John McGarry, OC (born 1957) is a political scientist from Northern Ireland. He was born in Belfast and grew up in Ballymena, County Antrim. He is currently the Stephen Gyimah Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Political Studies at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. [1]
John McGarry is the author of numerous books about ethnic conflict and particularly The Troubles. Many of the books were co-authored with Brendan O'Leary, whom McGarry met when they both attended Saint MacNissi's College. [2]
McGarry and O'Leary' Explaining Northern Ireland: Broken Images (Blackwells, 1995) is widely regarded as the most authoritative (and most cited) book on the Northern Ireland conflict. [3] Their Policing Northern Ireland: Proposals for a New Start (Blackstaff Press, 1999) influenced the work of the Independent Commission on Policing for Northern Ireland. [4] The commission's work on reforming Northern Ireland's police dealt with one of the most intractable issues in the negotiations around the Good Friday Agreement.
In 2008–2009, McGarry served as the 'Senior Advisor on power-sharing' to the United Nations (Mediation Support Unit, Department of Political Affairs). [5] Since that time, he has worked as a senior advisor to the UN-mediated negotiations on Cyprus and participated in the negotiations on Cyprus at Crans-Montana,Switzerland in June–July, 2017. Apart from Northern Ireland and Cyprus, McGarry has advised on a range of conflicts, including in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Iraq, Kosovo, and Ukraine.
His academic and applied contribution were recognised in 2010, when he was invested into the Royal Society of Canada. [6] He won a Trudeau Fellowship Prize in 2011. [7] In 2013, he was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, [8] and the Killam Prize. The latter is Canada's most prestigious research prize. [9] In 2014, McGarry won the Innis-Gérin Medal from the Royal Society of Canada. [10] In 2015, his research on conflict resolution was recognised by the Council of Ontario Universities (COU) as one of the top 50 examples of "game-changing" research conducted in Ontario during the past 100 years. [11]
On 30 June 2016, McGarry was made an Officer of the Order of Canada by Governor General David Johnston for "his scholarly contributions to the study of ethnic conflict and for designing Governance Frameworks that promote peace." [12] He won Canada's Molson Prize in the Social Sciences and Humanities in the same year. [13] In 2022 he was awarded the Pearson Peace Medal, previous recipients of which include Romeo Dallaire, Louise Arbour, and Beverly McLachlin.
McGarry and O'Leary have long backed consociationalism (power-sharing) as a method of conflict management. Arend Lijphart has been a significant influence on their work. [14] In 2009, a book entitled Consociational Theory: McGarry and O'Leary and the Northern Ireland Conflict was published, edited by Rupert Taylor. [15]
An ethnic conflict is a conflict between two or more ethnic groups. While the source of the conflict may be political, social, economic or religious, the individuals in conflict must expressly fight for their ethnic group's position within society. This criterion differentiates ethnic conflict from other forms of struggle.
Jean-Jacques Nattiez is a musical semiologist or semiotician and professor of musicology at the Université de Montréal. He studied semiology with Georges Mounin and Jean Molino and music semiology (doctoral) with Nicolas Ruwet.
Consociationalism is a form of democratic power sharing. Political scientists define a consociational state as one which has major internal divisions along ethnic, religious, or linguistic lines, but which remains stable due to consultation among the elites of these groups. Consociational states are often contrasted with states with majoritarian electoral systems.
William Archibald Mackintosh, was a Canadian economist and political scientist, and was the twelfth principal of Queen's University from 1951 until 1961. He is best known for developing the staple thesis that explains Canadian economic history in terms of a series of exports of staple products – fish, fur, timber, and wheat.
Rupert Taylor, is a professor of political studies and former head of the Department of Political Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, from 1987 to 2013. He was educated at the progressive independent Dartington Hall School in England and completed a BA degree in politics and government at the University of Kent in 1980, followed by an MSc at the London School of Economics (1981) and a PhD in sociology at Kent, (1986). He was formerly a visiting research fellow in the Department of Political Science at the New School for Social Research in New York City, adjunct professor in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University and a visiting research fellow in the School of Politics, Queen's University Belfast.
Brendan O'Leary is an Irish political scientist, who is Lauder Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. He was formerly a professor at the London School of Economics. In 2009–10 he was the second Senior Advisor on Power-Sharing in the Standby Team of the Mediation Support Unit of the Department of Political Affairs of the United Nations.
Power sharing is a practice in conflict resolution where multiple groups distribute political, military, or economic power among themselves according to agreed rules. It can refer to any formal framework or informal pact that regulates the distribution of power between divided communities. Since the end of the Cold War, power-sharing systems have become increasingly commonplace in negotiating settlements for armed conflict. Two common theoretical approaches to power sharing are consociationalism and centripetalism.
Frank Millar is a Northern Irish journalist and former unionist politician.
Arthur Bruce McDonald, P.Eng is a Canadian astrophysicist. McDonald is the director of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory Collaboration and held the Gordon and Patricia Gray Chair in Particle Astrophysics at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario from 2006 to 2013. He was awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics jointly with Japanese physicist Takaaki Kajita.
Axel Dieter Becke is a physical chemist and Professor of Chemistry at Dalhousie University, Canada. He is a leading researcher in the application of density functional theory (DFT) to molecules.
Peter Howard Russell was a Canadian political scientist and professor emeritus of political science at the University of Toronto, where he taught from 1958 to 1997.
John Henry Whyte was an Irish historian, political scientist and author of books on Northern Ireland, divided societies and church-state affairs in Ireland.
Victoria Michelle Kaspi is a Canadian astrophysicist and a professor at McGill University. Her research primarily concerns neutron stars and pulsars.
John A. Hall is the James McGill Emeritus Professor of Comparative Historical Sociology at McGill University, Montreal. He is the author or editor of over 30 books.
The Innis-Gérin Medal is an award of the Royal Society of Canada for a distinguished and sustained contribution to the literature of the social sciences. It was established in 1966 and is given biennially. The award is named in honor of Harold Innis and Léon Gérin.
Michael Brecher was a Canadian political scientist and teacher in Quebec.
Richard Ernest Tremblay is a Canadian child psychologist and Professor of Pediatrics, Psychiatry, and Psychology at the University of Montreal, where he holds the Canada Research Chair in child development. He has also served as director of the Research Unit on Children's Psychosocial Maladjustment, a multidisciplinary research unit funded by the University of Montreal, Laval University, and McGill University, since it was founded in 1984. His research has focused on the development of aggressive behavior in children and the potential for early intervention programs to reduce the chances of children turning to crime in adulthood.
Gilbert Laporte is a full professor of operations research at HEC Montréal. He holds the Canada Research Chair in Distribution Management. Laporte has been awarded the Order of Canada and the Innis-Gérin Medal.
Centripetalism, sometimes called integrationism, is a form of democratic power sharing for divided societies which aims to encourage the parties towards moderate and compromising policies and to reinforce the center of divided political spectrum. As a theory, centripetalism developed out of the criticism of consociationalism by Donald L. Horowitz. Both models aim to provide institutional prescriptions for divided societies. While consociationalism aims to give inclusion and representation to each ethnic group, centripetalism aims to depoliticize ethnicity and to encourage the establishment of multi-ethnic parties.