Northern Irish Voters and the British-Irish Agreement: Foundations of a Stable Consociational Settlement? (2002)

Northern Irish politics is characterised by two distinct and polarised Nationalist and Unionist ethno-national blocs, and marked clearly by religious origin or affiliation. There is also a third, significantly smaller, `other' quasi-bloc, that is more heterogeneous in nature, and lacks the ethno-national solidity of the two primary blocs. As is well known, the two primary blocs, their political representatives, and those who term themselves their military or paramilitary representatives, have remained at war, or at least at loggerheads, for many years...