This book examines the interrelated dynamics of political action, ideology and state structures in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, emphasising the wider UK and European contexts in which they are nested. It makes a significant and unique contribution to wider European and international debates over state and nation and contested borders, looking at the dialectic between political action and institutions, examining party politics, ideological struggle and institutional change. It goes beyond the binary approaches to Irish politics and looks at the deep shifts associated with major socio-political changes, such as immigration, gender equality and civil society activism. Interdisciplinary in approach, it includes contributions from across history, law, sociology and political science and draws on a rich body of knowledge and original research data. This text will be of key interest to students and scholars of Irish Politics, Society and History, British Politics, Peace and Conflict studies, Nationalism, and more broadly to European Politics.

This book examines the interrelated dynamics of political action, ideology and state structures in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, emphasising the wider UK and European contexts in which they are nested. It makes a significant and unique contribution to wider European and international debates over state and nation and contested borders, looking at the dialectic between political action and institutions, examining party politics, ideological struggle and institutional change. It goes beyond the binary approaches to Irish politics and looks at the deep shifts associated with major socio-political changes, such as immigration, gender equality and civil society activism. Interdisciplinary in approach, it includes contributions from across history, law, sociology and political science and draws on a rich body of knowledge and original research data. This text will be of key interest to students and scholars of Irish Politics, Society and History, British Politics, Peace and Conflict studies, Nationalism, and more broadly to European Politics.

Building on the success of previous editions, Politics in the Republic of Ireland continues to provide an authoritative introduction to all aspects of government and politics in this seventh edition. Written by some of the foremost experts on Irish politics, it explains, analyses and interprets the background to Irish government and contemporary political processes. It devotes chapters to every aspect of contemporary Irish government and politics, including the political parties and elections, the constitution, deliberative democracy, referendums, the Taoiseach and the governmental system, women and politics, the position of the Dáil, and Ireland’s place within the European Union. Bringing readers up to date with the very latest developments, especially with the upheaval in the Irish party system and the implications of recent liberalising referendums, the seventh edition combines substance with a highly readable style, providing an accessible book that meets the needs of all those who are interested in knowing how politics and government operate in Ireland.

This book offers a uniquely comprehensive account of the conflict in Northern Ireland, providing a rigorous analysis of its dynamics and present structure and proposing a new approach to its resolution. It deals with historical process, communal relations, ideology, politics, economics and culture and with the wider British, Irish and international contexts. It reveals at once the enormous complexity of the conflict and shows how it is generated by a particular system of relationships which can be precisely and clearly described. The book proposes an emancipatory approach to the resolution of the conflict, conceived as the dismantling of this system of relationships. Although radical, this approach is already implicit in the converging understandings of the British and Irish governments of the causes of conflict. The authors argue that only much more determined pursuit of an emancipatory approach will allow an agreed political settlement to emerge.

Ireland and the Balkans have come to represent divided and (re)united communities. They both provide effective microcosms of national, ethnic, political, military, religious, ideological and cultural conflicts in their respective regions and, as a result, they demonstrate real and imaginary divisions. This book will specifically focus on the history, politics and literature of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Northern Ireland, while making comparative reference to some of Europe’s other disputed and divided regions. Using case-studies such as Kosovo and Serbia; Lithuania, Germany, Poland, Russia and Belarus; Greece and Macedonia, it examines ‘space’, ‘place’ and ‘border’ discourse, the topography of war and violence, post-war settlement and reconciliation, and the location and negotiation of national, ethnic, religious, political and cultural identities. The book will be of particular interest to scholars and students of cultural studies, history, politics, Irish studies, Slavonic studies, area studies and literary studies.