then taken away—
much of it transported by the sage provost, Sir James Dick, to his
lands at Prestonfield, then newly enclosed, and the first that were so
—which consequently became distinguished for fertility[732]—and the
city was never again allowed to fall into such disorder. There was
still, however, no regular system of cleaning, beyond what the street
sewers supplied; and the ancient practice of throwing ashes, foul
water, &c., over the windows at night, graced only with the warning-
cry of Gardez l’eau, was kept up in full vigour by the poorer and
more reckless part of the population.
An Edinburgh merchant and magistrate, named Sir Alexander
Brand, who has been already under our attention as a manufacturer
of gilt leather hangings, at one time presented an overture to the
Estates for the cleaning of the city. The modesty of the opening
sentence will strike the reader: ‘Seeing the nobility and gentry of
Scotland are, when they are abroad, esteemed by all nations to be the
finest and most accomplished people in Europe, yet it’s to be
regretted that it’s always casten up to them by strangers, who admire
them for their singular qualifications, that they are born in a nation
that has the nastiest cities in the world, especially the metropolitan.’
He offered to clean the city daily, and give five hundred a year for the
refuse.[733] But his views do not seem to have been carried into effect.
After 1730, when, as we have seen, great changes were beginning
to take place in Scotland, increased attention was paid to external
decency and cleanliness. The Edinburgh magistrates were anxious to
put down the system of cleaning by ejectment. We learn, for
example, from a newspaper, that a servant-girl having thrown foul
water from a fourth story in Skinners’ Close, ‘which much abused a
lady passing by, was brought before the bailies, and obliged to enact
herself never to be guilty of the like 1735.
practices in future. ’Tis hoped,’ adds our
chronicler, ‘that this will be a caution to all servants to avoid this
wicked practice.’
 There lived at this time in Edinburgh a respectable middle-aged
man, named Robert Mein, the representative of the family which had
kept the post-office for three generations between the time of the
civil war and the reign of George I., and who boasted that the pious
lady usually called Jenny Geddes, but actually Barbara Hamilton,
who threw the stool in St Giles’s in 1637, was his great-grandmother.
Mein, being a man of liberal ideas, and a great lover of his native city,
desired to see it rescued from the reproach under which it had long
lain as the most fetid of European capitals, and he accordingly drew
up a paper, shewing how the streets might be kept comparatively
clean by a very simple arrangement. His suggestion was, that there
should be provided for each house, at the expense of the landlord, a
vessel sufficient to contain the refuse of a day, and that scavengers,
feed by a small subscription among the tenants, should discharge
these every night. Persons paying what was then a very common
rent, ten pounds, would have to contribute only five shillings a year;
those paying fifteen pounds, 7s. 6d., and so on in proportion. The
projector appears to have first explained his plan to sundry
gentlemen of consideration—as, for example, Mr William Adam,
architect, and Mr Colin Maclaurin, professor of mathematics, who
gave him their approbation of it in writing—the latter adding: ‘I
subscribe for my own house in Smith’s Land, Niddry’s Wynd, fourth
story, provided the neighbours agree to the same.’ Other subscribers
of consequence were obtained, as ‘Jean Gartshore, for my house in
Morocco’s Close, which is £15 rent,’ and ‘the Countess of
Haddington, for the lodging she possessed in Bank Close,
Lawnmarket, valued rent £20.’ Many persons agreed to pay a half-
penny or a penny weekly; some as much as a half-penny per pound
of rent per month. One lady, however, came out boldly as a recusant
—‘Mrs Black refuses to agree, and acknowledges she throws
over.’[734]
Mr Mein’s plan was adopted, and acted upon to some extent by the
magistrates; and the terrible memory of the ‘Dirty Luggies,’ which
were kept in the stairs, or in the passages within doors, as a
necessary part of the arrangement, was fresh in the minds of old
people whom I knew in early life. The city was in 1740 divided into
twenty-nine districts, each having a couple 1735.
of scavengers supported at its own expense,
who were bound to keep it clean; while the refuse was sold to persons
who engaged to cart it away at three half-pence per cart-load.[735]

