This New book offers prescription to cure British-Irish conflict Michael Gillespies thesis offers both an examination and corrective actions DERRY/LONDONDERRY, Northern Ireland Historians have a severe drawback in that they describe but dont prescribe, says author Michael Gillespie. They can describe events and problems but are lax in prescribing remedies for these. Gillespie does more in his new book The Theoretical Solution to the British/Irish Problem Using The General Theory of a Federal Kingdom clearly stated and fully discussed in this Thesis (published by AuthorHouse), which examines the perennial points of conflict between Britain and Ireland. It is the purpose of Gillespies book to revive the concept of a federal kingdom in Ireland as a solution to the British/Irish problem. The kingdom was federal before the Acts of Union in 1707 and 1801. According to the author, the Act of Union which established the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was an attempt to devise a unitary state for the British Isles in which those islands were ruled directly from Westminster in London and the inhabitants of Ireland were British. This failed dismally and was resisted by federalists in Ireland throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. There is no simple solution to the British/Irish problem and half-measures of the Good Friday and St Andrews agreements at Stormont will fail. The coalition at Stormont of loyalists and Republicans is a constitutional obsenity Gillespie says. You are urged therefore to read this book in full to gain a valuable insight into the complexities of the nuts and bolts of this historic problem and find in the National Government of Ireland Act an approach that can be built in bricks and mortar in Ireland if the will of compromise among politicians and the people can be found to do it.

Veteran journalist Andrew Lawler delivers a “fascinating and delightful…globetrotting tour” (Wall Street Journal) with the animal that has been most crucial to the spread of civilization—the chicken. In a masterful combination of historical sleuthing and journalistic adventure, veteran reporter Andrew Lawler “opens a window on civilization, evolution, capitalism, and ethics” (New York) with a fascinating account of the most successful of all cross-species relationships—the partnership between human and chicken. This “splendid book full of obsessive travel and research in history” (Kirkus Reviews) explores how people through the ages embraced the chicken as a messenger of the gods, an all-purpose medicine, an emblem of resurrection, a powerful sex symbol, a gambling aid, a handy research tool, an inspiration for bravery, the epitome of evil, and, of course, the star of the world’s most famous joke. Queen Victoria was obsessed with the chicken. Socrates’s last words embraced it. Charles Darwin and Louis Pasteur used it for scientific breakthroughs. Religious leaders of all stripes have praised it. Now neuroscientists are uncovering signs of a deep intelligence that offers insights into human behavior. Trekking from the jungles of southeast Asia through the Middle East and beyond, Lawler discovers the secrets behind the fowl’s transformation from a shy, wild bird into an animal of astonishing versatility, capable of serving our species’ changing needs more than the horse, cow, or dog. The natural history of the chicken, and its role in entertainment, food history, and food politics, as well as the debate raging over animal welfare, comes to light in this “witty, conversational” (Booklist) volume.

Queen Victoria was obsessed with it. Socrates' last words were about it. Charles Darwin and Louis Pasteur made their scientific breakthroughs using it. Hailed as a messenger of the gods, powerful sex symbol, gambling aid, all-purpose medicine and handy research tool, the humble chicken has been also cast as the epitome of evil, and the star of the world's most famous joke. Beginning with the recent discovery, that the chicken's unlikely ancestor is the T. Rex, How the Chicken Crossed the World tracks the chicken from its original domestication in the jungles of Southeast Asia some 10,000 years ago to today's Western societies, where it became the most engineered of animals, to the uncertain future of what is now humanity's single most important source of protein. In a masterful combination of historical sleuthing and journalistic exploration on four continents, Lawler reframes the way we feel and think about all domesticated animals and even nature itself.

This book is a companion to my book The Theoretical Solution to the British/Irish Problem, which gives a suggested constitution for the Federal Kingdom of Ireland and it recognizes a right, center, and left political structure of the Federation. The left structure is the Irish Christian Social and Democratic Party. Christian Socialism is peaceful in its origins and present form and is opposed to the violence of Marxist class conflict. In place of class struggle, Christian Socialism places class togetherness. Christian Socialism envisages a New Ireland and a New Ireland needs a new economic theory of the left. Georgeist economics fits the bill. George argued that land shouldnt be owned by individuals but collectively by the people. He held that there should be only a single land tax raised to meet the expenses of the state. This was a popular economic theory in the nineteenth century but was crushed by neoclassical economists such as Marx in the interests of the landed gentry in Ireland and England. Marx condemned the excesses of capitalists in their exploitation of labor but was silent when it came to the exploitation of tenant farmers in Ireland by the landed gentry. Georgeist economics need to be looked at again in twenty-first century Ireland.

