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      • NORLA

        Books from Norway is a website providing you with information in English about Norwegian literature in all genres: Fiction, Non-fiction and Children and Young Adults’ literature.NORLA - Norwegian Literature Abroad, promotes the export of Norwegian literature through active profiling work and translation subsidies. The organisation disseminates knowledge about Norwegian books and authors abroad, and operations are financed by the Norwegian Ministry of Culture.

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      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        May 2016

        Northern Ireland and the European Union

        by Mary C. Murphy

      • Trusted Partner
        Teaching, Language & Reference
        August 2024

        The Northern Ireland peace process

        by Eamonn O'Kane

      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        September 2008

        Northern Ireland after the troubles

        A society in transition

        by Colin Coulter, Michael Murray

        In the last generation, Northern Ireland has undergone a tortuous yet remarkable process of social and political change. This collection of essays aims to capture the complex and shifting realities of a society in the process of transition from war to peace. The book brings together commentators from a range of academic backgrounds and political perspectives. As well as focusing upon those political divisions and disputes that are most readily associated with Northern Ireland, it provides a rather broader focus than is conventionally found in books on the region. It examines the cultural identities and cultural practices that are essential to the formation and understanding of Northern Irish society but are neglected in academic analyses of the six counties. While the contributors often approach issues from rather different angles, they share a common conviction of the need to challenge the self-serving simplifications and choreographed optimism that frequently define both official discourse and media commentary on Northern Ireland. Taken together, the essays offer a comprehensive and critical account of a troubled society in the throes of change. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        November 2010

        Devolution and the governance of Northern Ireland

        by Colin Knox

        This book offers the first account of what the First Minister, Peter Robinson, describes as the most settled period of devolution in Northern Ireland for almost forty years. It traces the tortuous path to devolved government, the political instability which constantly threatened the institutions, and since May 2007 the bedding down of devolution and its impact so far on the people of Northern Ireland. The book parallels accounts of devolved government in Scotland and Wales. For years Northern Ireland has been the subject of academic enquiry relating to political, constitutional and security issues. Now as a post-conflict society political parties which for years engaged in the politics of antagonism must now redirect their efforts to delivering public policies that will improve the quality of people's daily lives. This has not come easily to them. This book is therefore the first study which looks at devolved power sharing governance arrangements in Northern Ireland and a sequel to Derek Birrell's book Direct Rule and the Governance of Northern Ireland. Manchester: Manchester University Press (2009) The book contains chapters on the key governance institutions: the civil service, local government, non-departmental public bodies, and the vibrant third sector in Northern Ireland. It examines in some detail the major review of public administration ongoing since 2002 and the more recent public services modernising agenda. Importantly, given the sectarian divisions which have segregated every aspect of life in Northern Ireland, the book asks the key question whether it is possible to reconcile the two communities or are they destined to live 'separate but equal' lives. Finally, the book considers topical issues which are at the early stages of implementation: community planning and central-local relations. This book will be of interest to students of devolution across the UK and beyond. It will also be relevant for those researchers working in the area of post-conflict societies. ;

      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
        20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000
        October 2013

        Northern Ireland in the Second World War

        Politics, economic mobilisation and society, 1939–45

        by Philip Ollerenshaw

        This original and distinctive book surveys the political, economic and social history of Northern Ireland in the Second World War. Since its creation in 1920, Northern Ireland has been a deeply divided society and the book explores these divisions before and during the war. It examines rearmament, the relatively slow wartime mobilisation, the 1941 Blitz, labour and industrial relations, politics and social policy. Northern Ireland was the only part of the UK with a devolved government and no military conscription during the war. The absence of military conscription made the process of mobilisation, and the experience of men and women, very different from that in Britain. The book's conclusion considers how the government faced the domestic and international challenges of the postwar world. This study draws on a wide range of primary sources and will appeal to those interested in modern Irish and British history and in the Second World War.

      • Trusted Partner
        Political structure & processes
        May 2007

        Devolution and constitutional change in Northern Ireland

        by Edited by Paul Carmichael, Colin Knox and Robert Osborne

        This edited book, written by a collection of scholars with an interest in Northern Ireland, tracks its uneasy experience with devolution following the optimistic political period associated with the 1998 Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement. The volume brings together researchers from the Economic and Social Research Council's (ESRC) 'Devolution and Constitutional Change' Programme and other experts to record four key perspectives on Northern Ireland. First, it considers the inextricable link between devolution and constitutional developments. Second, it examines how the main political parties responded to devolution and the major challenges faced by society in moving beyond conflict (such as political symbolism, the role of women, equality and human rights issues). Third, it attempts to assess some of the workings of devolved government in its short-lived form or those seeded in devolution and carried on by direct rule ministers. Finally, Northern Irelands devolved government and associated institutions are located within the wider relationships with Westminster, the Republic of Ireland and Europe. This edited volume will be of interest to students of Irish politics and public policy, but more generally, from a comparative perspective, those with an interest in devolution and constitutional change. It may even assist politicians in Northern Ireland to reflect on the real potential to restore its devolved institutions and draw back from the brink of permanently copper-fastening 'direct rule' from Westminster.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        April 2008

