peace in northern ireland: why now?

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Peace in Northern Ireland: Why Now?Author(s): Jonathan StevensonSource: Foreign Policy, No. 112 (Autumn, 1998), pp. 41-54Published by: Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, LLCStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1149034 .

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Peace in Northern

Ireland: Why Now? by Jonathan Stevenson

nWhen the British and Irish governments and political parties in Northern Ireland reached their historic agreement on

April 10, 1998, on Northern Ireland's future, most news coverage credited a blend of British prime minister Tony Blair's feel-good diplomacy, U.S. president Bill Clinton's eager sponsor- ship, Unionist Party leader David Trimble's brave flexibility, Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams' attack of pacific statesmanship, and former U.S. Senate majority leader George Mitchell's dignified brokerage.

But another unsung factor played a key role in producing the so- called Good Friday Agreement (GFA): the Maastricht Treaty's impact on the definition of sovereignty in Europe.

As the drive toward European integration and unity has eroded national borders and the notions of sovereignty that underpin them, it also has undermined the beliefs and the support that gave voice and strength to Northern Ireland's most stubborn politicians. The European Union (EU), in turn, has become not merely a looming economic force but also a formidable supranational political lever, offering benefits and imposing penalties that have swayed the attitudes and behaviors of all parties to the conflict. And although the tortured course of negotiations that led to the Good Friday Agreement reflects the twists and turns of Northern Ireland's historical divisions and dilemmas, the agreement's

JON ATHAN STE VENSON has lived in Belfast for the last five years and is the author of "We Wrecked the Place": Contemplating an End to the Northern Irish Troubles (New York: The Free Press, 1996).

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structure draws heavily on many of the same cross-border arrangements designed to make the EU a lasting success.

At this early juncture, of course, celebrating the end of violence in Northern Ireland would be as unwise as giving faceless bureaucrats in Brussels top credit for producing it. But if the GFA offers lessons in resolving other seemingly intractable disputes over sovereignty, it is not so much in championing political courage and deft diplomacy. It is instead in recognizing and harnessing the power of the transnational forces driving European integration.

NORTHERN IRELAND'S NATIONALIST ROOTS

The Anglo-Irish conflict was long considered terminally nationalistic. At bottom, the republican movement to unite Ireland and the unionist drive to keep Northern Ireland bound to Great Britain-both products of British colonialism inflamed by sectarian conflict-were defiant assertions of national sovereignty. After the partition of Ireland under the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, the marginalization of Catholics in Northern Ireland nourished Irish nationalism and eventually led to Catholic civil rights protests, public disorder, and, finally, terrorism by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and its loyalist adversaries.

The assumption of direct rule over Northern Ireland by London in 1972 prompted reforms that bettered the Catholics' lot. By then, however, the nationalists believed that only an outright change in sovereignty- the unification of Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic-could ensure their equal civil status and their physical protection. They viewed a pure- ly internal settlement, such as the accommodation between Flemings and Walloons in Belgium, as unacceptable-even as unionists saw it as essen- tial for the preservation of the province's British sovereignty.

The Cold War's rigidification of national alignments set limits on the 1957 Treaty of Rome's lofty aspiration "to eliminate the barriers which divide Europe" and reinforced the concept of sovereignty as absolute. And in practice the EU has been loath to intervene in Northern Ire- land's "troubles" for fear of alienating the British government (which has generally considered the Anglo-Irish conflict an internal matter) and jeopardizing the larger goal of European integration.

The end of the Cold War, however, gave the logic of European unity new force, not least in the context of Northern Ireland. What- ever lingering strategic worth Northern Ireland held for Britain as a

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center of shipbuilding or as an island redoubt became inconsequential. In November 1990, Peter Brooke, Northern Ireland's secretary of state, declared that the province had no economic or strategic value to the United Kingdom. And, in post-Maastricht Europe, it made no sense for Britain and the Irish Republic to allow Northern Ireland to come between them.

But among Northern Ireland's political players, only John Hume- leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, Northern Ireland's largest nationalist group-took seriously the idea that "the British-Irish conflict is European in origin" and that its solution therefore lay with Europe. In 1989, he argued that a "Europe of the regions" would ensure that "the Irish border, like other European borders, will be no more in reality than a county boundary." Otherwise, each side deployed Euro- pean unity tactically. Sinn Fein, the IRA's political wing, argued that since the EU and Maastricht were weakening sovereignty throughout Europe, unionists should logically find a united Ireland less objection- able. Unionists simply ran the argument the other way, saying that the EU dilution of nationhood ought to make Irish unity a dead letter.

