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Home rule refers to a demand in parts of the United
Kingdom that the constituent nations (notably Scotland, Wales and Ireland) be given self-government within the United Kingdom. It is often called devolution. Home rule also refers analogously to the process and mechanisms of self-government by municipalities in many countries with respect to their immediately superior level
of government (e.g., U.S. states, in which context see special legislation). It can also refer to the similar system by
which Greenland and the Faroe
Islands are associated to Denmark.
Home Rule is not however comparable with federalism. Whereas states in a
federal system of government (e.g., Federal Republic of Germany and the United States of America) have a guaranteed constitutional existence, a
devolved home rule system of government is created by ordinary legislation and can be reformed, or even abolished by
mere repeal or amendment of that ordinary legislation.
Irish home rule
The issue of Irish home rule was the dominant political question of British politics at the end of the 19th and beginning
of the 20th centuries.
From the late nineteenth century, Irish leaders of the Irish Parliamentary Party under Isaac Butt,
William Shaw and Charles Stewart Parnell demanded a form of home rule, with
the creation of a subsidiary Irish parliament within the United
Kingdom. This demand led to the eventual introduction of four Home Rule Bills, of which only two, most notably the Government of Ireland Act 1920 (which created
the parliaments of Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland -- the latter state did not in reality function and was
replaced by the Irish Free State), were enacted.
The home rule demands of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century differed from earlier demands for Repeal by Daniel O'Connell in the first half of the nineteenth century. Whereas home rule meant a subsidiary
parliament under Westminster, repeal meant the repeal of the
1801 Act of Union and the creation of an entirely independent
Irish state, separated from the United Kingdom, with only a shared monarch joining them both.
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