The Good Friday Agreement deserved the attention the world gave it, even if it was not always accurately understood. After its ratification in two referendums, for the first time in history political institutions throughout the island of Ireland rested upon the freely given assent of majorities of all the peoples on the island. It marked, it was hoped, the full political decolonization of Ireland. Whether Ireland would reunify, or whether Northern Ireland remain in union with Great Britain now rested on the will of the people of Ireland, North and South respectively: a complex mode of power-sharing addressed the self-determination dispute. The concluding volume of Brendan O'Leary's A Treatise on Northern Ireland explains the making of this settlement, and the many failed initiatives that preceded it under British direct rule. Long-term structural and institutional changes and short-term political maneuvers are given their due in this lively but comprehensive assessment. The Anglo-Irish Agreement is identified as the political tipping point, itself partially the outcome of the hunger strikes of 1980-81 that had prevented the criminalization of republicanism. Until 2016 the prudent judgment seemed to be that the Good Friday Agreement had broadly worked, eventually enabling Sinn Fein and the DUP to share power, with intermittent attention from the sovereign governments. Cultural Catholics appeared content if not in love with the Union with Great Britain. But the decision to hold a referendum on the UK's membership of the European Union has collaterally damaged and destabilized the Good Friday Agreement. That, in turn, has shaped the UK's tortured exit negotiations with the European Union. In appraising these recent events and assessing possible futures, readers will find O'Leary's distinctive angle of vision clear, sharp, unsentimental, and unsparing of reputations, in keeping with the mastery of the historical panoramas displayed throughout this treatise.

About the Author
Brendan O'Leary is the Lauder Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania and World Leading Researcher Visiting Professor of Political Science at Queen's University Belfast. He is the inaugural winner of the Juan Linz Prize of the International Political Science Association for lifetime contributions to the study of federalism, democratization, and multinational states, and was recently elected an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy and to Membership of the US Council on Foreign Relations. Educated in Northern Ireland, Oxford, and the London School of Economics & Political Science he advised parties and governments during and after the making of the Good Friday Agreement. His extensive publications include Power-Sharing in Deeply Divided Places (co-editor, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), The Northern Ireland Conflict (OUP, 2004), and Explaining Northern Ireland (co-author, Blackwell, 1995).

Reviews
He colors his work throughout with lively writing, moving past equivocation and pulling no punches in his assessments of participants or previous scholarship ... the author has thoughtfully structured his books and chapters in a way that is accessible to both non-experts and specialists. Whatever the audience, this is a work of canonical importance for understanding Northern Ireland ... Highly recommended. * M. J. O'Brien, CHOICE *
The detailed coverage is astonishing, the range immense. The book exemplifies best practice in social science and history, combining both disciplines, asking analytic questions of the historical record and widening the remit of social science - above all by looking carefully both at political calculations and the details of constitutional arrangements. It is important to stress that he offers us an analytic history of Ireland as a whole, paying special attention to developments in the Irish Free State and to the Republic thereafter. * John A Hall, McGill University in Montreal, Dublin Review of Books *
The most prolific, perceptive and powerfully analytical writer on the north in the last 35 years, Brendan O'Leary, has just produced his magnum opus. * Brian Feeney, Irish News *


Awards
Winner of Winner of the James S. Donnelly, Sr. Prize from the American Conference for Irish Studies An Irish Times Book of the Year 2019.



Book Information
ISBN 9780198830580
Author Brendan O'Leary
Format Hardback
Page Count 512
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 1g
Dimensions(mm) 242mm * 162mm * 32mm