The EU was not a party to Northern Ireland settlement negotiations. In fact, its Council of Ministers did not even kibitz. Yet the blos- soming of European unity under Maastricht created an environment that helped make peace possible. The new Europe presented economic and political incentives substantial enough to move the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, and to a lesser extent Britain, to abridge their national identities.

A CHANGING CALCULUS

Few EU members have made out as well as the Irish Republic, whose "Celtic tiger" economy owes much of its vitality to EU subsidies. In 1998 alone, Dublin will receive $2.7 billion, or 4 percent of its GDP, in structural funds and agricultural price supports from Brussels. Today, Europe is the Irish Republic's most important market. In 1970, 66 percent of Irish exports went to the United Kingdom and only 12 percent to what is now the rest of the EU; in 1995, the respective figures were 26 percent and 47 percent. Not surprisingly, the republic has spearheaded the push for European unity; its 1996 presidency of the EU was easily one of the most aggressive to date. Activism in EU politics, in turn, has earned Ireland growing clout. Former Irish president Mary Robinson, for example, was a

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front-runner for secretary general of the United Nations and was recently named its high commissioner for human rights.

For a variety of reasons, Britain's relationship with the EU has been more checkered, especially as it relates to the EU's occasional meddling in Northern Ireland. Westminster rejected findings by the European Court of Human Rights that its detention provisions and the killing of RA personnel in Gibraltar by British security forces were unlawful. And its ambivalence about European unity has been reflected prominently in the British government's refusal to join the first wave of monetary union and the public's noisy reaction to the 1996 EU ban on British beef, which cost the United Kingdom around $6 billion. Still, the Labour government, unlike Tory Euro-skeptics, regards the beef ban as a signal to accommodate Europe rather than spurn it. More recent EU actions - such as the European Parliament's finding that British candy contains too much vegetable fat and milk to be called "chocolate"-have been met with wry irritation rather than sovereign indignation.

The EU beef ban had a salutary, if ironic, effect in Northern Ireland. Although Northern Irish controls on beef were superior to mainland Britain's-and arguably the Irish Republic's-as part of the United King- dom, its product was embargoed in Europe. Even for unionists, being British hurt. The Reverend Ian Paisley, a member of the European Par- liament and Ulster unionism's most strident and retrograde anti-Catholic voice, found himself allied with his nationalist foe and fellow European Parliament member John Hume in successfully petitioning that the entire island of Ireland be treated as a single unit for beef ban purposes. North- ern Ireland still depends heavily on Britain's annual subvention of nearly $5 billion, and peace may mean greater short-term unemployment as the number of security-related jobs in the area diminishes. But porous Euro- pean borders and coordinated EU economic policies are likely to enhance the prospective "peace dividend" of increased tourism and foreign investment. Peace has also produced a direct EU pledge of about $500 million in aid for cross-community programs through 1999.

EUROPE Go BRAGH?

With the advent of stronger European unity under Maastricht, conceptions of nationhood in the British Isles are not what they used to be. Westminster has devolved power not only to Northern Ireland but also to Scotland and Wales, making the "kingdom" significantly less

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united, more federal, and, hence, more in line with Europe. The British Commonwealth is no longer seen as projecting the power of the British empire but merely as conferring residual trading privileges. Britons increasingly characterize themselves as "European."

Although the EU has not mandated change in Ireland's conservative Catholic values, the secular cast of Maastricht has tacitly pressured Dublin to subordinate some of them. In 1994, Irish prime minister Albert Reynolds was ousted partly because he allowed his attorney general to delay the extradition (to Northern Ireland) of a pedophile priest. Divorce, constitutionally prohibited since 1937, became legal in November 1995 by popular referendum. Although the constitutional ban on abortion is still sacrosanct, the Irish government has relaxed restrictions on the dis- tribution of information about the procedure and is no longer inclined to bar women from traveling to have abortions. This EU-driven economic and social liberalization has helped meld the republic's dominant Catholic and tiny Protestant middle classes. Ireland is still a resolutely Catholic country, but an increasingly tolerant and cosmopolitan one.

