Professor Jonathan Tonge:

I promise the Chair I will be brief. Mr. Farry is correct that there has not been a census in Lebanon since 1932, given the sensitivities of it.

Consociational deals like the Good Friday Agreement are inherently unstable because they are about trying to resolve acute constitutional differences within a framework which at least parks those constitutional questions. That is inevitable. The Bosnia case mentioned by Dr. Farry has created three different presidencies, a whole mass of legislatures and approximately ten different cantons. That is the nature of it. Without getting bogged down in it, you have Bosnian Serbs who resist further moves to integrate into a Bosnian identity with which they do not associate and that is the problem. There is a limit to which you can push identities if they are not dearly held. The Good Friday Agreement is a step up on the Lebanese and Bosnian cases because it offers far greater respect for differences in identity. That is why I am more positive about the Good Friday Agreement than those two cases which I teach and are regularly fairly disastrous politically. That is the only point I want to make. There is no alternative to a consociational deal for Northern Ireland pending a longer-term resolution of the constitutional position.