9. Governing from Below

2021 ◽  
pp. 246-269
Author(s):  
Peter John
Keyword(s):  
Local Government ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Power Sharing ◽  
Complex Pattern ◽  
British Politics ◽  
General Stability ◽  
The Uk

This chapter studies a key aspect of delegation in British politics: decentralization and local/national self-government. It deals with local government in England, and government in the devolved territories/nations of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Decentralization in British politics has formed into a complex pattern, where there are different dynamics in the various territories: relative centralization in England, power-sharing in Northern Ireland, pragmatic devolution in Wales, and then a strong push towards independence in Scotland. For a question about how centralized or decentralized British politics is, the answer would need to be based on where a person lives, with England rehearsing the conventional arguments about constitutional centralization and the rest of the country increasing decentralization, if not a form of federalism. The chapter then assesses the question of the rationale and general stability of the system, with respect to the integrity of the UK as a whole.

Sovereignty, Devolution and the English Constitution

2018 ◽  
pp. 45-67
Author(s):  
Akash Paun
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Power Sharing ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Constitutional Theory ◽  
Parliamentary Sovereignty ◽  
Form Of Government ◽  
Political Disaffection ◽  
Eu Referendum ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Right

This chapter argues that the UK territorial constitution rests upon a profound ambiguity about its central principles. Parliamentary sovereignty remains at the core of how the English understand their constitution. Yet in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, alternative doctrines have flourished, especially since devolution, which conceded the right of each nation to determine its own form of government (popular sovereignty) and established a non-majoritarian system of power-sharing and cross-border governance in (Northern) Ireland. These developments imply that the UK is a voluntary ‘family of nations’ not a unitary state. Yet Westminster has never formally conceded this point and devolution could in theory be reversed by a simple parliamentary majority. Constructive ambiguity has been retained. However, the historic tendency to allow constitutional theory and practice to diverge may be unsustainable in the light of the EU referendum result and the wider mood of English political disaffection that Brexit has tapped into.

Stan Orme and the road to ‘Industrial Democracy’: British attempts at the politicisation of working-class Protestants in Northern Ireland, 1973–75

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Craig
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Power Sharing ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Industrial Democracy ◽  
Industrial Workers ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
The Road ◽  
General Elections ◽  
The Uk

As Minister of State in Northern Ireland 1974-1976, Stanley Orme MP (1923-2005) worked at the heart of British government policies that attempted to ameliorate and politicise the membership of those loyalist groups that had successfully brought down the power sharing executive in 1974. Orme followed and extended a government policy of often secret engagement of those outside the mainstream of Northern Ireland politics; a policy that successfully brought about the Provisional IRA’s 1975 ceasefire, but which failed to bring the UVF into electoral politics with the dismal performance of the Volunteer Political Party in the 1974 general elections. Orme’s approach, outlined in the 1975 pamphlet ‘Industrial Democracy’ encouraged workers’ participation in the newly nationalised Harland and Wolff shipyard and was a direct attempt to politicise the Protestant working classes of Belfast. Orme attempted to redirect their support away from both existing militant and right-wing groups that at this time included the UDA, UVF and Ulster Vanguard. Orme’s view was that skilled industrial workers belonged within the fold of progressive social democracy and that the extension of government-backed syndicalist activity in the ship yard would empower the workers and help shift Northern Ireland as a whole from sectarian models of political activity to a class based system similar to the rest of the UK. For Orme, ‘Industrial Democracy’ was the ‘Last Chance for Northern Ireland’ and a potential solution to the province’s ills, ‘If the working-class people of Northern Ireland can be convinced that, whatever their religious denominations, they have economic interests in common, they will be able to approach the constitutional problem… with open minds.’ (‘Last Chance for Northern Ireland?’, [undated] c. 1975 LSE Orme 1/3). Using a combination of Orme’s official and private papers, this chapter seeks to explore and critique Orme’s motivation, his policy, and its effect.

