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As voters across Northern Ireland went to the polls on 5 May 2016, it was by no means obvious that they were participating in a landmark election. The preceding campaign was largely lacklustre, voters were left uninspired, and competition for votes was primarily conducted along predictable ethno-national lines. The Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Féin retained their positions as the dominant unionist and nationalist parties respectively, while the Ulster Unionist Party and Social Democratic and Labour Party struggled to retain their existing support, let alone expand it. The cross-community Alliance Party remained stagnant in fifth place. However, these ostensive signs of continuity with previous elections mask deeper signs of substantive change. The establishment of Northern Ireland’s first official opposition within current structures and the publication of a draft Programme for Government framework within a month of the election are indicative of a new era in consociational power sharing. Meanwhile, the growth in support for smaller parties, a further fall in voter turnout and an audible debate around social issues suggest at least a partial decline in the salience of the ethno-national dimension in the electoral arena.
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This paper examines the potential of international actors to contribute to conflict resolution by analysing the evolving role of the European Union (EU) in embedding Northern Ireland's peace process. Scrutiny of the EU's approach to conflict resolution in Northern Ireland offers useful insights into the scope and potential of soft power for facilitating behavioural change from governmental to grass-roots levels. This paper traces the development of the EU's approach to conflict resolution in Northern Ireland from one concentrated on encouraging state-level agreement, to nurturing peace through multilevel funding, through now to consolidating the peace by facilitating regional-level empowerment. The core argument is that, in sum, the most critical element of the EU's contribution to peace in Northern Ireland has been, quite simply, that of enduring commitment.
How national parliaments adapt to the European Union is an important debate. However,
scholars often overlook the regional aspect. This is particularly so for the UK where,
despite devolution since 1999, scholarship remains largely devolution-blind. It is
assumed that evaluating UK parliamentary adaptation only requires assessing the work
of Westminster committees. This article takes a first step towards rectifying this oversight
through reconceptualising UK–EU parliamentary engagement as multi-territory, not
state-centric. This is demonstrated by comparing the social construction of practices in
Scotland, Wales and at Westminster since 1999. Acknowledging devolution, however,
does not just require comparing practices. Additionally, the paper asks how the ideas of
devolution have been taken up by actors, potentially transforming the meaning of UK
engagement for them. This necessitates new approaches drawn from interpretivist and
constructivist institutionalist theories. Ultimately, therefore, the paper goes further than
arguing for devolution-aware research to promoting change more generally in how parliamentary
adaptation is theorised.
This book, comprising papers contributed to a conference entitled Constitutional Design 2000 and held at the University of Notre Dame in December 1999, brings together the views of the leading academic specialists on the theory of effective democratization, and of the institutional design tasks involved.
This edited collection assembles leading experts on the politics and constitution of Northern Ireland to explore and analyse aspects of the 1998 Belfast Agreement. For most the Agreement represented an inclusive political bargain, while others perceived it as an act of betrayal - whether of the Union or, conversely, of republicanism. These rival interpretations are discussed by a number of the contributors, alongside assessments of the roles performed by key actors both within and outside Northern Ireland in forging the Agreement. The more immediate provenance of the Agreement is complemented by a comparison with its often cited predecessor, the 1973 Sunningdale Agreement, and the former’s ‘consociational plus’ design is explained while its legislative implementation is set within the context of cross-cutting constitutionalism ushered in by the UK’s wider devolution process. The collection also includes a discussion of the British-Irish Council, and the early operation of both the Executive Committee and the Assembly elected in 1998. The elections themselves suggested the emergence of an embryonic and fragile pro and anti-Agreement cleavage that transcended the orthodox ethno-nationalist division in Northern Ireland, and this proposition is subjected to analysis in the collection. Public and elite attitudes towards the Agreement in the Republic of Ireland are also discussed, as is the controversial report of the Patten Commission on the reform of the RUC. The acceptance of the consent principle by the Agreement’s signatories and the open-ended constitutional future it bequeathes to Northern Ireland have created a form of devolution that is delicately poised. The delayed and faltering implementation of the 1998 Agreement suggests that its promise is yet to be fully realized. This collection, in focusing upon key aspects of the Agreement, seeks to explain both its complexity and some of the difficulties thus far encountered in putting it into effect.
