Brexit, the Belfast Agreement and Northern Ireland: Imperilling a Fragile Political Bargain

Teague, Paul

doi:10.1111/1467-923x.12766

Cited by 10 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…While the DUP was on the defensive, SF emerged from the Irish general election in February as the largest party by votes, and ambitions to lead the government. As Unionists took fright at the Protocol after January 2020, nationalist agitation for a referendum on Irish unity grew (Teague 2019). Greater turmoil was probably delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, which, even in NI, dominated popular, political, and media attention.…”

Section: Brexit Borders and Boycottsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transformation or Truce? Tracing the Decline of “Reconciliation” and Its Consequences for Northern Ireland Since 1998

Morrow

2023

Treatises and Documents, Journal of Ethnic Studies / Razprave in Gradivo, Revija Za Narodnostna Vprašanja

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Reconciliation and consociation were at the core of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement (BGFA) in 1998. Analysis of the politics of the last 25 years in Northern Ireland (NI), however, reveals that many presumed aspects of reconciliation – integrated education, desegregated living, the disbandment of armed groups, cultural rapprochement, linguistic and cultural diversity, safe and secure shared public space, an approach to the past which puts the suffering of victims at its core – remain unaddressed or are deeply disputed. The article explores how consociational government in Northern Ireland has gradually decayed under pressure from this weakness. Since 2016, reconciliation has been a second-order consideration for the shaping partnership between the United Kingdom (U.K.) and Ireland which made the Agreement possible, leaving the Agreement at risk from the repeated exercise of the veto and dependent on the absence of any alternative, rather than proactive commitment.

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Section: Brexit Borders and Boycottsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transformation or Truce? Tracing the Decline of “Reconciliation” and Its Consequences for Northern Ireland Since 1998

Morrow

2023

Treatises and Documents, Journal of Ethnic Studies / Razprave in Gradivo, Revija Za Narodnostna Vprašanja

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“…The full implications of Brexit for Northern Ireland became increasingly apparent in the period after the referendum. Independent analyses highlighted the severity of Brexit's economic consequences for Northern Ireland (Budd, 2015;Oxford Economics, 2016;Springford, 2015) and concerns about the politically destabilizing impact of Brexit became more pronounced (Connolly & Doyle, 2019;Gormley-Heenan & Aughey, 2017;Teague, 2019). The latter centred on concerns, voiced predominantly by Irish Nationalists, but also shared by the Irish government, business and sectoral interests, and security services in Northern Ireland, about the damaging impact of a hard border between North and South on both the spirit and the practical operation of the provisions and institutions of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement.…”

Section: Brexit and Bordersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contesting sovereignty and borders: Northern Ireland, devolution and the Union

Murphy

Evershed

2021

Territory, Politics, Governance

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Supported by UK and Irish membership of the European Union (EU), the 1998 Belfast/Good Friday Agreement's post-sovereignist compromise helped to diminish the contested politics of the border in Ireland. However, by altering the status of the border, Brexit aroused and fomented politically charged divisions in Northern Ireland. We explore the confluence of four consequences of Brexit for Northern Ireland. Firstly, we detail how Brexit highlights the inadequacies and dysfunction of the UK's territorial architecture. Second, we examine the specific structural, institutional and relational weaknesses of Northern Ireland's devolved system. Third, we explain how Brexit further weakened the scaffolding that supports Northern Ireland's devolved settlement. And fourth, we explore why Brexit has prompted profound reconsideration of the UK's existing territorial set-up. Brexit's challenge to the status quo in Northern Ireland, and by extension the UK's constitutional and territorial integrity, is linked not just to internal political dynamics in Northern Ireland, but also to the ambiguity of the existing asymmetrical UK devolution settlement, its lack of embeddedness within the UK constitutional order and the absence of binding cultural narratives. Finally, we extend this analysis to posit that Brexit has revived the 'Irish question' and stirred a potentially destabilizing debate about Irish unity.

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“…The uncertainty regarding the future of the Irish border challenged the post-GFA regime, thus reopening the territorial debates-and nationalist-unionist fractures-in Northern Ireland. The consensus among scholars is that Brexit, particularly a so-called hard Brexit, challenged, undermined and potentially jeopardised the peace process in Northern Ireland (Brewer, 2018;Doyle & Connolly, 2019;Hayward & Murphy, 2018;Teague, 2019). As explained in previous sections, Northern Ireland has experienced territorially driven violence in different periods of the 20th century.…”

Section: Brexit: the Re-territorialisation Of Ireland?mentioning

confidence: 99%