Democracy in Northern Ireland Since the Good Friday Agreement: A Post-Brexit Reappraisal

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to identify and analyse the reasons why the Brexit referendum and its results have led to a profound and lasting destabilisation of post-Good Friday Agreement Northern Irish democracy. The main thesis developed in this paper is that the post-Brexit referendum crisis prevailing in Northern Ireland should lead us to reappraise critically the democratic institutions and processes established after the GFA as they were vulnerable and perfectible. It is argued that three kinds of deficits can be found in the democratic arrangements in place since 1998 which can account for the destabilising impacts of Brexit. These deficits are: first, the lure of a new European post-national and post-sovereign democratic transformation of the Northern Irish conflict, second, the limitations of consociational democracy and, thirdly, the problems raised by referendum democracy.

Keywords

• Northern Ireland
• consociational democracy
• Irish reunification
• referendum
• nationalism
• post-nationalism