Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T03:04:17.626Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - Beyond Matryoshka Governance in the Twenty-First Century: The Curious Case of Northern Ireland

from Part I - Territorial Pressures in Ireland and the United Kingdom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 August 2021

Oran Doyle
Affiliation:
Trinity College Dublin
Aileen McHarg
Affiliation:
University of Durham
Jo Murkens
Affiliation:
London School of Economics and Political Science
Get access

Summary

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.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Brexit Challenge for Ireland and the United Kingdom
Constitutions Under Pressure
, pp. 64 - 85
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×