Ireland and the Politics of Change provides a timely assessment of the fundamental changes that have occurred in Irish society over the last several decades from the standpoint of their political significance. There is a particular concern with the leadership role of government and other political institutions in stimulating, managing and responding to the changes taking place that are of fundamental importance to understanding contemporary politics and today's Ireland in the world community. Considerable social, economic, demographic and international change has taken place within Ireland (and Northern Ireland) and without in relation to the rest of the world, and particularly in response to the association with the European Union. Ireland and the Politics of Change examines institutional developments, economic forces, demographic and attitudinal profiles and group-based (religious, gender, class) concerns as they have evolved and assesses their significance for policy enactment and political representation.

Written during the Northern Ireland peace process and just before the Good Friday Agreement, The Politics of Antagonism sets out to answer questions such as why successive British Governments failed to reach a power-sharing settlement in Northern Ireland and what progress has been made with the Anglo-Irish Agreement. O'Leary and McGarry assess these topics in the light of past historical and social-science scholarship, in interviews of key politicians, and in an examination of political violence since 1969. The result is a book which points to feasible strategies for a democratic settlement in the Northern Ireland question and which allows today's scholars and students to analyse approaches to Northern Ireland from the perspective of the recent past.

The latest book in the Gill Books series of important topics tackled by experts, this engaging guide demystifies political systems, elections, voting, and government, and explores issues including human rights, freedom of speech, and fake news.

How diaspora activism in the Irish land movement intersected with wider radical and reform causes The Irish Land War represented a turning point in modern Irish history, a social revolution that was part of a broader ideological moment when established ideas of property and land ownership were fundamentally challenged. The Land War was striking in its internationalism, and was spurred by links between different emigrant locations and an awareness of how the Land League’s demands to lower rents, end evictions, and abolish “landlordism” in Ireland connected with wider radical and reform causes. Changing Land offers a new and original study of Irish emigrants’ activism in the United States, Argentina, Scotland, and England and their multifaceted relationships with Ireland. Niall Whelehan brings unfamiliar figures to the surface and recovers the voices of women and men who have been on the margins of, or entirely missing from, existing accounts. Retracing their transnational lives reveals new layers of radical circuitry between Ireland and disparate international locations, and demonstrates how the land movement overlapped with different types of oppositional politics from moderate reform to feminism to revolutionary anarchism. By including Argentina, which was home to the largest Irish community outside the English-speaking world, this book addresses the neglect of developments in non-Anglophone places in studies of the “Irish world.” Changing Land presents a powerful addition to our understanding of the history of modern Ireland and the Irish diaspora, migration, and the history of transnational radicalism.

This collection focuses on the particular nexus of popular sovereignty and constitutional change, and the implications of the recent surge in populism for systems where constitutional change is directly decided upon by the people via referendum. It examines different conceptions of sovereignty as expressed in constitutional theory and case law, including an in-depth exploration of the manner in which the concept of popular sovereignty finds expression both in constitutional provisions on referendums and in court decisions concerning referendum processes. While comparative references are made to a number of jurisdictions, the primary focus of the collection is on the experience in Ireland, which has had a lengthy experience of referendums on constitutional change and of legal, political and cultural practices that have emerged in association with these referendums. At a time when populist pressures on constitutional change are to the fore in many countries, this detailed examination of where the Irish experience sits in a comparative context has an important contribution to make to debates in law and political science.

Almost nowhere are politics and history so intimately bound up as in Ireland. Over the course of several hundred years rival political and religious camps have shaped their identities according to particular interpretations of their shared history. As such, any re-examination and revision of Irish history has the potential to have a very real impact upon wider society. Defining revisionism in historiography as a reaction to contemporary conflict in Ireland, this book looks at how intellectuals, scholars and those who were politically involved, have reacted to a crisis of violence. It explores how they believed that revisionism in historiography was necessary - that a deconstruction, re-evaluation, and revision of ideology and therefore history was crucial in such a crisis of violence. This at times provocative approach seeks to better understand, clarify and de-mystify the ongoing revisionist debate in Ireland, through a critique and exposition of the theory of change and the process and product of change. Perry argues that revisionism should not be seen as solely a neutral form of academic or intellectual discourse, but one that is fundamentally linked to politics at the widest possible level; that revisionist assumptions underpin the validity and legitimacy of partition and the Northern Ireland state; that revisionism is widely judged to be anti-nationalist and pro-unionist; and that it is myopic with regard to the shortcomings of loyalism and unionism and has therefore a related ideological effect, if not intended purpose.

