Northern Ireland Constitutional Thought

This project provides a normative examination of the constitutional status of Northern Ireland. ‘The Northern Ireland Constitutional Question and Political Theory’ takes the loss of Unionism’s majority, the convulsions experienced across the British Isles by Brexit, and the rise of Sinn Féin in the Republic of Ireland as defining a political moment in which it is prudent to re-examine the constitutional status of Northern Ireland. The project is structured as an examination of intellectual debates thought closed after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. It re-examines Unionist, Irish Nationalist and Republican, and other intellectual arguments for alternative constitutional statuses for Northern Ireland, including UK political and administrative integration, Ulster independence, and UK, Irish, British Isles, and European federalisms.

The project aims, first, to provide an intellectual history of this thought, which is well-described in terms of the political movements from which such ideas were articulated, but often not as bodies of thought in their own right. Second, by applying concepts and methodological practices from political theory and the history of political thought, to subject these constitutional ideas to intellectual re-interpretation. For example, identifying classically republican concerns in Unionist debates about Ulster independence and UK integration, which are potentially disruptive of popular understandings and historiographies of Unionism as an ideology. And third, to derive normative resources and commitments from this history to assess what standards should be met in changing Northern Ireland’s constitutional status, and potentially other statuses in claims for self-determination beyond the north-east of Ireland.