Five men, who had suffered from the 1736. Jan. 9.

severity of the excise laws, having formed
the resolution of indemnifying themselves, broke into the house of
Mr James Stark, collector of excise, at Pittenweem, and took away
money to the extent of two hundred pounds, besides certain goods.
They were described as ‘Andrew Wilson, indweller in Pathhead;
George Robertson, stabler without Bristoport [Edinburgh]; William
Hall, indweller in Edinburgh; John Frier, indweller there; and John
Galloway, servant to Peter Galloway, horse-hirer in Kinghorn.’
Within three days, the whole of them were taken and brought to
Edinburgh under a strong guard.
Wilson, Robertson, and Hall were tried on the 2d of March, and
condemned to suffer death on the ensuing 14th of April. Five days
before that appointed for the execution—Hall having meanwhile
been reprieved—Wilson and Robertson made an attempt to escape
from the condemned cell of the Old Tolbooth, but failed in
consequence of Wilson, who was a squat man, sticking in the grated
window. Two days later, the two prisoners being taken, according to
custom, to attend service in the adjacent church, Wilson seized two
of the guard with his hands, and a third with his teeth, so as to enable
Robertson, who knocked down the fourth, to get away. The citizens,
whose sympathies went strongly with the men as victims of the
excise laws, were much excited by these events, and the authorities
were apprehensive that the execution of Wilson would not pass over
without an attempt at rescue. The apprehension was strongly shared
by John Porteous, captain of the town-guard, who consequently
became excited to a degree disqualifying him for so delicate a duty as
that of guarding the execution. When the time came, the poor
smuggler was duly suspended from the gallows in the Grassmarket,
without any disturbance; but when the hangman proceeded to cut
down the body, the populace began to throw stones, and the detested
official was obliged to take refuge among the men of the guard.
Porteous, needlessly infuriated by this demonstration, seized a
musket, and fired among the crowd, commanding his men to do the
same. There was consequently a full 1735.
fusillade, attended by the instant death of six persons, and the
wounding of nine more.
The magistrates being present at the windows of a tavern close by,
it was inexcusable of Porteous to have fired without their orders,
even had there been any proper occasion for so strong a measure. As
it was, he had clearly committed manslaughter on an extensive scale,
and was liable to severe punishment. By the public at large he was
regarded as a ferocious murderer, who could scarcely expiate with
his own life the wrongs he had done to his fellow-citizens.
Accordingly, when subjected to trial for murder on the ensuing 5th of
July, condemnation was almost a matter of course.
The popular antipathy to the excise laws, the general hatred in
which Porteous was held as a harsh official, and a man of profligate
life, and the indignation at his needlessly taking so many innocent
lives, combined to create a general rejoicing over the issue of the
trial. There were some, however, chiefly official persons and their
connections, who were not satisfied as to the fairness of his assize,
and, whether it was fair or not, felt it to be hard to punish what was
at most an excess in the performance of public duty, with death. On a
representation of the case to the queen, who was at the head of a
regency during the absence of her husband in Hanover, a respite of
six weeks was granted, five days before that appointed for the
execution.[736]
The consequent events are so well known, 1736.
that it is unnecessary here to give them in
more than outline. The populace of Edinburgh heard of the respite of
Porteous with savage rage, and before the eve of what was to have
been his last day, a resolution was formed that, if possible, the
original order of the law should be executed. The magistrates heard
of mischief being designed, but disregarded it as only what they
called ‘cadies’ clatters;’ that is, the gossip of street-porters. About
nine in the evening of the 7th September, a small party of men came
into the city at the West Port, beating a drum, and were quickly
followed by a considerable crowd. Proceeding by the Cowgate, they
shut the two gates to the eastward, and planted a guard at each. The
ringleaders then advanced with a large and formidable mob towards
the Tolbooth, in which Porteous lay confined. The magistrates came
out from a tavern, and tried to oppose the progress of the
conspirators, but were beat off with a shower of stones. Other
persons of importance whom they met, were civilly treated, but
turned away from the scene of action. Reaching the door of the
prison, they battered at it for a long time in vain, and at length it was
found necessary to burn it. This being a tedious process, it was
thought by the magistrates that there might 1736.
be time to introduce troops from the
Canongate, and so save the intended victim. Mr Patrick Lindsay,
member for the city, at considerable hazard, made his way over the
city wall, and conferred with General Moyle at his lodging in the
Abbeyhill; but the general hesitated to act without the authority of
the Lord Justice Clerk (Milton), who lived at Brunstain House, five
miles off. Thus time was fatally lost. After about an hour and a half,
the rioters forced their way into the jail, and seized the trembling
Porteous, whom they lost no time in dragging along the street
towards the usual place of execution. As they went down the West
Bow, they broke open a shop, took a supply of rope, and left a guinea
for it on the table. Then coming to the scene of what they regarded as
his crime, they suspended the wretched man over a dyer’s pole, and
having first waited to see that he was dead, quietly dispersed.
The legal authorities made strenuous efforts to identify some of
the rioters, but wholly without success. The subsequent futile
endeavour of the government to punish the corporation of
Edinburgh by statute, belongs to the history of the country.

