Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of Contributors
- List of Illustrations
- Introduction to Revised Edition
- Introduction
- Achieving Transformational Change
- The Resolution of Armed Conflict: Internationalization and its Lessons, Particularly in Northern Ireland
- Some Reflections on Successful Negotiation in South Africa
- The Secrets of the Oslo Channels: Lessons from Norwegian Peace Facilitation in the Middle East, Central America and the Balkans
- The Awakening: Irish-America's Key Role in the Irish Peace Process
- ‘Give Us Another MacBride Campaign’: An Irish-American Contribution to Peaceful Change in Northern Ireland
- Towards Peace in Northern Ireland
- Neither Orange March nor Irish Jig: Finding Compromise in Northern Ireland
- Mountain-climbing Irish-style: The Hidden Challenges of the Peace Process
- The Good Friday Agreement: A Vision for a New Order in Northern Ireland
- Hillsborough to Belfast: Is It the Final Lap?
- Defining Republicanism: Shifting Discourses of New Nationalism and Post-republicanism
- Conflict, Memory and Reconciliation
- Keeping Going: Beyond Good Friday
- Religion and Identity in Northern Ireland
- Getting to Know the ‘Other’: Inter-church Groups and Peace-building in Northern Ireland
- Enduring Problems: The Belfast Agreement and a Disagreed Belfast
- Appendices: Key Recommendations of:
- Index
- Plate section
Defining Republicanism: Shifting Discourses of New Nationalism and Post-republicanism
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of Contributors
- List of Illustrations
- Introduction to Revised Edition
- Introduction
- Achieving Transformational Change
- The Resolution of Armed Conflict: Internationalization and its Lessons, Particularly in Northern Ireland
- Some Reflections on Successful Negotiation in South Africa
- The Secrets of the Oslo Channels: Lessons from Norwegian Peace Facilitation in the Middle East, Central America and the Balkans
- The Awakening: Irish-America's Key Role in the Irish Peace Process
- ‘Give Us Another MacBride Campaign’: An Irish-American Contribution to Peaceful Change in Northern Ireland
- Towards Peace in Northern Ireland
- Neither Orange March nor Irish Jig: Finding Compromise in Northern Ireland
- Mountain-climbing Irish-style: The Hidden Challenges of the Peace Process
- The Good Friday Agreement: A Vision for a New Order in Northern Ireland
- Hillsborough to Belfast: Is It the Final Lap?
- Defining Republicanism: Shifting Discourses of New Nationalism and Post-republicanism
- Conflict, Memory and Reconciliation
- Keeping Going: Beyond Good Friday
- Religion and Identity in Northern Ireland
- Getting to Know the ‘Other’: Inter-church Groups and Peace-building in Northern Ireland
- Enduring Problems: The Belfast Agreement and a Disagreed Belfast
- Appendices: Key Recommendations of:
- Index
- Plate section
Summary
The pace of events since the first IRA ceasefire in 1994 has been staggering. The nature and speed of these developments have frequently been confusing and erratic, but the pictures of smiling Sinn Féin Executive members seated around the Cabinet table at Stormont alongside their Unionist and SDLP colleagues marks the distance travelled by contemporary republican politicians. Throughout this process a range of commentators, as well as political opponents, have attempted to explain republicanism's apparent transformation from revolutionary armed movement to semi-constitutional party. Many unionists have understandably remained sceptical of the sincerity of this Damascene conversion, while republican critics see the new departure as the abandonment of the movement's traditional goals. Brendan Hughes, a former IRA commander in Belfast, argues that there has been a fundamental shift in Provisional republicanism and that the only real beneficiary of the armed struggle has been the nationalist middle class, which has reaped the rewards of the Good Friday Agreement.
Academic commentators reflect this debate about a possible structural shift within republicanism. For example, Jennifer Todd stresses that Provisionalism has not been transformed into constitutional nationalism, but rather the Sinn Féin leadership has extended the ‘ideological repertoire’ of republicanism by subordinating traditional long-term goals, which are unachievable in the immediate term, to a more practical agenda of ‘radical egalitarian democratic transformist principles’.
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- The Long Road to Peace in Northern IrelandPeace Lectures from the Institute of Irish Studies at Liverpool University, pp. 133 - 146Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2007