The Belfast Agreement and Cross- Border Economic Cooperation in the Tourism Industry

THE BELFAST AGREEMENT AND CROSS-BORDER ECONOMIC COOPERATION IN THE TOURISM INDUSTRY This paper examines the impact of the Belfast Agreement on north-south economic cooperation in Ireland, using the tourism industry as a case study. The first part of the paper sets out the suggested benefits that may arise from greater economic and business connections between both parts of the island. It also develops a policy framework which the authors believe is established by the Agreement to achieve these benefits. A number of propositions are developed to assess under what conditions the potential benefits from greater cooperation will actually materialise. The second part of the paper explores the case-study evidence. The paper concludes by arguing that although advances have been made towards greater cooperation, these new initiatives, for the most part, have not been of a deep or strategic kind. The “minimalist” character of strand two of the agreement suggests that no big “institutional push” is likely to emerge to change this situation. Publication information Paper presented at final conference of the Mapping frontiers, plotting pathways: routes to North-South cooperation in a divided island programme, City Hotel, Armagh, 19-20 January 2006. The programme is funded by the Special EU Programmes Body through the Higher Education Authority over the period 2004-06. BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION Joan Henderson is a lecturer in Management at the School of Management and Economics, The Queen’s University Belfast. She holds a PhD from the University of Ulster, Jordanstown. She worked as an engineer for six years before embarking on an academic career. She has recently returned from the University of Waterloo in Ontario where she spent six months as a visiting professor. She has written in the area of policy developments, business improvement and change management. More recently her research has focused on cross-border policy issues and northsouth economic development in Ireland. Paul Teague is the Martin Naughton Chair of Management at the School of Management and Economics, The Queen’s University Belfast. He holds a PhD from the London School of Economics and has been a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Massachusetts. He has written widely on the theme of the employment relations consequences of deeper European integration and the political economy of Ireland, north and south.