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British and Irish Conflict Regulation from Sunningdale to Belfast Part I: Tracing the Status of Contesting Sovereigns, 1968–1974
Author(s) -
O'Duffy Brendan
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
nations and nationalism
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.655
H-Index - 44
eISSN - 1469-8129
pISSN - 1354-5078
DOI - 10.1111/j.1354-5078.1999.00523.x
Subject(s) - irish , sovereignty , negotiation , state (computer science) , power sharing , political science , power (physics) , law , sociology , northern ireland , political economy , politics , ethnology , philosophy , linguistics , physics , algorithm , quantum mechanics , computer science
. This article, which is presented in two parts, analyses the changing conceptions of the status of the two sovereigns (the United Kingdom and the Irish Republic) whose competing claims to sovereignty over Northern Ireland has been the ultimate cause of conflict. In Part I (presented here) I adapt Ian Lustick's theory of state contraction and expansion to the British‐Irish relationship as it affected the negotiation of the Sunningdale Power‐sharing Agreement of 1973–1974. I argue that the failure to address the competing claims to sovereignty limited the possibilities of achieving and maintaining the consent of sufficient proportions of each ethno‐national community. Part I of the article (forthcoming) will extend the analysis to explain the relative equalisation of sovereignty status between Britain and Ireland and presents a modification of a ‘liberal intergovernmentalist’ explanation of the evolution of the Anglo‐Irish Agreement (1985) and Belfast Agreement (1998).