The Northern Ireland Assembly

Download or read book The Northern Ireland Assembly written by Sean Haughey and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-09-08 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Northern Ireland’s power- sharing Assembly is understudied in the legislative studies literature. Having been suspended (or de facto suspended) for around 40% of its existence, conversation has tended to focus more on the wider political problems in which the Assembly has been enmeshed and less on its day-to-day functions as a legislature. This book is the first to examine how the Assembly fulfils the four core functions of a legislature: representation, linkage, scrutiny, and policy- making. Using Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) as the primary unit of analysis, the book explores: who and how MLAs represent; their approach to cultivating links with constituents; their use of parliamentary scrutiny tools; and their contribution to law- making. The book grounds its analysis in original data sourced from elite interviews, surveys, parliamentary questions, legislation, and the Official Report of parliamentary proceedings. Readers will therefore be able to reflect on whether the Assembly’s (often poor) reputations comport with empirical realities. This book contributes to debates in the legislative studies and consociational power- sharing literatures, and will be of interest to students and scholars of parliaments, devolution, and Northern Ireland politics.