This study examines the institutional development of the Irish Department of Finance both as part of Government and internally between 1997 and 2011. Using the framework provided by historical institutionalism and its account of the dynamics of institutional change it identifies and analyses formal and informal institutional changes which impacted upon the Department's influence in Government. In also includes an examination of institutional changes prior to 1997 which created enduring historical legacies which continued to impact on the Department's position and influence in Government in a path dependent manner. The study consciously adopts a 'moving picture' approach to the analysis of institutional change and seeks out instances of both punctuated and gradual change where often these tend to be examined in isolation. In this regard, it builds on Streeck and Thelen's (2005) and Mahoney & Thelen's (2010) typologies of institutional evolutionary change to present a single framework for analysing change, whether punctuated or gradual. The study's primary data emanated from 15 semi-structured interviews with elites who occupied key positions in the core executive in Ireland. They include former Taoisigh, Secretaries General, Cabinet members and political advisors. Their first-hand accounts provide a unique insight into a critical period in Irish Government. The study's findings illustrate the impact of formal and informal institutional change on the Department of Finance, some being punctuated changes, others gradual (or incremental) and that multiple change inducing variables were at play. An underlying theme which emerges from the research is that the Department of Finance institutionally drifted within the core executive for much of the period, but that the triple crises from 2008 onwards led to a re-setting of power relations in Government back in the Department of Finance 's favour, although in a new paradigm involving a proximate role for external actors in Irish domestic affairs.

This study examines the construction of cultural nationalism in Northern Ireland and Scotland post-1979. Two particularly significant processes and practices are selected for analysis; football and literature. The methodological approach taken is a synthesis of ethnosymbolism, modernism, and cultural materialism, and nations are discussed as cultural constructs. Nationalism produced at both the elite and popular levels is considered, to provide a greater level of insight into the construction of national identity. The different nationally defined identities discussed are Scottish nationalism, Irish nationalism, unionism, and two varieties of Northern Irish nationalism. One of these is ecumenical, and is largely produced by literary elites. The other is loyalist, and is produced at the popular level. Scottish nationalism is produced through literature and through football, and is largely defined by working class values. As a consequence, literature has become a “popular” social practice in Scotland. Irish nationalism is also produced through literature and football; literature remains an elite practice in Northern Ireland, however. As well as fan groups, individual footballers play a key role in the production of Irish nationalism within Northern Ireland. The rejection of the Northern Ireland team by players of an Irish Catholic background, in favour of the team of the Republic of Ireland, is significant. Irish and Scottish nationalism have often been seen as antagonistic; however, there is an increasingly positive relationship between the two. In the novels of Irvine Welsh, Irish and Scottish identities are mutually informative; the identities of many Celtic fans, including the influential fan group “the Green Brigade”, are similarly constructed. Scottish and Irish nationalism are culturally “other” to unionism and loyalism, and are brought together by this common “enemy”. Most Rangers supporters consider themselves to be culturally unionist. Their identity is unlike that expressed by fans in other parts of the United Kingdom, and paradoxically appears nationalist as a consequence. The Northern Ireland national football team has become a symbol of loyalism, which is considered as a form of national identity because its rituals and symbolism are distinctively Northern Irish, not “British”. In adopting a nationally defined team, loyalists demonstrate the importance of Northern Ireland to their identity, rather than the United Kingdom.

This thesis is an examination of the influence and impact of the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland, post 1968, on the practice of Irish history, on southern Irish broadcast media and on the southern Irish modernisation process. I will examine the uneasy and contested transition in systems of hegemony in a society where the state is not coterminous with perceptions of nationhood, where society is anxiously suspended between conservation of its existence and popular nationalist aspirations, where southern economic dependency interacted uneasily with northern political instability and sectarianism. The thesis examines the ‘Ulsterisation’ of the War of Independence by some historians and its aftermath as an ideological project. It pays particular attention, using the case-study method, to the imposition of a sectarian character on republican forces during the war of independence by the highly influential Newfoundland historian Peter Hart, and will explain why this research is ideologically problematic within Irish historiography. I will link this to (in a second case-study) the project undertaken in the early 1970s by Irish government minister (also an academic historian and political scientist) Conor Cruise O’Brien to undermine and eradicate from popular awareness secular anti-imperialist aspects of Irish nationalist consciousness, primarily through, in case-study three, the imposition of broadcasting censorship and support for repression. I question O’Brien’s positing of a ‘Catholic nationalism’ as an overarching basis for Irish statehood by, in case-study four, an examination the largely unexplored socio-economic position of Protestants in southern Ireland and the forms of social control imposed on and within that community. The thesis examines how official reaction to the conflict combined repression and broadcasting censorship during the 1970s to revise popular perceptions of Irish history and Irish society. Control of understanding of the present was combined with attempts to take control of perceptions of the past, in order to circumscribe the parameters of what is feasible in the present, so as to preserve the socio-economic status quo. It specifically explores the impact of the post 1968 Northern Ireland conflict on: • The attempt by proponents of Irish revisionist historiography to portray Irish resistance to British rule as ‘Catholic nationalism’ and as a mirror image generally of Ulster unionist sectarianism; in the context of • The simultaneous transformational change of economic direction in the southern Irish economy and society, which imparted to this project increased impetus, opportunity and political scope.