The Northern Ireland Civil Service: Characteristics and Trends Since 1970

Abstract

“This is a damned funny country. There’s one crowd singing ‘Wrap the Green Flag Round Me’ and another crowd sings ‘Rule Britannia’ and there’s a lot of bloody civil servants up there in Stormont drawing twenty pounds a week and laughing at the lot of us.”Comment made in 1939 to Patrick Shea, cited in Shea 1981, p. 205. This paper offers a summary of research on the Northern Ireland Civil Service (NICS) that has been undertaken as part of an ESRC‐supported project examining the changing nature of civil services throughout the British Isles. Not since Gladden’s seminal work in 1967 have studies of the British Civil Services offered sufficient coverage of the long‐existing variations within the UK. The weaknesses in coverage are particularly visible with respect to the Northern Ireland Civil Service (NICS), which is accorded either footnote status in most work or even ignored altogether. A compelling case for closing the gap in the literature is underscored by the political devolution that was introduced after 1998. Far from being the unitary state associated with the Westminster model, the UK exhibits the features of a differentiated polity in which figure the contradictory impulses of centralization and fragmentation. In illustrating ‘parity with particularity’, the civil service arrangements obtaining within the Province of Northern Ireland clearly exemplify the differentiation with the UK. Moreover, with devolved fora now established for both Scotland and Wales, with associated pressure for more distinctive and even separate civil arrangements in each, Northern Ireland’s experience offers valuable lessons on how the UK civil service may develop in Scotland and Wales.

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