This edited collection assembles leading experts on the politics and constitution of Northern Ireland to explore and analyse aspects of the 1998 Belfast Agreement. For most the Agreement represented an inclusive political bargain, while others perceived it as an act of betrayal - whether of the Union or, conversely, of republicanism. These rival interpretations are discussed by a number of the contributors, alongside assessments of the roles performed by key actors both within and outside Northern Ireland in forging the Agreement. The more immediate provenance of the Agreement is complemented by a comparison with its often cited predecessor, the 1973 Sunningdale Agreement, and the former’s ‘consociational plus’ design is explained while its legislative implementation is set within the context of cross-cutting constitutionalism ushered in by the UK’s wider devolution process. The collection also includes a discussion of the British-Irish Council, and the early operation of both the Executive Committee and the Assembly elected in 1998. The elections themselves suggested the emergence of an embryonic and fragile pro and anti-Agreement cleavage that transcended the orthodox ethno-nationalist division in Northern Ireland, and this proposition is subjected to analysis in the collection. Public and elite attitudes towards the Agreement in the Republic of Ireland are also discussed, as is the controversial report of the Patten Commission on the reform of the RUC. The acceptance of the consent principle by the Agreement’s signatories and the open-ended constitutional future it bequeathes to Northern Ireland have created a form of devolution that is delicately poised. The delayed and faltering implementation of the 1998 Agreement suggests that its promise is yet to be fully realized. This collection, in focusing upon key aspects of the Agreement, seeks to explain both its complexity and some of the difficulties thus far encountered in putting it into effect.
This study, by a host of leading experts, provides the most up-to-date analysis of the often problematic relationship between various elements of British political culture and the developing European Union. The book opens with a general review of the history of this relationship since 1950, by Andrew Gamble. This is followed by ten chapters by other leading researchers, each examining a particular aspect of the relationship, including the view of Britain from Europe, the attitudes of Labour, Conservative, and Liberal Democratic parties, the Scottish and Welsh Nationalist parties, the Trade Unions, Business, the Civil Service, and the media. The study concludes with a review of the findings of these chapters, and a discussion of their implications for future relations between Britain and her European partners.
This chapter surveys seven decades of theorizing about European Union policy-making and policy processes. It begins with a discussion of theories of European integration, including neo-functionalism, intergovernmentalism, liberal intergovernmentalism, institutionalism, constructivism, and postfunctionalism. It then considers the increasing number of studies that approach the EU through the lenses of comparative politics and comparative public policy, focusing on the federal or quasi-federal aspects of the EU and its legislative, executive, and judicial politics. It finally explores the vertical and horizontal separation of powers in the EU and concludes by looking at the ‘governance approach’ to the EU, with emphasis on multi-level governance and EU policy networks, Europeanization, and the question of the EU’s democratic deficit.
Examines recent evidence of a growing symmetry in the operation of devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. This book makes one of the first systematic and detailed comparisons of the operation of the devolved institutions and machinery of governance. It uses a comparative approach to explore the key workings of government.
Since the end of the Second World War the United Kingdom has enjoyed neither a comfortable nor a clear relationship with the process of European integration. For more than fifty years the ‘problem’ of Europe, in the sense of the dilemma of choice which continental integration has presented to British policy, has consistently been one of the most central and divisive themes within British political debate. Given the importance of this debate about Europe, it is worth prefacing the analysis of public opinion in Northern Ireland that is the subject of this chapter with two, perhaps obvious, points: firstly, that it has been Westminster and Whitehall who have set the framework within which relations with Europe have developed; secondly, that this framework has seldom, if ever, been conceived in anything but broad terms of national interest. Whether it has wished this or not, Northern Ireland’s response to Europe since accession to the EEC has been circumscribed by the context of the UK’s frequently ill-tempered dialogue with the evolving European Community; a dialogue in which particular preoccupations about Britain’s role in the wider world as well as Europe have played a large part. In many areas — for example, those of coping with economic decline and restructuring or of social issues — Northern Ireland has inevitably shadowed patterns across the UK as a whole.
Accession to what was then the European Economic Community in 1973 marked a turning point in the economic management of the United Kingdom, even though the changes were relatively small in the early years of membership. The same was also true of Northern Ireland as part of the UK, although in Northern Ireland the impact of Europe has been overshadowed by more dramatic changes for much of the subsequent period. While the last 25 years of economic development have occurred within an EU context, they have been in many ways more heavily influenced by the change from the semi-autonomous status of the Stormont years to direct rule from Westminster since 1972. Also over the last 25 years the economy has been influenced in important ways by the almost continuous history of political violence. By coincidence 1973 also proved to be the watershed in post-war growth. Rapid economic growth and full employment prior to 1973 changed with the OPEC oil price rise to a new period of slower growth and high unemployment. There has also been a series of fundamental changes in economic policy within the UK and Northern Ireland. The policy of privatisation has, for instance, changed the balance between public and private sectors, and new government agencies have been formed, in the case of LEDU (Local Entereprise Development Unit) with a lifetime matching that of EU membership.