Considering how important have been the June 24.

proceedings under the act of the ninth
parliament of Queen Mary Anentis Witchcrafts, it seems proper that
we advert to the fact of its being from this day repealed in the
parliament of Great Britain, along with the similar English act of the
first year of King James I. It became from that time incompetent to
institute any suit for ‘witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment, or
conjuration,’ and only a crime to pretend to exercise such arts, liable
to be punished by a year’s imprisonment, with the pillory. There
seems to be little known regarding the movement for abolishing
these laws. We only learn that it was viewed with disapprobation by
the more zealously pious people in Scotland, one of whom, Mr
Erskine of Grange, member for Clackmannanshire, spoke pointedly
against it in the House of Commons. Seeing how clearly the offence is
described in scripture, and how direct is the order for its
punishment, it seemed to these men a symptom of latitudinarianism
that the old statute should be withdrawn. When the body of
dissenters, calling themselves the Associate Synod in 1742, framed
their Testimony against the errors of the established church and of
the times generally, one of the specific things condemned was the
repeal of the acts against witchcraft, which was declared to be
‘contrary to the express letter of the law of 1736.
God, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”’

Amongst the gay and ingenious, who Nov. 8.

patronised and defended theatricals, Allan
Ramsay stood conspicuous. He entertained a kind of enthusiasm on
the subject, was keenly controversial in behalf of the stage, and
willing to incur some risk in the hope of seeing his ideal of a sound
drama in Scotland realised. We have seen traces of his taking an
immediate and personal interest in the performances carried on for a
few years by the ‘Edinburgh Company of Comedians’ in the Tailors’
Hall. He was now induced to enter upon the design of rearing, in
Edinburgh, a building expressly adapted as a theatre; and we find
him going on with the work in the summer of this year, and
announcing that ‘the New Theatre in Carrubber’s Close’ would be
opened on the 1st of November. The poet at the same time called
upon gentlemen and ladies who were inclined to take annual tickets,
of which there were to be forty at 30s. each, to come forward and
subscribe before a particular day, after which the price would be
raised to two guineas.
Honest Allan knew he would have to encounter the frowns of the
clergy, and be reckoned as a rash speculator by many of his friends;
but he never expected that any legislative enactment would interfere
to crush his hopes. So it was, however. The theatre in Carrubber’s
Close was opened on the 8th of November, and found to be, in the
esteem of all judges, ‘as complete and finished with as good a taste as
any of its size in the three kingdoms.’[737] A prologue was spoken by
Mr Bridges, setting forth the moral powers of the drama, and
attacking its enemies—those who
 ‘From their gloomy thoughts and want of sense,
Think what diverts the mind gives Heaven offence.’

The Muse, it was said, after a long career of glory in ancient times,
had reached the shores of England, where Shakspeare taught her to
soar:
‘At last, transported by your tender care,
She hopes to keep her seat of empire here.
For your protection, then, ye fair and great,
This fabric to her use we consecrate;
On you it will depend to raise her name,
And in Edina fix her lasting fame.’

