Power-sharing and memory-sharing in Northern Ireland: a case study of Healing Through Remembering during consociational volatility

This article explores the relationship between the (in)effectiveness of consociationalism and the culture of co-remembrance in Northern Ireland during and between the first and second Executives. It seeks to answer to what extent successes or failures in forming and running a working Executive affected civil society attempts to foster curative remembering between deeply divided communities. Focussing on the ‘memory-power nexus’, the article analyses grassroots initiatives in ‘remembrance work’, the effects the first and second Executives and the interregnum had on them, and their attempts to shape policy in return. Conventional wisdom holds that favourable political conditions are the preconditions for the success of social ‘reconciliation projects’. This study critically reviews this commonly held belief by examining (counter) evidence on the ground, and finds that ‘memory-sharing’ actually and ironically suffered from the perceived success of power-sharing.