In the 1975 referendum, campaigners against the United Kingdom remaining in the European Economic Community coined the slogan ‘leave Europe — join the world’. They argued that the then six member states were merely ‘a rich man’s club’. Rich man’s club or not, the debate about the quality of life for citizens within the European Union, about equity and distribution of resources, about equality and human rights, continues unabated.
On the 22nd of January 1972, in the Palais d’Egmont in Brussels, Ireland and the United Kingdom signed the Treaty of Accession to the European Communities. Jack Lynch for Ireland and Edward Heath for the United Kingdom made speeches in praise of a new Europe based on the unity of its peoples, on understanding and friendship.
What is the impact of the Labour Government on the territorial distribution of power in the British state? The question is interesting for several reasons. First, every standard political science text states that Britain is a centralized country because the executive controls a sovereign Parliament. Unified political parties have an ability to command a majority of seats in the legislature which means that, once elected to office, they can generally push through what policies they like, through the executive’s control over appointments and the parliamentary timetable. Thus, unlike in some European countries, not only do elected local authorities or other territorial organizations have no constitutional right to exist and must find a legal power backed by Parliament to act, they usually deal with a united and powerful executive. Thus a combination between Parliament’s legal authority, the lack of constraint on party government and executive coherence centralizes power in Britain. Given that a unified Labour Party was elected in 1997 with a large majority, why should it act any differently to its predecessors? On the other hand, Labour has given executive powers to parliaments in Scotland and Wales which will be hard to repeal. Most of all Labour is keen to reform the very British constitution, which centralizes power, and the electoral system, which sometimes creates large majorities in Parliament.
In this chapter I consider two recent additions to the EU scholar’s analytical toolkit: the concepts of multilevel governance and policy networks. I seek to explain the meaning of these concepts and to set out their respective uses for advancing our theoretical understanding of the EU. I argue that the two concepts are of greatest utility when they are used together rather than separately, hence reference in the chapter title to ‘conceptual combinations’. I argue this because multilevel governance is a concept which helps us understand the kind of polity that the EU has become and how it is currently evolving, whereas policy network analysis helps us understand the complex processes of alliance construction, bargaining and deliberation through which EU public policy is actually produced. In other words, when taken together, the two concepts can give EU scholars a workable understanding of the nature of the EU system and how it works. We can thus go some way — but not all the way — towards filling the ‘grand theory-shaped hole’ (Warleigh, 2000a, 173) that has been present in recent EU theory, and combine insights from different approaches more successfully than in the past.
It is true that the EC is developing new political forms, somewhat reminiscent of much older political forms. These force us to revise our notions of what contemporary states and their interrelations must be. This paper briefly examines the other two major regions of advanced capitalism and the less developed world. Concludes that Western European weakenings of the nation-state are slight, ad hoc, uneven, and unique. In parts of the less developed world, would-be nation-states are also faltering, but for different, essentially "premodern' reasons. Across most of the globe, nation-states are still maturing, or they are at least trying to do so. Europe is not the world's future. -from Author
Under three broad headings, namely, the internal dimension, the Westminster dimension and the intergovernmental dimension, this article seeks to analyse and explore the nature of devolution and to consider factors pertinent to its development. The article, thus, first compares the provisions of the Scotland Act 1998 and of the Northern Ireland Act 1998 on the electoral system, the size of the devolved legislature, the power of dissolution and the formation and the scrutiny of the devolved executive. The prime purpose of this section is to identify the principles enshrined in the legislation which may affect the way in which devolution will operate within its own borders. While this first dimension draws on the statutory provisions, the second, dealing with the relationships between the devolved system and Westminster, concerns issues to be regulated almost entirely by non-statutory “understandings” and by parliamentary/assembly Standing Orders. These issues include most crucially the power of the devolved...