        Policing the peace in Northern Ireland

        Politics, crime and security after the Belfast Agreement

        by Jon Moran

        This timely and controversial book shows how crime, and the authorities' response to crime, became central to the peace process in Northern Ireland. At times, paramilitary activity threatened to destabilise the peace in Northern Ireland after 1998, but crime was central to maintaining capacity should the groups return to war. Over time, the reduction of crime was central to these groups' own attempts to reform and official judgements as to whether they were genuinely demobilising. The state's response to crime added controversy. Police reform produced the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and the new Organised Crime Task Force signalled the importance of crime control, but the Assets Recovery Agency, supposedly the 'magic bullet' for organised crime, misfired. Law enforcement was also deeply affected by the British state's response to paramilitary crime. By 2007, peace was apparently secure and paramilitaries were 'de-criminalising', but this often chaotic process was marked with questions about the British state's adherence to the rule of law. Incorporating first-hand research in the PSNI, the book will be of interest to general readers and scholars of Irish Studies, criminology, and British and comparative politics. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Teaching, Language & Reference
        July 2015

        Politics and peace in Northern Ireland

        Political parties and the implementation of the 1998 Agreement

        by David Mitchell

        Politics and peace in Northern Ireland analyses the complex and contradictory process of implementing the Good Friday Agreement. Using the lens of security dilemma theory, it begins with an original overview of the conflict, the Agreement and post-1998 politics. The book then explores post-Agreement Northern Ireland through the eyes of each of the four main political parties, showing how they tried to shape the course of peace implementation, and how implementation, in turn, shaped the fates and fortunes of the parties. Drawing on extensive original research, this book explains the promise and limits of the Agreement. It shows how and why the two sides' mutual insecurities repeatedly derailed peace implementation, and reflects on the likely direction of parties and politics in the future. This clearly written and up-to-date book will be of interest to scholars and students of recent Northern Irish history, ethnic conflict and peace-making. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        February 2013

        Catholic police officers in Northern Ireland

        Voices out of silence

        by Mary Gethins

        This exciting book, newly available in paperback, aims to establish the historical and cultural reasons why there was only a participation rate of 7-8% by the Catholic population in policing Northern Ireland when the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) came into being in 2001, even though Catholics constituted 46% of the total population. It also aims to ascertain whether or not implementation of the Patten Commission's recommendation to recruit to the PSNI on a 50: 50 basis between Catholics and non-Catholics has resulted in greater representation and what the political and cultural obstacles might be in transforming policing from meeting colonial model criteria to those of the liberal model advocated by Patten. In doing this, author Mary Gethins uses a wealth of historical data to show that there has for a long time been a problematic relationship between the native Irish Catholic population and the police, and the reasons for Catholic under-representation in the police force can be largely put down to this legacy. A survey of Catholic police officers focusing on family history, reasons for joining the police and sacrifices perceived to have been made in joining a largely Protestant organisation provide a strong empirical evidence base from which Gethins draws illuminating lessons. The work is informed by sociological theory to show that Catholic police officers are atypical of the Catholic population at large in Northern Ireland, and best explained by the concept of fragmented identity. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        October 2010

        The Northern Ireland experience of conflict and agreement

        A model for export?

        by Robin Wilson

        The Northern Ireland Experience of Conflict and Agreement presents a salutary warning to the international community against the fashionable view that there is an 'Irish model' which can be exported to cauterise ethnic troubles around the globe. The book draws on extensive archive research in London and Dublin on the 1970s power-sharing experiment, and on interviews with senior officials and political figures from the two capitals-as well as reconciliation practitioners-about the negotiation and chequered implementation of the Belfast agreement. It shows how stereotyped conceptions of the problem as a product of 'ancient hatreds', allied to solutions based on Realpolitik, have failed to transform Northern Ireland from a fragile peace, following the exhaustion of protracted paramilitary campaigns, to genuine reconciliation. The book concludes with practical proposals for constitutional reforms which would favour genuine power-sharing-rather than merely sharing power out-and set Northern Ireland on the road to the 'normal', civic society its long-suffering residents desire. It will be essential reading not only for academics and postgraduates interested in ethnic conflict but also for policy-makers who confront it in practice. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2014