In Northern Ireland, Paisley's calculated paranoia over "popery" car- ries less weight. Ulster's identity is slowly becoming less sectarian. Unionist business executives have tired of explaining partition to foreign colleagues and quietly concede that, in the EU context, a unified Ireland makes at least as much economic sense as Northern Ireland's union with Britain. Old Bushmills Distillery-a Protestant-owned com- pany located in a staunchly unionist town with red, white, and blue curbstones in Paisley's home county of Antrim-prints "Product of Ire- land" on its whiskey to ensure its commercial appeal.

Although still insular in their outlooks, Northern Irish Protestants and Catholics are beginning to understand that the EU can help resolve their differences. Both communities regard the EU as guardian of their cultures and insist that their European Parliament members do the same. Although Paisley has threatened to wreck the new Northern Ireland assembly, he has never stinted in fulfilling his European parlia- mentary duties. Hume has actually declined the post of deputy prime minister in the new assembly to concentrate on advancing the province's interests in the European Parliament.

Most crucially, European integration has changed Britain's and Ire- land's attitudes about their own sovereign claims on Northern Ireland. In December 1993, London and Dublin jointly announced their official neutrality as to whether Northern Ireland stayed British or became Irish.

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Signaling that the two governments anticipated closer cooperation within the EU, the declaration stated that any new government structures "would ... include institutional recognition of the special links that exist between the peoples of Britain and Ireland . .. while taking account of newly forged links with the rest of Europe." Unionists understood that London wanted them to solve the problem or to risk capitulation; north- em republicans realized that Dublin would never support the armed struggle, let alone the IRA's orthodoxy of a closed 32-county socialist state.

With a less robust brand of sovereignty to play for, the political costs of IRA terrorism and unionist inflexibility became too high. One ex-II pris- oner commented that republicans had come to believe that a united Ire- land would not be achieved through force but "through Europeanization," adding "of most immediate importance to me would be things like equali- ty, an end to religious discrimination." Likewise, according to a former loyalist inmate, loyalists now realized that "no country was independent economically." On August 31, 1994, the iRA announced a unilateral ceasefire. Loyalist paramilitaries matched their counterpart's gesture six weeks later. The ensuing peace process, despite notable backslides and violent splinters, had a tentatively happy ending: the Good Friday Agreement.

The Good Friday Agreement The linchpin of the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) is a quid pro quo: the Irish Repub- lic's repeal of the territorial claim on Northern Ireland, once enshrined in Articles 2 and 3 of its constitution, in exchange for an institutionalized voice in governing the province through "cross-border bodies."

To Northern Ireland's unionists, Articles 2 and 3 were illegal and predatory. Dublin's offer to repeal them validated its stated endorsement in the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement of the "consent principle," which requires the approval of Northern Ireland's electoral majority to change its sovereign status.

The GFA avoids the instability of outright self-determination. It calls for amendments to the Irish constitution to define Ireland's nationhood in terms of its people "in all the diversity of their identities and traditions" rather than in terms of physical territory. Under the GFA, Britain retains sovereign dominion over the province as long as its electoral majority wants it to do so. But the Irish Republic has a permanent (and potential- ly expanding) role in Northern Irish government through a North/South Ministerial Council that includes bodies composed of members of the Northern Ireland assembly and the Irish parliament. Both legislative organs must approve council action, which must also take into account the policies, programs, and proposals of the European Union.

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SOVEREIGNTY DILUTION, EU-STYLE

The government structures prescribed by the GFA are designed to address basically the same sorts of transnational concerns as the EU's cross-border bodies. The new Northern Ireland assembly's consensus and supermajority requirements, like the European Parliament's disproportionately high allocation of three seats to Northern Ireland, ensure that nationalist concerns are accommodated (see box below). The Belfast/Dublin cross-border bodies, like the EU's Committee of the Regions, are designed to preserve local subcultures and identities. And, like the EU, the GFA's British-Irish Council and InterGovernmental Conference, though merely advisory, are intended to harmonize local and regional interests.