Alas! all these hopes of a poet were soon 1736.

clouded. Before the Carrubber’s Close
playhouse had seen out its first season, an act was passed (10 Geo. II.
chap. 28) explaining one of Queen Anne regarding rogues and
vagabonds, the whole object in reality being to prevent any persons
from acting plays for hire, without authority or licence by letters-
patent from the king or his Lord Chamberlain.[738] This put a
complete barrier to the poet’s design, threw the new playhouse
useless upon his hands,[739] and had nearly shipwrecked his fortunes.
He addressed a poetical account of his disappointment to the new
Lord President of the Court of Session, Duncan Forbes, a man who
united a taste for elegant literature with the highest Christian graces.
He recites the project of the theatre:
‘Last year, my lord, nae farther gane,
A costly wark was undertane
By me, wha had not the least dread
An act would knock it on the head:
A playhouse new, at vast expense,
To be a large, yet bien defence,
In winter nights, ’gainst wind and weet,
To ward frae cauld the lasses sweet;
While they with bonny smiles attended,
To have their little failings mended.’

He asks if he who has written with the approbation of the entire

country, shall be confounded with rogues and rascals, be twined of
his hopes, and
 ‘Be made a loser, and engage
With troubles in declining age,
While wights to whom my credit stands
For sums, make sour and thrawn demands?’

Shall a good public object be defeated?

‘When ice and snaw o’ercleads the isle,
Wha now will think it worth their while
To leave their gousty country bowers,
For the ance blythesome Edinburgh’s towers,
Where there’s no glee to give delight,
And ward frae spleen the langsome night?’

He pleads with the Session for at least a limited licence.

‘... I humbly pray
Our lads may be allowed to play,
At least till new-house debts be paid off,
The cause that I’m the maist afraid of;
Which lade lies on my single back,
And I maun pay it ilka plack.’

Else let the legislature relieve him of the 1736.

burden of his house,
‘By ordering frae the public fund
A sum to pay for what I’m bound;
Syne, for amends for what I’ve lost,
Edge me into some canny post.’

All this was of course but vain prattle. The piece appeared in the
Gentleman’s Magazine (August 1737), and no doubt awoke some
sympathy; but the poet had to bear single-handed the burden of a
heavy loss, as a reward for his spirited attempt to enliven the beau
monde of Edinburgh.

Amongst other symptoms of a tendency Nov. 28.

to social enjoyments at this time, we cannot
overlook a marked progress of free-masonry throughout the country.
This day, the festival of the tutelar saint of Scotland, the Masters and
Wardens of forty regular lodges met in St Mary’s Chapel, in
Edinburgh, and unanimously elected as their Grand Master, William
Sinclair, of Roslin, Esq., representative of an ancient though reduced
family, which had been in past ages much connected with free-
masonry.
On St John’s Day, 27th December, this act was celebrated by the
freemasons of Inverness, with a procession to the cross in white
gloves and aprons, and with the proper badges, the solemnity being
concluded with ‘a splendid ball to the ladies.’[740]

The Edinburgh officials who had been 1737. June 30.

