Peter Thiel’s oxymoron? The Windsor Framework and Exceptional Economic Governance Spaces

Much of the pro-Brexit campaigning focused on the possibility of freeports and/or Singapore on Thames. Yet, it is Northern Ireland that turns out to have the innovative trading space. Globally, there are networks of freeports, complex sovereign spaces such as Hong Kong and a variety of tax havens and charter cities taking a multitude of forms. Some of these have emerged from colonial spaces and others have not. There is also an accelerating trend towards the privatisation of space exploitation. But across many of such spaces there is a dearth of employment protection, of access to human rights, massive gaps in transparency and a lack of substantive democracy, or in some cases no democracy at all. Yet, for some, such as Peter Thiel, this makes them – apparently – the perfect economic space. The Windsor Framework, a response to the specific issues Brexit caused for Northern Ireland, stands in contrast. It includes human rights provisions in its texts and it acknowledges where it sits within a broader transitional framework which aims to embed democracy as core to how the space is run, which is the impetus for it being a unique economic space. This article explores the nature of the current pro and anti-democratic trends in creating exceptional economic governance spaces.