Problems of North-South Economic Integration and Politics in Ireland: Southern Perspectives

Abstract

North-South economic integration across the border in Ireland is being stimulated by wider transnational processes and European Union integration. But its meanings and extent, as elsewhere in the EU, are defined by state-centred structures and political ideologies. In Ireland, economic integration, and the lack of it, has been shaped by political Partition and the national conflict over Northern Ireland. This article discusses economic integration and politics from a Southern perspective, drawing on interviews with Dublin-based representatives of business organisations, professional associations and semi-state bodies. It mirrors earlier research in Belfast on the motivations and problems of cross-border integration, its institutional forms and future potential. Private firms, associations and other bodies have generally tried to circumvent rather than supersede North-South and national divisions. But the end result of trying to keep ‘economics’ separate from ‘politics’ is a very uneven and stunted form of integration which is sorely lacking in coherence, coordination, and accountability. It is concluded that overcoming these problems requires North-South political institutions and democratic involvement.