Failure to reform Stormont power-sharing is "condemning devolution to death by a thousand collapses", Alliance Party leader Naomi Long has said.
In her speech at the party's annual conference, Mrs Long said the current system of "stop-go, up-down, ransom politics needs to end".
She warned her party is willing to test the legality of Stormont voting structures which leave those who do not designate as nationalist or unionist locked out of key decisions.
Read more: Windsor Framework: Boris Johnson criticises Rishi Sunak's new Brexit deal for Northern Ireland
It is understood the party has sought legal advice on whether the existing arrangements are human rights compliant. Party officials sought the advice to establish whether a legal challenge could be mounted in the courts.
Mrs Long said: "I am weary of successive governments telling us that we have won the intellectual argument on reform.
"We do not want to be patronised and patted on the head. We want our mandate - our votes and our voters' votes - to be treated as equal to everyone else's.
"And we want the people to have a stable, functioning government. No more excuses. No more delays."
The conference at Belfast's Stormont Hotel was Alliance's first since elections last May when it more than doubled its number of MLAs to become the third-largest party in the Assembly.
But in the past year the devolved institutions have not been functioning due to the DUP blocking them in protest against Brexit's Northern Ireland Protocol.
Mrs Long, who took to the conference stage to the song 'High Hopes' by 'Panic! At The Disco', said Stormont is "frozen by the system's inherent vetoes".
She warned a failure to change the power-sharing structures was "ruining people's lives and jeopardising the Good Friday Agreement".
"By responding to those who up-end the institutions by pandering to their demands time after time, rather than ending their ability to do so, they are condemning devolution to death by a thousand collapses," she said.
Mrs Long said Alliance's proposals for reform would enable power-sharing but "remove the right of any one party to deny the people of Northern Ireland a government".
She added: "They allow those who wish to get on with the work of government to do so and those who refuse to sit it out if they choose.
"No-one is being excluded, unlike the current absurdity where everyone is.
"And conference, I doubt that either of the two main parties would actually walk away from government if they thought for one second that it would continue in their absence."
Mrs Long also called for cross-community votes requiring support from both unionism and nationalism to be replaced with weighted majority voting, saying this would "incentivise cooperation".
She added: "To sit in the chamber and listen to others wax lyrical about being treated like second-class citizens, when their votes count for more than ours, is frankly an affront to democracy.
"Not only is it not acceptable, it might well be unlawful, and conference, we are willing to put that to the test if we have to."
On the new Windsor Framework deal on the protocol, Mrs Long said it could have been achieved in 2019 if former Prime Minister Boris Johnson had not been in power.
She argued it was the change in Prime Minister and not the DUP's collapse of Stormont that made the new agreement between the UK and European Union possible.
The Alliance leader expressed concern about the new "Stormont Brake" mechanism to give MLAs a greater say on any future changes to EU goods rules applying to Northern Ireland.
She said the threshold for use of the brake must be "clearly defined in legislation".
Mrs Long paid tribute to North Antrim MLA Patricia O'Lynn, who is stepping down less than a year after being elected to take up a new role at Queen's University Belfast.
The Alliance leader said: "Sadly, this is part of the price we all pay for the failure of the institutions.
"People with real talent, ability and ambition across all parties are either reluctant to get involved in the Assembly at all or reach a point where continuing becomes untenable."
Looking ahead to May's council elections, Mrs Long said the party has a "real opportunity" to expand its number of seats across Northern Ireland.
She said as a "keen Pokémon Go player" she hoped the party would expand its elected representation from 10 to all 11 councils.
She added: "I'm looking to you Mid Ulster to make the breakthrough and make it a clean sweep. As a keen Pokémon Go player, you know my mantra - you gotta catch 'em all!"
Concluding her speech, Mrs Long expressed hope that "together, we can end the politics of fear, distraction and division".
She added: "We have just weeks until the 18th May - weeks to offer that hope to people who are despairing at the state of politics, who are sick and tired of the wreckers. The blockers. The wasters. The people who take the votes but deliver nothing for them in return. Those who hold Stormont and our future to ransom.
"We need to share our vision of a future where better is possible."
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