The Northern Ireland Conflict

The book collects some of the major essays, past and new, of two of the leading authorities on the Northern Ireland conflict. The essays cover a wide range of topics, from the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, and the management of Northern Ireland by successive Labour and Conservative governments between 1974 and 1997, to an analysis of the 1998 Agreement, and the issues of policing and human rights reform in the aftermath of that agreement. The book is unified by the theory of consociation, one of the most influential theories in the regulation of conflicts. The authors are critical exponents of the consociational approach, and several chapters explain its attractions over alternative forms of conflict regulation. The book explains why Northern Ireland's national divisions have made the achievement of a consociational agreement particularly difficult.

The issues raised in the book are crucial to a proper understanding of Northern Ireland's past and future, which, the authors argue, is likely to involve some type of consociational democracy, whether or not the one agreed to on Good Friday 1998. The issues addressed, however, are not particular to Northern Ireland. They are relevant to a host of other divided territories, including Cyprus, Kosovo, Macedonia, Sri Lanka, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Israel/Palestine, and Iraq. The book is therefore vital reading not just for Northern Ireland specialists, but also for anyone interested in consociational and in the just and durable regulation of national and ethnic conflict.