Pressure and experimentation

2020 ◽  
pp. 74-132
Author(s):  
Lucy Atkinson ◽  
Andrew Blick ◽  
Matt Qvortrup
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
European Community ◽  
Common Market ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
British Politics ◽  
Community Or ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Over Time

Chapter 2 covers 1945–1979, a period during which referendums progressed from being relatively neglected as a concept in Britain to actually being deployed. Between 1945 and the early 1970s, the idea of holding a major referendum was absent from the forefront of the UK political agenda. But as we will see, the proposition simmered and revived over time. Then between 1973 and 1979, four such votes took place: on the constitutional status of Northern Ireland (1973); on whether or not the UK should continue to participate in the European Community (or ‘Common Market’, in 1975); and on whether or not devolution should be implemented in Scotland and Wales (both 1979). The chapter considers why referendums occurred, and their implications for British politics and for the British constitution.

9. Devolution and local government

Public Law ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Stanton ◽  
Craig Prescott
Keyword(s):  
Local Government ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Constitutional Law ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Regional Institutions ◽  
Legislative Authority ◽  
Recent Addition ◽  
The Uk

Devolution is a recent addition to the UK constitutional law vocabulary. The concept refers to the decentralisation of power from central institutions in London to regional institutions exercising executive and legislative authority in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. This chapter explores the principle of devolution, both in terms of its historical development and its constitutional importance. It discusses recent issues and debates relevant to the role that it continues to play in the UK Constitution through the established institutions in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. All this is tied together in consideration of a problem scenario which encourages discussion of the powers of the devolved institutions and their relationship with centralised authority at Westminster.

4. How the UK is organised

2021 ◽  
pp. 71-99
Author(s):  
Anne Dennett
Keyword(s):  
Local Government ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
National Security ◽  
Central Government ◽  
State Legislature ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
Government Agencies ◽  
Government Power ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Uk

This chapter details how power is allocated in the UK, and its organisation in terms of devolution and regional and local government. Power in the UK is divided into three branches or arms of state: legislature (law-makers), executive (government and administration), and judiciary (courts and judges). Before devolution, the government’s (executive’s) administrative power was centralised and it extended to the whole of the UK, but devolution has made significant changes to the constitution and has brought a substantial rebalancing of power in the government of the UK. Since devolution’s introduction, the power of central government no longer extends to the growing areas of domestic policy that have been devolved to Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The UK government’s remit therefore now covers England and the whole of the UK on non-devolved matters including the conduct of foreign affairs, defence, national security, and oversight of the Civil Service and government agencies.

scholarly journals Local government reform: Community planning and the quality of life in Northern Ireland

2015 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 31-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Knox ◽  
Paul Carmichael
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Local Government ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Community Planning ◽  
Reform Process ◽  
Legal Power ◽  
The Uk

Abstract Local government in Northern Ireland has undergone a significant reform process in terms of both the number of councils (from twenty-six to eleven) and their functional responsibilities. Councils in Northern Ireland have always been regarded as the ‘poor relation’ of central government or non-departmental public bodies which deliver many of the services performed by local government in other parts of the UK (education, social services, housing). The reforms in Northern Ireland, while devolving relatively minor additional functions, offer councils a significant role in community planning – the legal power to hold central departments to account for services provided by them in local areas. This paper argues that councils can use this power to improve the quality of life of their inhabitants.

Politics and Devolution in Northern Ireland, 1998–2007

2021 ◽  
pp. 209-240
Author(s):  
Jonathan Bradbury
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Policy Development ◽  
Power Sharing ◽  
The Political ◽  
Resource Limitations ◽  
The North ◽  
Political Management ◽  
Management Approaches ◽  
The Uk