The EU's Peace Programs in Ireland have promoted the cross-border activity of Third sector (voluntary and community) groups. Potentially, such activity gives substantive meaning to regional cross-border governance and helps to ameliorate ethno-national conflict by providing positive sum outcomes for “post-conflict” communities. The paper mobilizes focused research conducted by the authors to explore this potential. It finds that while regional cross-border governance has indeed developed under the Peace Programs, the sustainability of the social partnerships underpinning this governance is uncertain and its significance for conflict resolution is qualified by difficulties experienced in forming a stable power-sharing arrangement at the political-elite level.
The ruling of the European Court of Justice in Case C-474/10 is the latest twist in a saga that has dominated the environmental
agenda in Northern Ireland for the past decade; namely, the case for the creation of an independent environmental regulator.
In effect, a preliminary reference to the Court under Article 267 TFEU—seeking, inter alia, clarification of the structural or governance arrangements that must be created to ensure compliance with the consultation
procedure created by article 6(3) of the Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive 2001/42/EC—has produced a potential
judicial lever for forcing reform of a key aspect of the contested arrangements for environmental governance in Northern Ireland,
which years of political campaigning by environmental NGOs has failed to induce.
This article assesses the role played by the principle of consociational government in promoting Northern Irelands peace agreement. It reviews the central concept of consociation as it has evolved in recent comparative studies of the politics of divided societies. It describes the stages by which this concept moved to the centre of the political agenda in Northern Ireland, resting on contributions by policy-makers, academics, journalists and others. It reviews the difficult history of efforts to translate this principle into practice, contrasting the failed attempt to promote this formula in 1973 with the much more successful experiment in 1998. Using the classical literature on consociation, an effort is made to explain the difference between these outcomes, a difference with implications for Northern Irelands future stability. © The Author [2010]. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Hansard Society; all rights reserved.
This two-volume set provides coverage of aspects of European Community law, from perspectives on European integration and law and the market, to social and regional policies, economic and social regulation and the international political economy.
We foresee that the role of the new Scottish Parliament Executive will actually enhance the involvement of Scotland in European affairs without diluting, in any way, that single central [UK] voice' (Scottish Affairs Committee 1998, Vol. 2, p. 105). In his testimony to the Scottish Affairs Committee, then-Devolution Minister Henry McLeish identified the key aim as well as likely difficulty of the devolution settlement in relation to Europe: although European affairs are reserved to Westminster, the Scottish Parliament is responsible for implementing European directives in devolved areas. This raises a central question, namely, how can the Scottish Parliament seek to develop an autonomous voice in Europe that promotes distinctive Scottish policy needs and a strong 'regional' identity, while simultaneously contributing to the creation of a unified UK negotiating line? Although analysts have considered the relationship between Westminster and the European Union (EU) (e.g., George 1994, Bulmer and Burch 1998), little attention has been paid, as William Paterson (1994) noted in Scottish Affairs, to 'the relationships between the multinational character of the British state and the issue of the European Union' (p. 3). Such consideration is particularly important in Scotland, he added, as its 'Political discourse ... takes place as much about the terms on which Scotland might participate in the European Union as about Scottish attitudes to the United Kingdom' (p. 4). When the prospect of a Scottish Parliament appeared more viable, political This article is part of a wider study leading to a Ph.D. thesis at the University of Edinburgh that seeks to examine how the Scottish Executive can influence European policy-making. The author wishes to acknowledge financial support from British Energy for a research trip to Brussels, but maintains full responsibility for the ideas presented here. The author also thanks two anonymous referees for their useful suggestions.
In the late 1990s when the United Kingdom embarked on a programme of constitutional reform and decentralization of power through its programme of devolution, ostensibly one of the major non-devolved areas was international affairs and relations with the European Union. There is a growing literature on relations between the UK and the European Union, but much less on relationship between the regions, central government and the EU. This article aims to redress the balance and focus on the interaction between Northern Ireland's new institutions of governance and the EU. It examines the EU dimension to the new devolution arrangements heralded by the Belfast Agreement, considers how the new institutions (principally the Executive and Assembly) have responded to meet this new European challenge and analyses how far devolution has led to a fundamental change in relations between Northern Ireland and the European Union.
Although cursory examination reveals that one must refer to ‘British civil services’, a lacuna has persisted in the literature since Gladden's (1967) seminal work. Invariably, the tendency is to accord the Northern Ireland Civil Service (NICS) footnote status. This article seeks to remedy this deficiency. It offers a resum of the political context of Northern Ireland before concentrating upon NICS itself—its characteristics and changing nature in terms of public administration and the management of public policy since 1970.
