Negotiating a Settlement in Northern Ireland, 1969-2019

The Good Friday Agreement of 1998 ended a protracted violent conflict in Northern Ireland and became an international reference point for peace-building. Negotiating a Settlement in Northern Ireland, 1969–2019 traces the roots and out-workings of the Agreement, focussing on the British and Irish governments, their changing policy paradigms, and their extended negotiations, from the Sunningdale conference of 1973 to the St Andrews Agreement of 2006. It identifies three dimensions of change that paved the way for agreement: in the evolution of elite understanding of sovereignty, in the development of wide-ranging and complex modes of power-sharing, and in the interrelated emergence of substantial equality in the socio-economic, cultural, and political domains. The book combines wide-ranging analysis with unparalleled use of witness seminars and interviews where the most senior British and Irish politicians, civil servants, and advisors discuss the process of coming to agreement. In tracing the processes by which British and Irish perspectives converged to address the Northern Ireland conflict, the book provides a benchmark against which the ongoing impact of Brexit on the Good Friday Agreement can be assessed.

John Coakley, Fellow of the Geary Institute for Public Policy, University College Dublin,Jennifer Todd, Fellow of the Geary Institute for Public Policy, University College Dublin

John Coakley is a Fellow of the Geary Institute for Public Policy at University College Dublin. Recent publications include Nationalism, Ethnicity and the State: Making and Breaking Nations (Sage, 2012), Reforming Political Institutions: Ireland in Comparative Perspective (IPA, 2013), Breaking Patterns of Conflict: Britain, Ireland and the Northern Ireland Question (co-edited, Routledge, 2015), Non-Territorial Autonomy in Divided Societies: Comparative Perspectives (edited, Routledge, 2017) and Politics in the Republic of Ireland (co-edited, 6th ed., Routledge, 2018).

Jennifer Todd is a Fellow of the Geary Institute for Public Policy at University College Dublin. She has been Fernand Braudel visiting Fellow at the European University Institute (2016) and is presently Fellow of the Political Studies Association of Ireland. She is co-author of the classic Dynamics of Conflict in Northern Ireland (Cambridge, 1996), and recent publications include Identity Change after Conflict: Ethnicity, Boundaries and Belonging in the Two Irelands (Palgrave 2018), and jointly edited volumes on Ethnicity and Religion (Routledge, 2011); Breaking Pattens of Conflict (Routledge 2015).