taken to London for examination regarding
the Porteous Riot, being now at liberty to return, there was a general
wish in the city to give them a cordial reception. The citizens rode out
in a great troop to meet them, and the road for miles was lined with
enthusiastic pedestrians. The Lord Provost, Alexander Wilson, from
modesty, eluded the reception designed for him; but the rest came
through the city, forming a procession of imposing length, while bells
rang and bonfires blazed, and the gates of the Netherbow, which had
been removed since the 7th of September last, were put up again
amidst the shouts of the multitude.
A month later, one Baillie, who had given evidence before the
Lords’ Committee tending to criminate the magistrates, returned in a
vessel from London, and had no sooner set 1737.
his foot on shore than he found himself
beset by a mighty multitude bent on marking their sense of his
conduct. To collect the people, some seized and rang a ship’s bell;
others ran through the streets ringing small bells. ‘Bloody Baillie is
come!’ passed from mouth to mouth. The poor man, finding that
thousands were gathered for his honour, flung himself into the stage-
coach for Edinburgh, and was solely indebted to a fellow-passenger
of the other sex for the safety in which he reached his home.
Captain Lind, of the Town-guard, having given similar evidence,
was discharged by the town-council; but the government
immediately after appointed him ‘lieutenant in Tyrawley’s regiment
of South British Fusiliers at Gibraltar.’[741]
 It was still customary to keep recruits in 1738. Feb. 3.
prison till an opportunity was obtained of
shipping them off for service. A hundred young men, who had been
engaged for the Dutch republic in Scotland, had been for some time
confined in the Canongate Tolbooth, where probably their treatment
was none of the best. Disappointed in several attempts at escape,
they turned at length mutinous, and it was necessary to carry four of
the most dangerous to a dungeon in the lower part of the prison. By
this the rest were so exasperated, ‘that they seized one of their
officers and the turnkey, whom they clapped in close custody, and,
barricading the prison-door, bade defiance to all authority. At the
same time they intimated that, if their four comrades were not
instantly delivered up to them, they would send the officer and
turnkey to where the d—— sent his mother; so that their demand was
of necessity complied with.’
During all the next day (Saturday) they remained in their fortress
without any communication either by persons coming in or by
persons going out. The authorities revolved the idea of a forcible
attempt to reduce them to obedience; but it seemed better to starve
them into a surrender. On the Sunday evening, their provisions being
exhausted, they beat a chamade and hung out a white flag;
whereupon some of their officers and a few officers of General
Whitham’s regiment entered into a capitulation with them; and, a
general amnesty being granted, they delivered up their stronghold.
‘It is said they threatened, in case of non-compliance with their
articles, to fall instantly about eating the turnkey.’[742]
Isabel Walker, under sentence of death at 1738. Aug.
Dumfries for child-murder, obtained a
reprieve through unexpected means. According to a letter dated
Edinburgh, August 10, 1738, ‘This unhappy creature was destitute of
friends, and had none to apply for her but an only sister, a girl of a
fine soul, that overlooked the improbability of success, and helpless
and alone, went to London to address the great; and solicited so well,
that she got for her, first, a reprieve, and now a remission. Such
another instance of onerous friendship can scarce be shewn; it well
deserved the attention of the greatest, who could not but admire the
virtue, and on that account engage in her cause.’[743]
 Helen Walker, who acted this heroic part, was the daughter of a
small farmer in the parish of Irongray. Her sister, who had been
under her care, having concealed her pregnancy, it came to be
offered to Helen as a painful privilege, that she could save the
accused if she could say, on the trial, that she had received any
communication from Isabel regarding her condition. She declared it
to be impossible that she should declare a falsehood even to save a
sister’s life; and condemnation accordingly took place. Helen then
made a journey on foot to London, in the hope of being able to plead
for her sister’s life; and, having almost by accident gained the ear and
interest of the Duke of Argyle, she succeeded in an object which most
persons would have said beforehand was next to unattainable.
Isabel afterwards married her lover, and lived at Whitehaven for
many years. Helen survived till 1791, a poor peasant woman, living
by the sale of eggs and other small articles, or doing country work,
but always distinguished by a quiet self-respect, which prevented any
one from ever talking to her of this singular adventure of her early
days. Many years after she had been laid in Irongray kirkyard, a lady
who had seen and felt an interest in her communicated her story to
Sir Walter Scott, who expanded it into a tale (The Heart of Mid-
Lothian) of which the chief charm lies in the character and actings of
the self-devoted heroine. It was one of the last, and not amongst the
least worthy, acts of the great fictionist to raise a monument over her
grave, with the following inscription:
‘This stone was erected by the Author of Waverley to the memory
of Helen Walker, who died in the year of God 1791. This humble
individual practised in real life the virtues with which fiction has
invested the imaginary character of Jeanie 1738.
Deans; refusing the slightest departure
from veracity, even to save the life of a sister, she nevertheless
shewed her hardiness and fortitude in rescuing her from the severity
of the law, at the expense of personal exertions which the time
rendered as difficult as the motive was laudable. Respect the grave of
poverty when combined with love of truth and dear affection.’

This month was commenced in 1739. Jan.

