The Challenges of Powersharing in Implementing the Good Friday Agreement: Twenty-Five Years of Intermittent Shared Governance

Abstract

The attempts to implement the Good Friday Agreement have often been frustrated by Unionist parties’ reluctance to share power given their discontent with the difficulties in achieving decommissioning and more recently the Northern Ireland Protocol that was part of the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement. Given the continuing difficulties in operationalizing the institutional framework negotiated in 1998, Nationalist and Republican parties, especially Sinn Féin, have begun a discussion on a joint referendum that would bring Irish unification. This paper explores the changing narrative of Northern Ireland politics from peaceful powersharing to a transition toward Irish unity.