        The politics of constitutional nationalism in Northern Ireland, 1932–70

        Between grievance and reconciliation

        by Christopher Norton

        In the changed political landscape of Northern Ireland, where all major political parties with a nationalist agenda are now reconciled to the use of peaceful and constitutional means to achieve their objectives, this book presents a timely analysis of the constitutional nationalist tradition in Northern Ireland in the period leading up to the outbreak of the Troubles. The first book on constitutional nationalism to appear in over a decade, this new and incisive work based on extensive primary sources and existing secondary literature, maps the history of the campaigns of nationalist parties and organisations to redress the grievances of Northern Ireland's Catholics and bring partition to an end. It offers a critical reappraisal of these campaigns and it assesses the outcomes and consequences of the political strategies pursued by an array of nationalist parties and groups. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        December 2006

        Socio-ideological fantasy and the Northern Ireland conflict

        The Other side

        by Adrian Millar, Peter Lawler, Emmanuel Pierre Guittet

        Conducting a Lacanian-inspired psychoanalysis of some of the most candid interview materials ever gathered from former IRA members and loyalists, the author demonstrates through a careful examination of their slips of the tongue, jokes, rationalisations and contradictions, that it is the unconscious dynamics of socio-ideological fantasy, i.e. the unconscious pleasure people find in suffering, domination, submission, ignorance, failure and rivalry over jouissance, that lead to the reproduction of antagonism between the Catholic and Protestant communities in Northern Ireland. In the light of this, he concludes that traditional approaches to conflict resolution which overlook the unconscious are doomed to failure and that a Lacanian psychoanalytic understanding of socio-ideological fantasy has great potential for informing the way we understand and study all inter-religious and ethnic conflicts. Whether you find yourself agreeing with the arguments in this book or not, you are sure to find it a welcome change from both the existing, mainly conservative, analyses of the Northern Ireland conflict and traditional approaches to conflict resolution.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2017

        Britain in China

        by Robert Bickers

        This is a study of Britain's presence in China both at its peak, and during its inter-war dissolution in the face of assertive Chinese nationalism and declining British diplomatic support. Using archival materials from China and records in Britain and the United States, the author paints a portrait of the traders, missionaries, businessmen, diplomats and settlers who constituted "Britain-in-China", challenging our understanding of British imperialism there. Bickers argues that the British presence in China was dominated by urban settlers whose primary allegiance lay not with any grand imperial design, but with their own communities and precarious livelihoods. This brought them into conflict not only with the Chinese population, but with the British imperial government. The book also analyzes the formation and maintenance of settler identities, and then investigates how the British state and its allies brought an end to the reign of freelance, settler imperialism on the China coast. At the same time, other British sectors, missionary and business, renegotiated their own relationship with their Chinese markets and the Chinese state and distanced themselves from the settler British.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        July 2015

        The state and ‘terrorists’ in Nepal and Northern Ireland

        The social construction of state terrorism

        by Priya Dixit

        This book compares the use of 'terrorism' by states in the Global North (Britain in Northern Ireland) and South (Nepal), examining particular events over time. As such, it questions conventional understandings that states cannot be 'terrorists' and that post '9/11' terrorism is new. It does so by outlining how states have used the label of 'terrorism' to establish a specific 'counterterrorist' identity for themselves and by indicating how similar strategies of representation were used by the British and Nepali states while labeling others as 'terrorist'. Because it draws on rhetorical analysis, discursive psychology and critical security studies to analyze the politics of labelling, it is expected this book will be useful to a wide range of readers from political science, international relations, terrorism studies and also media, cultural and area studies. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Politics & government
        February 2017

        Sunningdale, the Ulster Workers' Council strike and the struggle for democracy in Northern Ireland

        by Edited by David McCann, Cillian McGrattan

        The 'Sunningdale experiment' of 1973-4 witnessed the first attempt to establish peace in Northern Ireland through power-sharing. However, its provisions, particularly the cross-border 'Council of Ireland', proved to be a step too far. The experiment floundered amid ongoing paramilitary-led violence, finally collapsing in May 1974 as a result of the Ulster Workers' Council strike. Drawing on new scholarship from some of the top political historians working on the period, this book presents a series of reflections on how key protagonists struggled with notions of power-sharing and the 'Irish dimension', and how those struggles inhibited a deepening of democracy and the ending of violence for so long.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        May 2009

        Direct rule and the governance of Northern Ireland

        by Derek Birrell

        This is the first comprehensive study of direct rule as the system of governance which operated in Northern Ireland for most of the period between 1972 and 2007. The major institutions of governance are described and examined in detail, including the often neglected sectors of the role of the Westminster parliament, the civil service, local government, quangos, ombudsmen offices, cross-border structures and the public expenditure process. The book explains how the complex system covering transferred, reserved and excepted functions worked and provided viable governance despite political violence, constitutional conflict and political party disagreements. In addition, a comparison is drawn between direct rule and devolution, analysing both the positive and negative impact of direct rule, as well as identifying where there has been minimal divergence in processes and outcomes. It will prove an invaluable reference source on direct rule and provide a comparative basis for assessing devolution for students of public administration, government, politics, public policy and devolution. ;

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