Edinburgh a monthly miscellany and
chronicle, which long continued to fill a useful place in the world
under the name of the Scots Magazine. It was framed on the model
of the Gentleman’s Magazine, which had commenced in London
eight years before, and the price of each number was the modest one
of sixpence. Being strictly a magazine or store, into which were
collected all the important newspaper matters of the past month, it
could not be considered as a literary effort of much pretension,
though its value to us as a picture of the times referred to is all the
greater. Living persons connected with periodical literature will hear
with a smile that this respectable miscellany was, about 1763 and
1764, conducted by a young man, a corrector of the press in the
printing-office which produced it, and whose entire salary for this
and other duties was sixteen shillings a week.[744]

A hurricane from the west-south-west, Jan. 14.

commencing at one in the morning, and
accompanied by lightning, swept across the south of Scotland, and
seems to have been beyond parallel for destructiveness in the same
district before or since. The blowing down of chimneys, the strewing
of the streets with tiles and slates, were among the lightest of its
performances. It tore sheet-lead from churches and houses, and
made it fly through the air like paper. In the country, houses were
thrown down, trees uprooted by hundreds, and corn-stacks
scattered. A vast number of houses took fire. At least one church,
that of Killearn, was prostrated. Both on the west and east coast,
many ships at sea and in harbour were damaged or destroyed. ‘At
Loch Leven, in Fife, great shoals of perches and pikes were driven a
great way into the fields; so that the country people got horse-loads
of them, and sold them at one penny per hundred.’ The number of
casualties to life and limb seems, after all, to have been small.[745]
James, second Earl of Rosebery, was one 1730.
who carried the vices and follies of his age
to such extravagance as to excite a charitable belief that he was
scarcely an accountable person. In his father’s lifetime, he had been
several times in the Old Tolbooth for small debts. In 1726, after he
had succeeded to the family title, he was again incarcerated there for
not answering the summons of the Court of Justiciary ‘for
deforcement, riot, and spulyie.’ A few years later, his estates are
found in the hands of trustees.
 At this date, he excited the merriment of the thoughtless, and the
sadness of all other persons, by advertising the elopement of a girl
named Polly Rich, who had been engaged for a year as his servant;
describing her as a London girl, or ‘what is called a Cockney,’ about
eighteen, ‘fine-shaped and blue-eyed,’ having all her linen marked
with his cornet and initials. Two guineas reward were offered to
whoever should restore her to her ‘right owner,’ either at John’s
Coffee-house, or ‘the Earl of Roseberry, at Denham’s Land, Bristow,
and no questions will be asked.’[746]

The potato—introduced from its native South American ground by

Raleigh into Ireland, and so extensively cultivated there in the time
of the civil wars, as to be a succour to the poor when all cereal crops
had been destroyed by the soldiery—transplanted thence to England,
but so little cultivated there towards the end of the seventeenth
century, as to be sold in 1694 at sixpence or eightpence a pound[747]—
is first heard of in Scotland in 1701, when the Duchess of Buccleuch’s
household-book mentions a peck of the esculent as brought from
Edinburgh, and costing 2s. 6d.[748] We hear of it in 1733, as used
occasionally at supper in the house of the Earl of Eglintoun, in
Ayrshire.[749] About this time, it was beginning to be cultivated in
gardens, but still with a hesitation about its moral character, for no
reader of Shakspeare requires to be told that some of the more
uncontrollable passions of human nature were supposed to be
favoured by its use.[750]
At the date here noted, a gentleman, 1739.
styled Robert Graham of Tamrawer, factor
on the forfeited estate of Kilsyth, ventured on the heretofore
unknown step of planting a field of potatoes. His experiment was
conducted on a half-acre of ground ‘on the croft of Neilstone, to the
north of the town of Kilsyth.’ It appears that the root was now, and
for a good while after, cultivated only on lazy beds. Many persons—
amongst whom was the Earl of Perth, who joined in the insurrection
of 1745—came from great distances to witness so extraordinary a
novelty, and inquire into the mode of culture.
The field-culture of the potato was introduced about 1746 into the
county of Edinburgh by a man named Henry Prentice, who had made
a little money as a travelling-merchant, and was now engaged in