Abstract
This chapter examines the role that Irish nationalism played in the 30 years of inter-communal violence that have been euphemistically named the ‘Northern Ireland troubles’ (1968–98) and, since the Good Friday Agreement of April 1998, in the decade-long attempt to find common political ground in the North. The chapter eschews a simplistic causal depiction of the ‘Northern Ireland problem’ as being one of antagonistic ideologies and modes of belonging (British versus Irish; unionists versus nationalists; Protestants versus Catholics).1 Instead, it borrows from recent theoretical insights into the importance of political actors and key decisions in constructing ethnic contention,2 and claims that the failure to reach a compromise was not solely due to unionist obduracy but that modern Irish nationalism pursued a consistently maximal policy agenda that effectively ruled out accommodation with moderate unionist tendencies.
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Notes
Brendan O’Leary and John McGarry, The Politics ofAntagonism: Understanding Northern Ireland, London: Athlone Press, 1997, pp. 3–4.
For example, Rogers Brubaker, Ethnicity without Groups, London: Harvard University Press, 2004;
Kanchan Chandra, ‘What is Ethnic Identity and Does it Matter?’ Annual Review ofPolitical Science, Vol. 9, 2006, pp. 397–424;
Joseph Ruane and Jennifer Todd, ‘The Roots of Intense Ethnic Conflict May Not in Fact be Ethnic: Categories, Communities, and Path Dependence’, Archives europ enes de sociologie, Vol. 45, No. 2, 2004, pp. 20932.
Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, London: University of California Press, 2000.
Gerard Murray and Jonathan Tonge, Sinn Fin and the SDLP: From Alienation to Participation, Dublin: O’Brien Press, 2005;
Peter McLoughlin, ‘John Hume and the Revision of Irish Nationalism’, unpublished PhD thesis, Queen’s University, Belfast, 2005.
Alvin Jackson, Home Rule: An Irish History, 1800–2000, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2003, pp. 293–4.
See also Paul Pierson, Politics in Time: History, Institutions, and Social Analysis, Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004.
See Paul Pierson, ‘Public Policies as Institutions’ in Ian Shapiro, Stephen Skowronek, and Daniel Galvin (eds), Rethinking Political Institutions: The Art of the State, London: New York University Press, 2006.
See Cillian McGrattan, ‘Dublin, the SDLP, and the Sunningdale Agreement: Maximalist Nationalism and Path-Dependency’, Contemporary British History, Vol. 23, No. 1, 2009, pp. 61–78.
Niall Dochartaigh, From Civil Rights to Armalites: Derry and the Birth of the Irish Troubles, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
Ronan Fanning, ‘Playing it Cool: The Response of The British and Irish Governments to the Crisis in Northern Ireland, 1968–9’, Irish Studies in International Affairs, Vol. 12, 2001, pp. 57–85.
John Hume, ‘The Irish Question: A British Problem’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 58, No. 2,1979–80, pp. 303–4.
Eamonn O’Kane, Britain, Ireland, and Northern Ireland since 1980: The Totality of Relationships, Abingdon: Routledge, 2007.
Henry Patterson, Ireland Since 1939: The Persistence of Conflict, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, p. 324.
Gerry Adams, ‘Presidential Address to Sinn Fin Ard Fheis, 1994’, www. sinnfein.ie/pdf/Speech_ArdFheis94.pdf accessed 20 November 2008.
Cillian McGrattan, ‘Northern Nationalism and the Belfast Agreement’, in Brian Barton and Patrick Roche (eds), The Northern Ireland Question: The Peace Process and the Belfast Agreement, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
Christopher Farrington, ‘Reconciliation or Irredentism? The Irish Government and the Sunningdale Communiqu of 1973’, Contemporary European History, Vol. 16, No. 1, 2007, pp. 89–107;
Katy Hayward, ‘The Politics of Nuance: Irish Official Discourse on Northern Ireland’, Irish Political Studies, Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 18–38, 2004.
Paul Mitchell, ‘Party Competition in an Ethnic Dual Party System’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol. 18, No. 4, 1995, pp. 773–93.
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© 2010 Cillian McGrattan
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Mcgrattan, C. (2010). Modern Irish Nationalism — Ideology, Policymaking, and Path-Dependent Change. In: Guelke, A. (eds) The Challenges of Ethno-Nationalism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230282131_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230282131_10
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