Security Governance in Northern Ireland: Lessons from the Past for the Future.

Policing in Northern Ireland has always been deeply problematic and linked to the dynamics of conflict in the region during the course of the past thirty years. The Independent Commission on Policing (ICP) was established under the terms of a negotiated constitutional settlement in Northern Ireland (The Belfast Agreement, 1998) to make recommendations for the reform of the nature, character and structure of policing in the region. The paper suggests that while the report the ICP provides a blueprint for police reform that has an international resonance it can also be seen as a bold attempt to engage more elliptically with contemporary debates in security governance that point to the increasingly fragmented nature of late-modern policing, and a weakening of state sovereignty in relation to how security is provided for and governed. I argue that in spite of the networked approach postulated by the ICP the public police continue to enjoy a pre-eminent role in the provision of security in Northern Ireland. Furthermore, there is little evidence of any significant weakening of state capacity in relation to the overall 'steering' and 'rowing' of security governance. The discussion concludes by suggesting that aspects of policing and security in Northern Ireland, are likely to provide the template for the norm in the context of global instability and the 'war on terror'. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]