Nevertheless, the political dynamic underlying the GFA is convolut- ed. On the one hand, the agreement strengthens Northern Ireland's sovereignty: Under its terms, the Irish government-which former Irish prime minister John Bruton urged "to look at the age-old Irish problem from a European angle of shared overlapping sovereignties"-renounces its constitutional claim on Northern Ireland, and republicans agree to

Except for an abortive five-month-long experiment in 1974, the 108-member Northern Ireland assembly created under the terms of the GFA is the first regional government in the province's 76-year history under which power is institutionally shared between the (mostly) Protestant unionists and the (mostly) Catholic nationalists. Elected by proportional representation, it will have full legislative and executive authority devolved from Westminster. To ensure cross-community consensus, parallel consent (majorities of both nationalists and unionists) or a 60 percent weighted majority is required to pass key measures. All measures must comply with the European Con- vention on Human Rights and a new Northern Ireland bill of rights. Thus, northern nationalists are accorded a satisfactory degree of political power within the existing state and the possibility of democratic sovereign change in the future. Britain contin- ues as the unionists' guarantor, and the Irish Republic effectively replaces the Irish Republican Army (in the ImA's view, anyway) as the nationalists' guarantor. Because the cross-border agencies set up under the GFA are subordinate to Northern Ireland's assembly and Republic of Ireland's parliament, some operational constipation is inevitable. But inefficiency beats ritual murder.

-J.s.

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recognize Northern Ireland's legitimacy as a state. On the other hand, the GFA then dilutes the north's reinforced sovereignty through cross- border bodies that will regulate areas such as agriculture, education, and tourism and that ultimately require the approval of Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic to function effectively.

The agreement works because it recognizes the power of sovereign guarantors (in this case, the United Kingdom and the Irish Republic) even as it establishes a mechanism for diluting that power. But given this delicate balance, can the GFA point the way toward the resolution of other conflicts, whether in Europe or elsewhere?

The most obvious candidate for help is Bosnia. Like Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, Bosnian Muslim, Croat, and Serb peoples live within the same legal borders but have different notions of territorial nationhood. But the two main factions in Bosnia do not both enjoy the benefit of strong sovereign guarantors. The Bosnian Muslims and the Croats are supported by a broad Western alliance. The Serbs have no comparable external political support. Despite Russia's Slavic ties to Serbia, Moscow is a tepid sponsor and has been disillusioned by the Serbs' conduct in Kosovo. Serbs perceive bias in the implementa- tion of the Dayton accord that ended the war in Bosnia, and they lack confidence in a unitary government's capacity to ensure their security, civil freedom, and cultural identity. Without recourse to a sovereign guarantor to ensure equity, the Serbs may become more paranoid, and the Republika Srpska correspondingly more insular and resistant to integration with the Muslim-Croat federation.

Less momentously, the IRA's Europe-inspired capitulation is also unlikely to move Eusakadi ta Askatuta, or ETA-the IRA's Basque cousin in both ideology and methodology-to settle for anything less than inde- pendence from Spain as the Basques also lack a sovereign guarantor. Like- wise, Northern Italy's "Lega del Nord," whose campaign for autonomy turns on economic grievances against the Rome-dominated south, has no such sponsor and, therefore, can draw little of value from the GFA.

Cyprus is another story. As with Northern Ireland, it is inhabited by two contending groups backed by competing sovereign sponsors, Greece and Turkey, that are close at hand-geographically, histori- cally, and politically. Greek Cypriots prefer unification with Greece, Turkish Cypriots integration with Turkey. Like Ulster unionists and northern nationalists, Greek and Turkish Cypriots have been unable to govern the island together, disagreeing on everything from license

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West Belfast vs. the West Bank Last spring, British prime minister Tony Blair won a walk-on role in the Middle East peace process thanks in part to the strength of his success in Northern Ireland. In reality, however, the Northern Irish "troubles" and the Arab-Israeli conflict have little in common.

The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) agitates primarily for the creation of a sovereign homeland, while the Irish Republican Army (I•A) has fought mainly for a change in the sovereignty of an existing state. Fur- thermore, Palestinians in occupied territories are severely underprivileged, whereas Catholic nationalists in Northern Ireland are not. West Belfast is hardly the West Bank. And Israel is concerned about territorial security; despite the threat of terrorism, Britain has no comparable worry.

In addition, most Palestinians have supported the PLO's violent campaign, while the vast majority of Catholics in Ireland have condemned the IRA's "armed struggle." With popular sentiment on its side, the PLO in the Middle East is far more difficult to outflank politically than its Irish counterpart. The British and unionists can democratically deny the IRA a united Ireland; Israel cannot democratically deny the Palestinians a homeland. Thus, solving the Arab-Israeli problem involves a form of nation-building, an activity well beyond the scope of an arrangement such as the Good Friday Agreement (GFA).

