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This article argues that the root of recent crises and political stalemate in Northern Ireland lies in a constitutional failure. The Good Friday Agreement of 1998 played an innovative constitutional role in Northern Ireland, and this was central to peace and stability. Yet, its own principles were underspecified and disputed. Strong convergent action by the British and Irish states functioned as an informal mode of constitutional adjudication and it stabilised the settlement. It failed, however, to emphasise constitutional principles or to embed them within the politics of Northern Ireland. British and Irish interests and capacities have changed and with them also the role the states play in Northern Ireland; the result from 2012 has been recurrent political crisis. If the informal British–Irish approach cannot be sustained, the likely alternative—a narrower form of British sovereigntism—carries still greater dangers to stability.