This book compares how governments in 192 countries perceive climate change related health risks and which measures they undertake to protect their populations. Building on case studies from the United Kingdom, Ireland, South Korea, Japan and Sri Lanka, The Politics of the Climate Change-Health Nexus demonstrates the strong influence of epistemic communities and international organisations on decision making in the field of climate change and health. Jungmann shows that due to the complexity and uncertainty of climate change related health risks, governments depend on the expertise of universities, think tanks, international organisations and researchers within the public sector to understand, strategize and implement effective health adaptation measures. Due to their general openness towards new ideas and academic freedom, the book shows that more democratic states tend to demonstrate a higher recognition of the need to protect their populations. However, the level of success largely depends on the strength of their epistemic communities and the involvement of international organisations. This volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of climate change and public health. It will also be a valuable resource for policymakers from around the world to learn from best practices and thus improve the health adaptation work in their own countries.

This book provides an unprecedented analysis of the politics underlying the appointment of judges in Ireland, enlivened by a wealth of interview material, and putting the Irish experience into a broad comparative framework. It tells the inside story of the process by which judges are chosen both in cabinet and in the Judicial Appointments Advisory Board over the past three decades and charts a path for future reform of judicial appointment processes in Ireland. The research is based on a large number of interviews with senior judges, current and former politicians, Attorneys-General and members of the Judicial Appointments AdvisoryBoard. The circumstances surrounding decisions about institutional design and institutional change are reconstructed in meticulous detail, giving us an excellent insight into the significance of a complex series of events that govern the way in which judges in Ireland are chosen today. Author Jennifer Carroll MacNeill is both an IRCHSS Government of Ireland Scholar and the winner of the Basil Chubb Prize 2015 for the best politics PhD in Ireland. [Subject: Legal History, Legal Studies, Politics, Ireland]

Has conflict in Northern Ireland kept political dimensions of religion alive, and has religion played a role in fuelling conflict? Conflict in Northern Ireland is not and never will be a holy war. Yet religion is more socially and politically significant than many commentators presume. In fact, religion has remained a central feature of social identity and politics throughout conflict as well as recent change. There has been an acceleration of interest in the relationship between religion, identity and politics in modern societies. Building on this debate, Claire Mitchell presents a challenging analysis of religion in contemporary Northern Ireland, arguing that religion is not merely a marker of ethnicity and that it continues to provide many of the meanings of identity, community and politics. In light of the multifaceted nature of the conflict in Northern Ireland, Mitchell explains that, for Catholics, religion is primarily important in its social and institutional forms, whereas for many Protestants its theological and ideological dimensions are more pressing. Even those who no longer go to church tend to reproduce religious stereotypes of 'them and us'. Drawing on a range of unique interview material, this book traces how individuals and groups in Northern Ireland have absorbed religious types of cultural knowledge, belonging and morality, and how they reproduce these as they go about their daily lives. Despite recent religious and political changes, the author concludes that perceptions of religious difference help keep communities in Northern Ireland socially separate and often in conflict with one another.

Paralleling his friend Alexis de Tocqueville's visit to America, Gustave de Beaumont traveled through Ireland in the mid-1830s to observe its people and society. In Ireland, he chronicles the history of the Irish and offers up a national portrait on the eve of the Great Famine. Published to acclaim in France, Ireland remained in print there until 1914. The English edition, translated by William Cooke Taylor and published in 1839, was not reprinted. In a devastating critique of British policy in Ireland, Beaumont questioned why a government with such enlightened institutions tolerated such oppression. He was scathing in his depiction of the ruinous state of Ireland, noting the desperation of the Catholics, the misery of repeated famines, the unfair landlord system, and the faults of the aristocracy. It was not surprising the Irish were seen as loafers, drunks, and brutes when they had been reduced to living like beasts. Yet Beaumont held out hope that British liberal reforms could heal Ireland's wounds. This rediscovered masterpiece, in a single volume for the first time, reproduces the nineteenth-century Taylor translation and includes an introduction on Beaumont and his world. This volume also presents Beaumont's impassioned preface to the 1863 French edition in which he portrays the appalling effects of the Great Famine. A classic of nineteenth-century political and social commentary, Beaumont's singular portrait offers the compelling immediacy of an eyewitness to history.