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The Good Friday or Belfast Agreement was reached just over 20 years ago. This article introduces a special issue devoted to appraising its subsequent trajectory. It provides a brief resumé of the Agreement’s contents as a peace agreement, and as a regional consociation with confederal and federal possibilities. The outworkings and partial implementation of the Agreement are reviewed against a theoretical appraisal of the circumstances under which consociations decay, organically dissolve, or definitively break down. Northern Ireland is not in these circumstances, yet. The impact of UK’s referendum to leave the European Union (EU) is evaluated as well as ‘the year of the four votes’ in 2016–2017, which have jointly left Northern Ireland without a functioning executive or Assembly, and politically divided over the minority UK Conservative government’s plans to give effect to the referendum result—Northern Ireland voted to remain in the EU, and contrary to some suggestions, joint membership of the EU by the UK and Ireland was integral to the making and design of the 1998 Agreement. Future scenarios are sketched.
Brendan O’Leary (Sun,) studied this question.