Northern Ireland after the Good Friday Agreement

Essay from the year 2004 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Region: Western Europe grade: 2+ (B) University of Kent (Brussels School of International Studies) language: English abstract: Six years after the Good Friday Agreement was signed and after a promising although troubled start of the institutional framework it has put in place Northern Ireland is following the suspension of devolution on 14 October 2002 yet again under direct rule from Westminster. Centuries of conflict decades of violent troubles and diametrically opposed demands of the groups involved make the Northern Ireland question to one of the most difficult conflicts of our time. Nevertheless there was genuine optimism both among the parties involved and the international community that the Agreement would succeed and resolve the conflict.However in the political reality of Northern Ireland the Agreement soon reached its limits and people realised that it takes more than an assembly and a power-sharing executive to overcome Ulster's deep-rooted sectarian divisions. Internal disagreement in the unionist and nationalist camps over the direction the Agreement is likely to take them and the still unresolved question of IRA weapons decommissioning leave the future of the Agreement in serious doubt.The Agreement has been widely acknowledged as being consociational and consistent with the four principles of power-sharing identified by Lijphart. This paper will thus also discuss the theoretical foundation of the Agreement. Here it will particularly focus on the role of the voting system (Single Transferable Vote) employed for the Assembly elections which is unusual for consociational models.This paper will conclude that the Agreement is undeniably a major breakthrough. Even if the Agreement itself does not solve the conflict by creating a prolonged period of peace in which political dialogue can take place it could be a vital step towards a future settlement. But is the