Finally, the idiom of Anglo-Irish relations long ago shifted from military to political. The Middle East's idiom is still military. Neither Britain nor Ireland has any strategic interest in Northern Ireland; Israel, however, has a vested strategic interest in the final status of the occupied territories, not to mention the disposition of the Golan Heights.

In the Middle East, current divisions may be so extreme and geopo- litical realities so constricting that a stable peace is possible only by way of rigid, agreed-upon borders and tight military security. In short, what- ever talents Tony Blair may have as a peacemaker, the GFA has, at best, only inspirational value for Arab-Israeli relations.

--j.S.

plates to water management. UN troops patrol the "green line" des- ignating de facto partition, and Greek and Turkish soldiers defend the territory on either side.

But Turkey covets full-fledged EU membership, which Athens has not supported mainly because of Turkish recalcitrance on Cyprus. The EU has not used its great leverage wisely. At the EU summit in Lux-

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embourg last December, for example, the Council of Ministers refused to invite Turkey to begin talks on accession, while extending invita- tions to Cyprus and 10 other applicants; its hope was to goad Ankara into a compromise on Cyprus. The gambit failed. By giving equal pri- ority to Cyprus' and Turkey's applications, the EU could have set in motion on Cyprus the dynamic of sovereignty dilution that has been at work in Northern Ireland.

Linked through a stronger EU, Cyprus, Greece, and Turkey would have to conduct their relations in consultation with Brussels, which would make bilateral (and ultimately federal) arrangements among them easier to foster. With Turkey's and Greece's involvement in Cyprus thus institutionalized politically, their contentious bilateral military guarantees to the respective Cypriot factions could be replaced (in law and in fact) by multilateral EU support and a neu- tral NATO guarantee of Cypriot sovereignty.

EU-style sovereignty dilution does not advance nation-building or internal settlement. It will not help Bosnia resurrect itself, and it will

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not tame irredentist conflicts in which one side has no sovereign guarantor. The UN remains the appropriate international agency for handling such situations. Dilution is, however, a powerful instrument for resolving conflicts that entail rival preexisting sovereignties. Often, such hostilities stem from partition. And dilution should prove most effective when all parties involved have something to gain from compromising their individual sovereignty in a larger economic and political context of regional unity.

THE PROFITS OF PEACE

Even when sovereign guarantors already exist, however, the lack of a strong supranational authority with a broad economic and political mandate diminishes the peacemaking potential of sovereignty dilution. The conflict between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, for instance, calls for a balance comparable with the one achieved by the GFA in Northern Ireland. A greater degree of self-determination would check India's strengthening of central control and help answer Pakistani concerns about Indian abuses of Kashmiri Muslims' human rights. Particularly in the wake of the Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests, the stakes in Kashmir are far higher than in Northern Ireland or Cyprus. But neither India, Kashmir's putative sovereign and the Hindus' guarantor, nor Pakistan, the Muslims' guarantor, has any positive incentive to accept sovereignty dilution because doing so would not enable them to tap into an overarching regional framework of benefits. For South Asia, there is no EU-style equivalent capable of furnishing subsidies, channeling investment, and providing other political and economic rewards and penalties that would encourage the parties to resolve their dispute. (The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation is neither willing nor able to tackle these tasks.) Thus, UN efforts to settle the Kashmir dispute have been futile. Moral pressure and economic sanctions are not enough.

The EU can help settle conflicts between two sovereign guarantors over a disputed area by normalizing their bilateral relations and thereby strengthening sovereignty in the area in question, and then diluting that sovereignty via cross-border links. This route to local self-government-from indeterminate sovereignty to strong sovereignty to federation (or devolution) to diluted sovereignty-may be circuitous, but it offers a strong chance of success.

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By creating a common identity among nations, transnational economic, political, and cultural forces can promote conflict resolution- provided the appropriate supranational channels and structures are there to apportion benefits fairly. Commented an editor of the Irish Times in July 1996, at the start of the Republic of Ireland's EU presidency: "In terms of national identity, Ireland has been a clear benefi- ciary of the pooling of sovereignty. Identity has been reinforced, not diluted, by the experience of European integration, which has liberated this state from its debilitating economic dependence on, and narrow political preoccupation with, Britain." The forces of economic integration have also been marshaled (though far less decisively) outside Europe-in North America, through the North American Free Trade Agreement; in Latin America, through MERCOSUR; and in East Asia, through the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. Even in the intractable Middle East, conferences designed to promote regional trade and investment have helped lower political temperatures.

