Experts

An Irish and U.S. citizen, Brendan O’Leary’s areas of expertise include power-sharing, nationalism, national and ethnic conflict-regulation; national self-determination; national, ethnic and community violence; democratization and electoral systems. Other research interests include despotisms; nations, states and empires; constitutional design debates, especially regarding executives, legislatures, electoral systems, minority, ethnic, religious, autonomy and national self-determination rights; the crises of the European Union; as well as empirical conflict research that examines Iraq’s federalization, the break-up of Sudan; the Irish peace process and Kurdish politics.

He has served as a political and constitutional advisor to the United Nations, the European Union, the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq, the Governments of the UK and Ireland, and to the British Labour Party during the Irish peace process.

His academic career combines regularly with constitutional advisory work. Between 1987-1997, he was a political advisor to the British Labour Shadow Cabinet on Northern Ireland. His ideas on power-sharing were influential during the Irish peace process, when he advised Irish, British and American officials and the Irish-American Morrison delegation.

O’Leary has also acted as a constitutional advisor for the European Union and the United Nations in the promotion of the confederal and federal rebuilding of Somalia; the United Kingdom’s Department of International Development in consultancies on power-sharing in coalition governments in areas such as South Africa and Nepal. Since 2003, he has been an international constitutional advisor to the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq, assisting in the negotiation of the electoral systems design, the Constitution of Iraq and the draft Constitution of the Kurdistan Region.