Consociational institutional arrangements in deeply divided societies are often criticised for cementing the underlying conflict cleavage, encouraging the continued dominance of conflict-based party competition and voter behaviour and prohibiting the emergence of ‘normal’ (that is, non-conflict-based) dimensions of political competition. However, drawing on evidence from a post-election survey at the 2009 Northern Ireland election to the European Parliament, I find that EU issues determined intra-bloc vote choice (at least in the nationalist community). This suggests that there is potential for regional integration projects, such as the EU, to contribute to the ‘normalisation’ of politics in a consociational system by acting as the source of an externally generated dimension of political competition.
In December 2007, Northern Ireland's newly elected First and Deputy First Ministers, Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness, were pictured sitting happily together on a read leather sofa at the new IKEA superstore in Belfast. It was an image that served as a powerful symbol of the region's political transformation and economic optimism. Yet, within months of this photo opportunity, global financial crisis and economic recession shattered hopes that a meaningful, economic ‘peace dividend’ would underpin the new political dispensation. This article takes a critical look at the media's role in conflict transformation in Northern Ireland; how they projected new and more positive images of life in the region and chronicled the daily business of ‘bread and butter politics’. However, it also identifies chronic decline among some sections of the regional media, particularly Belfast's daily newspapers, just when they are needed to monitor and debate political decision-making in a time of austerity.
The ongoing development of Titanic Quarter in Belfast, Northern Ireland, has already made significant changes to the area. The site on which the Titanic was built has been redeveloped as an area for tourism, business, education and the creative industries. The site has been developed following a significant inflow of private capital, and with the additional support of local government and public finance. This article outlines how economic and political forces have coalesced in Belfast to the point that the violent period of the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland can be said to have created a ‘pleasingly blank canvas for regeneration’.
2008 marked the 10th anniversary of the signing of the Belfast Agreement and followed a momentous year in the recent political history of Northern Ireland. Despite the passage of over a decade, the full operation of the new governance arrangements remains elusive. In 2008 however, it appeared that Northern Ireland had embraced 'normal' politics as local political representatives began to address the challenges of everyday political life. One such challenge is structuring and managing an engagement with the European Union (EU) which meets the interests of Northern Ireland. Over ten years after the decision to devolve power to Northern Ireland and despite the sporadic suspension of political institutions, the region has developed a functioning model of engagement with the EU. Using Wolff's (2002) model of post-Agreement reconstruction, this chapter suggests that when compared with other domestic policy areas, the Europeanizing influence of the EU has produced important political developments in Northern Ireland.
Party political incongruence in the UK after 2007 has had a moderate effect on both the machinery of intergovernmental relations and the dominant modes of intergovernmental interaction. In assessing changes in intergovernmental structures, we find more frequent meetings and more formalised interactions. A preference for informal bilateral exchange, however, still prevails. In assessing changes in the nature of intergovernmental relations, we find some intensification of conflict, but amid continued co‐operation. While one might find more pronounced changes after longer periods of party political incongruence, we argue that the limited effect observed thus far can be traced back to: (i) formal‐legal features of the UK multi‐level polity; (ii) the nature of the policy sectors requiring intergovernmental co‐ordination (iii); the specific political dynamics within the constituent governments; and (iv) the mitigating role and structure of non‐elected institutions such as the civil service and the judiciary.
This article provides a commentary on the evolution of intergovernmental relations in the UK from one of its leading practitioners. As the former Director General for Devolution in the UK Cabinet Office and the UK Ministry of Justice, Jim Gallagher was at the centre of the process of intergovernmental exchange, and provides rich practice‐based insights into both the character and dynamics of IGR before and after 2007.
The Good Friday Agreement represents an elite accommodation with popular legitimacy. Various accounts of how the deal was brokered at elite level have emerged and there is a growing amount of survey data on the attitudes of voters to the agreement. What, though, of the attitudes of the intermediate tier of party members? Continuing support for the deal among the 'centrist bloc' of the SDLP, Alliance and UUP is analysed in this article, based upon surveys of party members. The article highlights the different interpretations of the agreement, vital in the 'selling' of the deal to electors. In assessing the desires of party members in respect of contemporary debates, it suggests that the requirement for parallel consent across bloc designations within the assembly (opposed by Alliance) may be superfluous and may, in respect of education policy, operate as a barrier to change. Intra-party division, rather than inter-party conflict, appears evident from the views of members on the non-conflict management issues with which the assembly is primarily concerned.