Devolution in Northern Ireland—Grounds for optimism?

The future of UK government and possibilities for change will rest in large measure on the extent, or otherwise, to which the policy and practice of devolution work effectively. Perhaps of all the constitutional changes enacted by Tony Blair’s New Labour governments after 1997, devolution has had the most profound impact. Today and henceforth, nowhere better illustrates the future of UK government and possibilities for change than Northern Ireland. Moreover, the longstanding precarity and conditionality of Northern Ireland’s continued place within the Union, confirmed by the provisions of the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement, means that its system of regional governance operates under additional pressures to those obtaining elsewhere. Using the twin concepts of ‘positive public administration’ (PPA) and its concomitant of ‘positive public policy’ (PoPP), this research addresses a critical gap in devolution studies, which tend to focus on Scotland and Wales while treating Northern Ireland as exceptional or problematic, by offering lessons for understanding devolution’s resilience and adaptability more broadly.