THE INDISPENSABLE NATION-STATE

But in order for the EU's supranational presence to ease sovereignty conflicts by diluting sovereignty, strong sovereign governments must still guarantee support for the disputing parties, as the British and Irish governments have done in the case of Northern Ireland. Otherwise, contentious factions have no recourse other than a local government that has already proved itself unable to govern without guarantors.

Paradoxically, the GFA reaffirms political borders as mechanisms of regional stability. European unity does not remove the political neces- sity of the nation-state. Rather, it promotes wider regional cooperation and solidarity that moderates the coercive and exclusionary aspects of sovereignty and sovereign alliances. For sovereignty dilution to work from above, solid sovereign governments must first exist below. Harvard professor Samuel Huntington has hinted at this syn- ergy in the global context, remarking that "neither the United Nations nor the United States can impose on local conflicts long-lasting solutions that deviate from the realities of local power."

Of course, the same could be said about the EU and other similar regional organizations. Autocracies generally will not be susceptible to dilution of sovereignty unless the local benefits of transnational cooperation are substantial and durable. It is relatively easy for the EU to

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resolve conflicts through dilution because it consists of, and therefore reinforces, liberal democracies. For international organizations outside Europe, the challenge is to present a range of economic and political rewards grand enough to woo non-European governments into their supranational fold.

WANT TO KNOW MORE?

Prime sources on the history of the Anglo-Irish conflict are Roy Foster's Modem Ireland: 1600-1972 (New York: Penguin, 1993) and J.J. Lee's Ireland, 1912-1985: Politics and Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). On developments leading to the IRA's pivotal 1994 ceasefire, see Eamonn Mallie and David McKittrick's The Fight for Peace: The Secret Story Behind the IRA Ceasefire (London: Heinemann, 1996) and Jonathan Stevenson's "We Wrecked the Place": Contemplating an End to the Northern Irish Troubles (New York: The Free Press, 1996).

John Hume notes Europe's influence on political reconciliation in Northern Ireland in A New Ireland: Politics, Peace and Reconciliation (New York: Roberts Rinehart, 1997), as do Joseph Ruane and Jennifer Todd (too pessimistically, it turns out) in chapter 10 of The Dynamics of Conflict in Northern Ireland: Power, Conflict, and Emancipation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). In "Briingng in the 'International': the IRA Ceasefire and the End of the Cold War" (International Affairs, October 1997), Michael Cox comments that Ireland's post-Cold War Europeanization made the republican goal of a socialist siege state unrealistic and forced the IRA to alter its tactics.

John Ardagh's Ireland and the Irish: Portrait of a Changing Society (New York: Penguin, 1997) depicts the new Ireland's Europe- fed cosmopolitanism. On Britain's more cautious relationship with Europe, see Roy Hattersley's Fifty Years On: A Prejudiced History of Britain Since the War (London: Little, Brown, 1997). In "Think Again: Ethnic Conflict" (FOREIGN POLICY, Summer 1998), Yahya Sadowski confirms that economic globalization tends to marginalize longstanding tribal animosities.

Frank Wright compares Northern Ireland with other embattled states, notably Cyprus, in chapter nine of Northern Ireland: A Comparative Analysis (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1987). Radha

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Kumar's "The Troubled History of Partition" (Foreign Affairs, January/February 1997) assesses Cyprus, Kashmir, Northern Ireland, and Palestine and suggests that outside guarantors are needed to prevent Bosnian partition. James Schear advances more or less the same argument about the conflict in the Balkans in "Bosnia's Post-Dayton Traumas" (FOREIGN POLICY, Fall 1996).

Robert Keohane, in "International Institutions: Can Interdependence Work?" (FOREIGN POLICY, Spring 1998), and Jessica Mathews, in "Power Shift" (Foreign Affairs, January/February 1997), note that although EU-type institutions dilute sovereignty, their integrity depends on the preservation of domestic democratic accountability. In "The Real New World Order" (Foreign Affairs, September/October 1997), Anne-Marie Slaughter comments that liberal democracies' "disaggregation of sovereignty" through such institutions ultimately strengthens the nation-state.

For links to relevant Web sites, as well as a comprehensive index of related articles, access www.foreignpolicy.com.

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peace in northern ireland: why now?

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