This chapter analyses politics in Northern Ireland in the context, first, of the failed attempts to implement devolution that led to its suspension, then the St Andrews Agreement in 2006, elections and the restoration of devolution in 2007. It reappraises the tortuous years in terms of the territorial strains that were still present in Northern Ireland, the resources available to the Republican/Nationalist and Unionist party leaderships in Northern Ireland as well as to the Blair government, and the political management approaches that they each pursued. It focuses on the political imperatives and constraints that determined the Northern Ireland Assembly's journey between intermittent existence and suspension, and eventually led to the unlikely agreement between the leaders of the extreme representatives of Republicanism and Unionism. The chapter is informed by the proposition that both sides in Northern Ireland still recognised their resource limitations in asserting their ideal outcomes in the short term. The Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) and Sinn Fein still pursued power-sharing devolution in the short to medium term to realise their long-term objectives of Irish unity. This was principally to be achieved through electoral success and the cultivation of the North–South institutions under strand two of the Belfast Agreement to normalise Irish governance through instrumental arguments, shared policy development and functional spillovers. Meanwhile, the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), as the principal Unionist party, competitively sought to use devolution as a new framework in which to sustain an inter-governmentalist approach to governing within the UK, asserting the very different long-term aim of maintaining Northern Ireland within the Union.

Decentralisation and Devolution in the United Kingdom

2016 ◽  
pp. 1-34
Author(s):  
Chris Game
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Local Government ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Government Functions ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Working Out

The key to the core of this chapter is in its title. Constitutionally, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK) is still a unitary state comprising three countries – England, Scotland, Wales – plus the province of Northern Ireland. Since 1998, though, the last three have had their own elected parliaments or assemblies and devolved governments, whose responsibilities naturally include most local government functions and operations. It is arguable, therefore, that in practice nowadays the UK is quasi-federal. England, with 84% of the UK population, doesn't have a separate parliament, but is gradually working out its own form of devolution. The chapter describes all these developments, but its detail is largely reserved for the structure and workings of local government in England – elections and elected councillors, services and functions, and its currently rapidly changing finances – and the impact, particularly on councils' financial and policy discretion, of its having, in population terms, by far the largest scale of local government in Western Europe.

‘Slow learners’? Comparing the Sunningdale Agreement and the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Hennessey
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Power Sharing ◽  
Slow Learners ◽  
Good Friday ◽  
Good Friday Agreement ◽  
Ministerial Council ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Uk

This chapter compares and contrasts the 1973 and 1998 Agreements that, on the face of it, are remarkably similar: both involve power-sharing and an institutional link between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The phrase ‘Sunningdale for slow learners’, attributed to Seamus Mallon, masks a misunderstanding of the fundamental differences between the two Agreements. The former Agreement looked to establish a Council of Ireland with executive powers that had the potential to evolve into an embryonic all-Ireland government; the latter Agreement established a consultative North-South Ministerial Council with no executive powers that could not evolve into a united Ireland by incremental moves. This was the key to Unionist acceptance of the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) in comparison to Unionist rejection of the Sunningdale Agreement. In constitutional terms the GFA was a Unionist settlement that secured Northern Ireland’s position within the United Kingdom, recognised British sovereignty in Northern Ireland and established that a united Ireland could only be achieved on the basis of the principle of consent. In contrast the Sunningdale Agreement was, in constitutional terms, a Nationalist settlement that did not recognise Northern Ireland was part of the UK and attempted to bypass the principle of consent by establishing powerful North-South bodies. The chapter argues that the only thing the two Agreements has in common was a power-sharing element for the government of Northern Ireland.

4. How the UK is organised

2019 ◽  
pp. 69-96
Author(s):  
Anne Dennett
Keyword(s):  
Local Government ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
National Security ◽  
Central Government ◽  
State Legislature ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
Government Agencies ◽  
Government Power ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Uk

This chapter details how power is allocated in the UK, and its organisation in terms of devolution and regional and local government. Power in the UK is divided into three branches or arms of state: legislature (law-makers), executive (government and administration), and judiciary (courts and judges). Before devolution, the government's (executive's) administrative power was centralised and it extended to the whole of the UK, but devolution has made significant changes to the constitution and has brought a substantial rebalancing of power in the government of the UK. Since devolution's introduction, the power of central government no longer extends to the growing areas of domestic policy that have been devolved to Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The UK government's remit therefore now covers England and the whole of the UK on non-devolved matters including the conduct of foreign affairs, defence, national security, and oversight of the Civil Service and government agencies.

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