Informal is the new normal in North–South relations

Feeney Ryan
Additional contact information
Feeney Ryan: Vice-President (Governance and External Affairs) and Registrar, Queen’s University Belfast , Northern Ireland

Administration, 2024, vol. 72, issue 4, 147-166

Abstract: North/South cooperation on the island of Ireland has grown significantly in the last twenty-six years. Still, it can be argued that the delivery of that growth has happened mainly outside the formal Strand Two structures of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement with the North South Ministerial Council and its implementation bodies presently not directly involved in some of the main flagship cross-border projects in the areas of health, infrastructure, higher and further education, research, arts and culture. Instead, the Shared Island Unit, established in September 2020 and based within the Department of the Taoiseach, has been driving the delivery of the majority of projects in these areas, in many cases without direct input from the Northern Ireland Executive. This paper reviews how informal governance has been used to enhance cooperation and solve issues due to the deliberately limiting nature of the formal Strand Two institutions.

Keywords: Good Friday Agreement; informal governance; North/South cooperation; North South Ministerial Council; Strand Two institutions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.2478/admin-2024-0031 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:vrs:admini:v:72:y:2024:i:4:p:147-166:n:1009

DOI: 10.2478/admin-2024-0031

Access Statistics for this article

Administration is currently edited by Joanna O'Riordan

More articles in Administration from Sciendo
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().