Focuses on the decade since the signing of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement in 1998. This book delineates the key stumbling blocks in peace and political processes and examines in detail just how the conversion from terrorism to democratic politics is managed in post-conflict Northern Ireland.

Transforming conflict through social and economic development examines lessons learned from the Northern Ireland and Border Counties conflict transformation process through social and economic development and their consequent impacts and implications for practice and policymaking, with a range of functional recommendations produced for other regions emerging from and seeking to transform violent conflict. It provides, for the first time, a comprehensive assessment of the region’s transformation activity, largely amongst grassroots actors, enabled by a number of specific funding programmes, namely the International Fund for Ireland, Peace I, II and III and INTERREG I, II and IIIA. These programmes have been responsible for a huge increase in grassroots practice which to date has attracted virtually no academic analysis; this book seeks to fill this gap. In focusing on the politics of the socioeconomic activities that underpinned the elite negotiations of the peace process, key theoretical transformation concepts are firstly explored, followed by an examination of the social and economic context of Northern Ireland and the border counties. The three programmes and their impacts are then assessed before considering what policy lessons can be learned and what recommendations can be made for practice. This is underpinned by a range of semi-structured interviews and the author’s own experience as a project promoter through these programmes in the border counties for more than a decade. The book will be essential reading for students, practitioners and policymakers in the fields of peace and conflict studies, conflict transformation, peacebuilding, post-agreement reconstruction and the political economy of conflict and those interested in contemporary developments in the Northern Ireland peace process.

Essential text for a 1 term/semester undergraduate course on Northern Ireland (usually a 2nd year option). Combines coverage of the historical context of the situation in Northern Ireland with a thorough examination of the contemporary political situation and the peace process. The book explores the issues behind the longevity of the conflict and provides a detailed analysis of the attempts to create a lasting peace in Northern Ireland.

This book examines the economic and political contributions of the EU to the Northern Ireland peace process, tracing the genesis of EU involvement since 1979 and analysing how it acted as an arena in which to foster dialogue and positive cooperation. Based on extensive archival research and exclusive elite interviews this volume provides the first comprehensive study of how the EU contributed to the reconfiguration of Northern Ireland from a site of conflict to a site of conflict amelioration and peace-building. The book demonstrates that the relationship between Northern Ireland and the EU has been much more significant in the peace process than previously suggested.

The problem of Northern Ireland is a struggle for sharing power between the Catholics and the Protestants. The structural and basic reasons of the problem have played a very important role in the evolution of it towards civil war. The most important basic reason underlying it is mutual "distrust" between parties in Northern Ireland. On this regard, some necessary steps are to be taken for the stability of the peaceful environment established after the conflict. The normalization of the society and the making of the relations between groups transparent, constitute the "rehabilitation" process itself. Rehabilitation process ensures the continuation of confidence building in schools, helps with the matter of winning future generations, and also plays an important role in ensuring confidence building in institutions. In sum the subject of this study is addressing the contributions of the rehabilitation as the protection of peace, to the social reconciliation process as formed by the societies living in Northern Ireland; and its continuation by discussing the rehabilitation process with reference to the example of Northern Ireland in the phase of transforming conflict. One of the main research questions of this study is to present the contribution of the rehabilitation process on peace within the context of conflict administration. In the first part of this book, the stage of rehabilitation in the development process of conflict administration is discussed. In the second part of this book, the structural reasons of conflict will be approached and Belfast Agreement, which can be described as a reconciliation document of parties, will be analysed. The third part is focused on how the results of the application of rehabilitation activities that are foreseen in the in the process of transforming the problem of Northern Ireland are obtained.

Northern Ireland's Belfast Agreement has faced continual crises of implementation over a variety of security related issues. This book places the implementation of the Belfast Agreement in a wide context to provide an analysis of why implementation has been so difficult.

Lee Smithey examines how symbolic cultural expressions in Northern Ireland, such as parades, bonfires, murals, and commemorations, provide opportunities for Protestant unionists and loyalists to reconstruct their collective identities and participate in conflict transformation.