Northern Nationalism and the Belfast Agreement

Abstract

Although there are strongly divergent views on the series of events that constitute the modern Northern Ireland peace process, no account of modern Northern-Irish history and politics can ignore the contribution of Northern nationalism. Until now, much of the academic and journalistic work on Northern nationalism has concentrated on subtle ideological shifts. On the one hand, academics have argued that Northern and Southern political elites have widened nationalist or republican ‘discourses’ to emphasize equality issues, or to reappraise a continued British presence (Ivory, 1999; Todd, 1999; Bean, 2002; Hayward and Mitchell, 2003). A related body of work links these rhetorical shifts to broader institutional changes that have apparently given expression to new aspects of nationalist identity. This ‘institutionalist’-type approach stresses that nationalists are apparently more and more willing to participate alongside Ulster unionists in operating Northern Ireland state structures (Murray, 2003; McGovern, 2004; MacGinty, 2006).