ABSTRACT
The Northern Ireland Assembly was established as part of the Belfast Agreement (NI Office, 1998) reached at the multi-party negotiations on Friday 10 April 1998. Following a referendum held on 22 May 1998, which resulted in a majority voting in favour of the Agreement, the Assembly was constituted under the NI (Elections) Act 1998 and met for the first time on 29 November 1999. The Agreement, while not resolving the seemingly intractable ‘constitutional question’,1 paved the way for local politicians to manage local issues through a powersharing arrangement. Given the stumbling progress towards this pact, the process of devolution commenced with a mixture of anticipation and foreboding (Carmichael and Knox, 2003).
