The Relationship Between The Central And Local Government Of "the Northern Ireland Act" And Its Inspiration

All around the world, how to deal with the relationship between central and localgovernments has been the major issues of ancient and modern countries in governing and isalso a important topic paid close attention by today’s constitutional researchers.Constitutional law is an important point to study the relationship between central and localgovernments. It is a research method to do a comparative study of Chinese and foreignconstitutional law on the relationship between central and local governments. Both Britishand China are in the unitary state structure, and have a long history of centralizedcharacteristics. As a result, the British’s experience of dealing with the relationship betweencentral and local government has an important significance to our country. As the organicpart of the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland has many similarities on the historicalbackground with Hong Kong in our country. So, it provides premise and possibility forcomparative study of two constitutional law implementing in the two areas. Study found thatthe outstanding differences between two different legislative documents are as follows: theautonomy of government in Northern Ireland conferred by Northern Ireland Act1998is akind of" limited autonomy ", according to the act, Northern Ireland only has a certainamount of legislative power and executive power, do not have independent judicial powerand final adjudication; While according to the basic law of the Hong Kong specialadministrative region, the Hong Kong SAR "autonomy" is not only contain the legislativepower and executive power, but also including the independent judicial power and the finaladjudication. This paper analyzes believed that Northern Ireland’s constitutional practicevividly shows that the relationship between the central government and local governments inthe unitary state is a kind of power for duty-performing in nature. National sovereigntyshould be reflected in the aspects of the legislative, executive, and judicial of localgovernment. The key of dealing with the relationship between central and Specialadministrative region （SAR） is to clear the sovereignty boundaries of the exercise ofautonomy of local government.