The dispute that split parties, ministers and senior civil servants peaked, in political terms, with the Executive disputing what Ms Ritchie promised her colleagues prior to cutting off the Conflict Transformation Initiative.

The DUP and Sinn Fein remembered events in accordance with the draft minutes. Ms Ritchie and the two Ulster Unionists ministers recalled things differently.

It didn't matter. The combined weight of the DUP and Sinn Fein was enough to brush off dissent to make sure their version was adopted as the official one. Nine votes to three. Democracy in action.

But there is an argument that this event is symptomatic of something bigger: the nature of Stormont's pre-ordained coalition ensures that the minority partners can never get their way - that they must necessarily be overshadowed when the forces of the DUP and Sinn Fein combine.

The argument is strongest in the Ulster Unionist Party, where Assembly members Basil McCrea and David Burnside have led calls to ditch the party's ministries and become a full-blooded opposition.

Opposition is a tough road in any parliament or assembly - a constant uphill struggle, trying to second guess what the government is up to and often pretending that things are much more dire than they look.

But coalition life is awkward for minority parties - especially in this situation.

In other scenarios - the Greens and Fianna Fail coalition in the Republic, for example - the junior partners have some leverage. They can at least threaten the nuclear option - withdrawal from government and an election - to force their influence on issues that are dear to them.

At Stormont, that can't happen. Withdrawal means replacement, in most cases by more DUP and Sinn Fein ministers. So the junior coalition partners have all the drawbacks of being associated with the bigger beasts, and being seen to be part of their decisions, but have no way to control their direction.

But the mechanisms at Stormont aren't designed to be normal, and in the previous Executive the DUP demonstrated that it is possible to act like an opposition - criticising, admonishing, annoying - and take credit for running departments at the same time. In some ways, it's probably easier: having Ministers in the Executive at least confers some sense of the inner workings of the administration, which can then be exploited by other members of the party.

UUP withdrawal could accomplish a few things: it would make the DUP's partnership with Sinn Fein a bit more awkward, by leaving them as the sole unionist members of the Executive. It might simplify things for the electorate.

And in some situations where there was a sense of things going pear shaped, it might also be smart to get out when the going is good and start lobbing bricks before an election.

But on the other side of the equation, the DUP would have more opportunity to hog the headlines with more ministers.

And the UUP would have to ask itself what it could accomplish as an opposition party that it could not from within the Executive. They don't have the votes to be more than a nuisance in the Assembly, and at any rate the Assembly looks these days like little more than an after thought in the affairs of the administration. For the UUP, the deck is as stacked in the Assembly as it in the Executive.

Unless, of course, they could get the rules changed. Simple to accomplish, provided they could convince the DUP and Sinn Fein...