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Abstract
Robert J. Cormack and Robert D. Osborne (eds.), Discrimination and Public Policy in Northern Ireland, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991. Pp.288, 37 tables, 8 figures, biblio., index. £27.50. ISBN 0–19–827519–6.John Fulton, The Tragedy of Belief: Division, Politics, and Religion in Ireland, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991, Pp.260, 6 tables, biblio., index. £30. ISBN 0–19–827316–9.John E. Finn, Constitutions in Crisis: Political Violence and the Rule of Law, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. Pp.274, biblio., index. £28. ISBN 0–19–505738–4.
... The information itself was of value to the British government because it came under direct pressure from the German government on the issue (See Fco87/346 at the UK National Archives). It emerged several years later that he had been accidentally killed by his IRA captors three days after he was kidnapped and that the kidnapping had probably not been authorised by the IRA leadership (Howard, 2004, Bowyer Bell, 1993, Phoenix, 2009. For these reasons the IRA had an interest in avoiding publicity and public statements on this issue while the British had an interest in the information. ...
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to examine the mediation exit option, which is one of the most important tactics available to any third party mediator.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper analyzes a crucial intermediary channel between the Irish Republican Army (hereafter IRA) and the British Government utilizing unique material from the private papers of the intermediary, Brendan Duddy, including diaries that cover periods of intensive communication, extensive interviews with the intermediary and with participants in this communication on both the British Government and Irish Republican sides as well as recently released official papers from the UK National Archives relating to this communication.
Findings
The study reveals how the intermediary channel was used in order to get information, how the third party and the primary parties traded in asymmetries of information, and how the intermediary utilized the information advantage to increase the credibility of his threats of termination.
Research limitations/implications
The study outlines an avenue for further research on the termination dynamics of mediation.
Practical implications
Understanding the conditions for successfully using the exit‐option is vital for policy‐makers, in particular for peace diplomacy efforts in other contexts than the Northern Ireland one.
Originality/value
The paper challenges previous explanations for why threats by mediators to call off further mediation attempts are successful and argues that a mediator can use the parties' informational dependency on him in order to increase his leverage and push the parties towards settlement.
The Irish Republican Movement has its origins in eighteenth-century republican political philosophy, which also inspired the American (1776) and French revolutions (1789). In the 1790s, the United Irishmen tried to unite “Catholic, Protestant, and Dissenter” and create an Irish Republic independent of England. Unlike their American and French counterparts, the United Irishmen's rebellion of 1798 failed. However, they remained an inspiration for rebellions against the British in 1803, 1848, 1867, and 1916, and insurgent actions by Fenians (including armed campaigns against the British in Canada and a bombing campaign in England) in the 1860s, 1870s, and 1880s. Contemporary Irish Republicanism has organizational antecedents that date from the 1840s: Irish Republicans active as “Young Irelanders” in 1848 became Fenians; Fenians participated in the 1916 Rising and the Irish War of Independence (1919–1923); veterans of 1916–1923 were active in Irish Republican organizations into the twenty-first century.
While wars between nations have declined over the past twenty years, intrastate conflicts are on the rise. Scholars are now examining the conditions under which civil war is likely to break out, to last longer, and to intensify, and the strength of the local government has emerged as a critical factor that could potentially mitigate the harms posed by civil wars. This thesis addresses two research questions: what is the impact of state strength on (1) conflict duration and (2) conflict intensity? To answer these research questions, I conduct several quantitative analyses of all internal conflicts occurring in the years 1960-2015, examining the relationship between state strength and conflict duration and battle deaths per year. This thesis ultimately finds that state strength, as proxied by military, fiscal, and bureaucratic capacities, is negatively correlated with conflict intensity but is positively correlated with conflict duration. This thesis concludes with the presentation of two case studies – the First Congo War and the Troubles of Northern Ireland – to illustrate how strong states may experience longer, but less bloody, civil wars.
With the spectacular collapse of the Soviet bloc in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s/early 1990s it was confidently assumed that the international system was on the threshold of an era of unprecedented peace and stability. Politicians, diplomats and academics alike began to forecast the imminent establishment of a new world order, increasingly dominated by democratic political institutions that would develop within the context of an integrated international economic system based on the principles of the free market.1 As this ‘new world security order’ gradually extended its influence, so it was assumed that disrupting influences to international stability would become increasingly marginalized and peripheral.
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