Northern Ireland and South Tyrol: constitutional boundaries in consociational democracies

Northern Ireland and South Tyrol: constitutional boundaries in consociational democracies

This chapter compares the process of constitutional decentralisation in Northern Ireland and in Trentino-Alto Adige/Sudtirol. These are consociational regional democracies within a large state. Both regions host a fractured community divided along ethnic and, in the case of Northern Ireland, religious lines. Northern Ireland and Trentino-Alto Adige/Sudtirol are complex societies and they require a system of governance that is, by a way of comparison to homogeneous polities, more complicated. In this essay, I will discuss the constitutional structure that both regions adopted to establish peace, promote good governance and human development. Overall, there are indications that regional institutions in Northern Ireland and Trentino-Alto Adige/Sudtirol are under pressure to change. This pressure is coming from external factors, such as EU development, and internal trends like a new generation that is reluctant to dwell on past ethnic divisions.

The essay is divided in two sections preceded by an introduction and followed by a conclusion. The introduction delivers an overview of the essay’s main narratives and explains the paper methodology. The first section discusses Northern Ireland. It is divided into two subsections. The first provides a contextual overview in which Northern Irish institutions operate and the second subsection focuses on the institutions established by the Northern Ireland Act 1998. The second part of the essay turns to the Trentino-Alto Adige/Sudtirol region. As in the previous section, an analysis of the context is followed by an evaluation of the constitutional setting in which regional institutions operate.

Files associated with this item cannot be displayed due to copyright restrictions.