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A blog from the Northern Ireland Assembly Research and Information Service

Governance Blog Archive

Here you will find an archive of Governance Blog articles published before 1 May 2022, divided into their relevant categories.

Brexit

An image showing the border control entrance to Gibraltar from La Línea in Spain (image by Guy Percival, from Public Domain Picture)
This article updates a previous article on the negotiations around the Gibraltar Protocol. Gibraltar provides an interesting point of comparison with Northern Ireland in terms of arrangements following the…
A slide showing a dictionary definition of the word 'consent'
  John Locke once wrote, ‘we should have a great many fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are, signs of our ideas only,…
Royal Courts of Justice, Belfast, incorporating the High Court (Image: Suzanne Mischyshyn, Creative Commons)
The Ireland/Northern Ireland Protocol (‘the Protocol’) was the subject of a judicial review challenge at the High Court of Justice in Belfast. The hearing, which stretched over several days,…

Democracy and Government

The plenary chamber of the Northern Ireland Assembly
Please note that more up-to-date statistics on gender representation can be found in the RaISe research paper Who Runs Northern Ireland? A Summary of Statistics Relating to Gender and…
Assembly Chamber, Parliament Buildings, Belfast
The 2016-21 mandate begins in the midst of significant institutional reform….
A polling station sign.
On 5 May voters went to the polls to elect 108 Members to the Northern Ireland Assembly. Elections in Northern Ireland are an excepted matter, meaning the UK Parliament…

Justice

Image of girl using mobile phone: Increased access to social media, particularly via personal devices, presents opportunities but also risks (Image: Creative Commons Zero)
Rapid technological changes have caused the norms and methods of children’s sexual behaviour to evolve. Much screen-based media use now involves accessing interactive social networking sites such as Facebook…

Planning

An aerial view of the Peace Bridge in Derry/Londonderry
This article explores the temporary planning measures introduced as a response to COVID-19 across the UK and Republic of Ireland (ROI). Some of these measures have, and will, require…
An image of the Peace Bridge in Derry/Londonderry
This blog article examines the similarities and differences between the planning systems north and south of the border on the island of Ireland. It is based on a more…
Image of a planned urban landscape: Local development planning is now with local councils
The planning system has undergone much change recently, so what are the new structures and how has the balance of responsibility shifted between central and local government?…

Statistics and Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

A car involved in a road traffic collision being towed (Image: Pixabay)
It is difficult to grasp the full extent of what is portrayed by road traffic collision statistics. Each statistic represents a human being and, in the case of those…
Further education enrolments as a proportion of the population aged 16 and over at ward level, 2013/14
Please note that the Constituency Profiles have been updated with a new layout and are available on a new page here. The Research and Information Service (RaISe) has just…
Bar chart showing population change in Northern Ireland by age band, between 2004 and 2014 (Source: NISRA (2015) Northern Ireland Population Estimates 2014)
Please note: we have posted a new version of this blog article using the most recent data, see here. This article presents a brief demographic profile of Northern Ireland,…