This article examines the results of an online public consultation carried out in Northern Ireland in the summer of 2020 on how any future referendums on the unification question would best be conducted. Our results have broader comparative implications for political competition in multidimensional spaces where territorial disputes are present.ĭebate on Irish unification has increased in recent years, yet public attitudes on the processes that might lead to it are underexplored. We find that individuals' preferences on the territorial issue matter more than other issues for candidate choice: the reward (punishment) of congruent (incongruent) candidates is greater, and individuals are less prepared to concede on this issue. We present evidence from a conjoint experiment embedded in simultaneously fielded surveys in three European regions with active territorial disputes: Catalonia, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. We theorize that in contexts when such issues are salient, they have a greater weight relative to others due to their identity-oriented nature. Yet, empirical evidence is scarce regarding how much voters actually weigh territorial issues against others, and on which issues voters most reward congruent (like-minded) candidates. Territorial debates complicate the politics of the affected regions, as parties must decide whether to compete on a territorial dimension alongside others, such as redistribution, that have longstanding importance. The paper addresses such themes by placing borders and identities at the centre of its analytical framework. Deadlock marked by prolonged instability appears likely, provoking the re-emergence of sectarian violence. For instance, it is not clear that a ‘hard’ Brexit will inevitably result in the unification of Ireland. Yet, this paper maintains that the long-term impact of Brexit remains uncertain. The implications of Brexit that entails active de-Europeanisation and resulting tensions concerning the NI protocol are therefore significant.

It afforded a shared political space that helped transcend binary political, religious and ethnic differences. Shared EU membership improved engagement between the British and Irish governments, fostering ‘habits of co-operation’. Yet, the EU provided a constructive context for societal normalisation. It is acknowledged that the EU institutions were not directly responsible for achieving the relative peace that resulted. This paper contends that a hard Brexit and active dismantling of ties to the European Union (EU) pursued by the Johnson Administration is fundamentally incompatible with the provisions of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement (GFA).

The process of de-Europeanisation initiated by the British Government’s form of Brexit poses a major threat to the maintenance of peace in Northern Ireland (NI).

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