TY - CHAP
T1 - Beyond Matryoshka Governance in the Twenty-First Century: The Curious Case of Northern Ireland
AU - de Mars, Sylvia
AU - O'Donoghue, Aoife
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - This chapter considers how Northern Ireland’s experience during and after Brexit informs our understandings of multi-level governance orders and interactions between and within those orders. A traditional view of governance structures would regard Northern Ireland as having little say in negotiations on trade. Nonetheless, the negotiations on the Withdrawal Agreement have repeatedly seen all parties refer to and return to governance in Northern Ireland as a core concern. This piece will utilise scale theory – originating in political geography – to consider how Northern Ireland became central to the Brexit negotiations. Scale, as a geographical and political idea, incorporates a range of concepts (core and periphery, population size, majorities and minorities, temporality (linear and nonlinear), geographic governance size), as well as questions of local, national, regional and universal spaces to consider how governance is constructed and the role law plays in constructing scales. Whereas traditional accounts of scaled governance orders deploy “nested” constructs to place Northern Ireland in a tidy frame, organised like a series of Russian dolls, this chapter challenges this narrative by interrogating the slippage between the governance orders and their methods of interaction, and what extent of ‘voice’ that ultimately leaves for Northern Ireland.
AB - This chapter considers how Northern Ireland’s experience during and after Brexit informs our understandings of multi-level governance orders and interactions between and within those orders. A traditional view of governance structures would regard Northern Ireland as having little say in negotiations on trade. Nonetheless, the negotiations on the Withdrawal Agreement have repeatedly seen all parties refer to and return to governance in Northern Ireland as a core concern. This piece will utilise scale theory – originating in political geography – to consider how Northern Ireland became central to the Brexit negotiations. Scale, as a geographical and political idea, incorporates a range of concepts (core and periphery, population size, majorities and minorities, temporality (linear and nonlinear), geographic governance size), as well as questions of local, national, regional and universal spaces to consider how governance is constructed and the role law plays in constructing scales. Whereas traditional accounts of scaled governance orders deploy “nested” constructs to place Northern Ireland in a tidy frame, organised like a series of Russian dolls, this chapter challenges this narrative by interrogating the slippage between the governance orders and their methods of interaction, and what extent of ‘voice’ that ultimately leaves for Northern Ireland.
U2 - 10.1017/9781108966399.005
DO - 10.1017/9781108966399.005
M3 - Chapter
SP - 64
EP - 85
BT - The Brexit Challenge for Ireland and the United Kingdom: Constitutions under Pressure
A2 - Doyle, Oran
A2 - McHarg, Aileen
A2 - Murkens, Jo
PB - Cambridge University Press
ER -