Power-sharing in deeply divided places with special reference to Iraq and Northern Ireland

Distinguished Irish political scientist Professor Brendan O’Leary of the University of Pennsylvania, Visiting Fellow at the Moore Institute, will give a public lecture on ‘Power-sharing in deeply divided places with special reference to Iraq and Northern Ireland’. This talk is part of the President of Ireland’s Ethics Initiative, and is organised by the Conflict, Rights and Security Research Cluster of the Whitaker Institute in association with the Moore Institute. All are welcome.

About Professor O’Leary

Brendan O’Leary is Lauder Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of numerous highly regarded books and articles on conflict and
peacemaking and has been deeply and directly involved in efforts to secure peace and design new structures of government in Northern Ireland and Iraq. He was born in Cork, Ireland and his childhood and teenage years were mostly spent in Nigeria, Sudan, and Northern Ireland.

Before coming to Penn, O’Leary was on the faculty of the London School of Economics and Political Science between 1983 and 2003, where he had been Professor of Political Science, head of its Government Department, and an elected Academic Governor. Between 2012 and 2014 he is also Professor of Political Science at Queen’s University Belfast.

O’Leary’s professorial career has been combined with political advisory work. He was a political advisor to the British Labour Shadow Cabinet on Northern Ireland between 1987-8 and 1996-7, advising Kevin McNamara and the late Marjorie (“Mo”) Mowlam. He advised Irish, British, and American ministers and officials and the Irish-American Morrison delegation during the Northern Ireland peace process, appearing as an expert witness before the US Congress, and being a guest at the White House. His ideas on power-sharing are said to have been extremely influential, and his work with Prof. John McGarry on police reform was singled out in the press for influencing the commission on police reform which reported in 1999. O’Leary has also worked as a constitutional advisor for the European Union and the United Nations in the promotion of confederal and federal re-building of Somalia, and for the United Kingdom’s Department of International Development in constitutional consultancies on power-sharing in coalition governments in Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa, and in Nepal. Between 2003 and 2009 he was regularly an international constitutional advisor to the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq, assisting in the negotiation of the Transitional Administrative Law (2004); electoral systems design (2004-5); the Constitution of Iraq (2005), and the Constitution of the Kurdistan Region (2005-). He has been an expert witness on Iraq to branches of the US Government, and to the United Kingdom’s Iraq Commission. For the UN he contributed to its 2004 United Nations Human Development Report on Culture and Liberty. In 2009-2010 O’Leary was seconded to the UN as the Senior Advisor on Power-Sharing in the Standby Team of the Mediation Support Unit of the Department of Political Affairs.

This lecture is open to the public, but early attendance is advised. It will begin at 4 pm (sharp) on Wednesday 27th August.

For further information contact Dr. Niall O Dochartaigh at niall.odochartaigh@nuigalway.ie