The Trouble with Northern Ireland: The Belfast Agreement and Democratic Governance

Northern Ireland seems to be a repetitive, frustrating story, whose arcane local detail only insiders can understand. But in this fresh and non-partisan approach to the Belfast Agreement, Rick Wilford and Robin Wilson show how international democratic norms illuminate the stalemate over implementation of the agreement.

In this paper they identify how, without engaging with wider debates abotu democracy in divided societies, the agreement's drafters opted for a form of power-sharing which entrenched, rather than cauterised, sectarian polarisation. They chart a way ahead which chimes with the vision of 'A Shared Future' adopted by the UK government in a recent policy document on 'community relations'. And they suggest such a cosmopolitan vision can also offer a route through the argument initiated by the Taoiseach and the President about how Ireland should commemorate 1916.