Description
Existing governance scholarship argues that good governance can no longer take the form of sovereign rule, but must be performed through various forms of metagovernance. This term refers to the government of governance occurring when several social forces - or policy networks - wish to rebalance modes of governance. Among various consequences, a change of the role that public and private actors play in the socio-spatial relations governing the polities, politics and policies of the State has been registered. This article investigates this transformative role through the case study of the specific way in which new metagoverning networked interactions have been interpreted and institutionalised by the United Kingdom (UK) and the Republic of Ireland governments in the path leading to the 1998 Belfast/Good Friday Agreement. Drawing on never-before-seen archival documents and semi-structured élite interviews, this study highlights how the interactivity of the newly implemented governance arrangements, negotiated through metagovernance, was one of the constituent aspects of the ability of the new system to produce political stability and good governance in Northern Ireland post-conflict setting, and between the UK and the Island of Ireland. Findings reflect on the ‘re-centralisation’ of power entailed by the Brexit process as having complex implications for socio-spatial relations between the Island of Ireland and the UK. In the absence of metagovernace, devolved governments have been marginalised, and existing coordinated dynamics between cross-border policy networks are under pressure and threaten the future of the Northern Ireland peace process.
