The UK government’s Northern Ireland policy after Brexit: a retreat to unilateralism and muscular unionism

Brexit has significantly altered the trajectory of UK government policy towards Northern Ireland. The peace process was implicitly built on a presumption of continued joint EU membership by the UK and Ireland. The EU model of interdependence and cooperation was explicitly stated to be an inspiration by its key architect John Hume. However, the history of British–Irish cooperation over Northern Ireland is long and complex and cannot solely be understood through the lens of Europeanisation. Despite this, the aftermath of the 2016 referendum has seen a retreat by the UK government from a bilateral and consensual approach towards Northern Ireland to unilateralism and a ‘muscular’ unionist ideology. This has affected their governance there, hampering their relationship with local parties and undermining the agreed role of the Irish government. The impact of Brexit on UK government policy towards Northern Ireland has undoubtedly contributed to the destabilisation of the political settlement

Pragmatists versus dogmatists: Explaining the failure of power-sharing in Northern Ireland during the 1970s

This article argues that the failure of Northern Ireland’s first power-sharing executive, and subsequent attempts to restore power-sharing during the 1970s, was the result of conflicting attitudes towards devolution among Northern Ireland’s politicians. Traditional ideological divisions between nationalists and unionists were not the primary barrier to creating and sustaining cross-community institutions, as stressed in accounts of this period premised on consociational theory. Drawing extensively from archival sources, it argues that the split between the pragmatists from both communities, who were prepared to compromise their core principles and accept power-sharing devolution within a UK framework, and the dogmatists (both nationalists and unionists) who refused to contemplate any compromise to their core position, prevented a consensual political settlement emerging during the 1970s

Tresspassing on borders? The European Community and the relationships between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic; a test of neo-funtionalism

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:DX198671 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

The future of Northern Ireland: the role of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement Institutions

Since the 2016 Brexit referendum a series of crises has gripped Northern Ireland's politics. This has had a destabilising effect across society, which has arguably been felt most acutely by political unionism. The Belfast/Good Friday Agreement (B/GFA) of 1998 created a series of institutions to deal with political conflict in Northern Ireland, manage cross-border cooperation and normalise relations between the UK and Ireland. However, many aspects of it have been sparingly and ineffectually deployed, most notably the second and third strands dealing with north/south and east/west relations respectively. In this article, the authors argue that regular use of the institutional arrangements created by the Agreement would help to deal with the challenges currently facing Northern Ireland and help address unionist anxieties over the Protocol. Use of the North-South Ministerial Council (NSMC), the British Irish Council (BIC) and the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference (BIIGC) should be prioritised. The unresolved issues arising from Brexit require a recommitment to the intergovernmental logic at the heart of the 1998 Agreement, despite the obstacles