This book collects some of the major essays, past and new, of two of the leading authorities on the Northern Ireland conflict. It is unified by the theory of consociation, one of the most influential theories in the regulation of conflicts. The authors are critical exponents of the approach, and several chapters explain its attractions over alternative forms of conflict regulation. The book explains why Northern Ireland's national divisions have made the achievement of a consociational agreement particularly difficult. The issues raised in the book are crucial to a proper understanding of Northern Ireland's past and future, which, the authors argue, is likely to involve some type of consociational democracy, whether or not the one agreed to on Good Friday ..... The issues addressed are not particular to Northern Ireland. They are relevant to a host of other divided territories, including Cyprus, Kosovo, Macedonia, Sri Lanka, Nigeria, and Afghanistan. The book is therefore vital reading not just for Northern Ireland specialists, but also for anyone interested in consociation and in the just and durable regulation of national and ethnic conflict.

Consociational theory explains how democratic stability is possible in culturally or ethnically segmented political systems. It is one of the most important theories in Comparative Politics and one of the most contested. This volume brings together the leading proponents and opponents of consociational theory and conflict resolution.

Democracy and Northern Ireland examines the influence of liberal theories of democracy on recent developments in the Northern Irish peace process. In so doing it analyzes the applicability of theories such as political liberalism, multiculturalism and deliberative democracy to deeply divided societies. Little contends that these models need to build upon recent critiques provided by feminists and civil society theorists in the construction of a more radical interpretation of democracy that can provide a framework for democratic politics in Northern Ireland.

Focusing on four case studies, author William Beattie Smith traces the evolution of British policy from 1969-73 and depicts how easily a conflict over national identity can turn into bloodshed, grief, and horror; and how difficult it is once a serious fight has started to restore peace.In each of the case studies, Smith highlights a discrete policy followed by the British government in tackling political disorder in Northern Ireland, and examines why the policy was chosen or pursued. He outlines three broad strategic options reform, coercion, and powersharing and identifies factors influencing which of the three will be selected in practice. Focusing on policy outcomes rather than the details of the negotiating process, the author evaluates the relative importance of rational calculation, patterns of understanding, party politics, diplomatic pressures, organizational structure, and official doctrine in shaping policies and initiating radical changes. While rooted in policy analysis, the book ventures into the territory of political history and conflict studies. The author addresses issues such as the legitimacy of state authority, the vulnerability of democratic institutions to the opposition of disaffected minorities, and the tensions that exist between public order and individual rights. His conclusion derives strategic lessons from the British experience in Northern Ireland and provides guidance for policymakers confronting challenges arising from comparable cases."

The study is the result of an international collaborative project supported and funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. This multi-year venture has involved a research team of some forty chapter authors and commentators. The research has been accompanied by three major workshops on project methodology, initial chapter reviews and final discussions. A point was made of including both scholars and practitioners involved in power-sharing settlements in the review process, in the hope that more would be learned about the actual implementation of the settlements under investigation. The project team was united in its wish to explore whether long-standing secessionist conflicts have been addressed effectively through the significant number of self-determination settlements that were generated in response to the wave of internal conflicts of the 1990s. It was also committed to testing whether consociationalist and integrative techniques of conflict settlement really are as mutually exclusive as is sometimes supposed, or whether they can in fact be mutually reinforcing. Finally, the project derives its impetus from the necessity to critically rethink the doctrine of self-determination. One may question whether its traditional, restrictive interpretation will be adequate in confronting the wide variety of future challenges to the territorial integrity of states.

Consociational power sharing is often perceived to be the method of conflict management that is most likely to succeed in deeply divided societies. The case of Northern Ireland in particular is heralded by many as a consociational success story. Since the signing of the Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement in 1998, significant conflict transformation has taken place in the form of a considerable reduction in levels of violence and the establishment of power sharing between unionists and nationalists. This book looks at what consociational power sharing achieves after its implementation – specifically, whether it can work to overcome existing identities in divided societies, or whether it simply freezes divisions. It argues that if consociational power sharing is facilitating a move towards a genuinely shared society, this would be demonstrated in the focus of the election campaigns of Northern Ireland’s political parties, which would be almost exclusively based around socio-economic issues affecting the whole population, rather than narrow single identity concerns. However, the book claims that, on the whole, this has not been realised. Although election campaigns are today less strident than they were in the pre-1998 era, it remains the case that they usually foreground single identity symbolism, as it is this that resonates with voters. Whilst consociational power sharing has been very successful in reducing levels of violent conflict and facilitating elite level cooperation between unionists and nationalists, it has been much less successful in reducing divisions within wider society to facilitate a genuinely shared Northern Irish identity. By establishing an important middle ground between consociational proponents and critics, this research will be of significant interest to students and scholars of ethnic politics, political sociology, conflict management, and divided societies more generally.