This study documents the rise of party political public relations in Northern Ireland and explores its impact on the media and the peace/political process more generally. While this research primarily charts and describes the chronological development of public relations pertaining to Northern Ireland's four main political parties (the SDLP, Sinn Fein, the DUP and the UUP), it also explores the media-source relations or interactions between journalists and public relations personnel. Significantly, political public relations has expanded considerably in Northern Ireland since the mid-90s, and political parties are increasingly utilising PR to enhance their media relations capabilities and improve their image (or `brand') with the public. What was once mainly the remit of the British government and its agencies in Northern Ireland (that is, political public relations) has now become an area in which the four main political parties (to varying degrees of success) have become increasingly more professional and well-resourced. The result of this expansion of party political public relations has seen the regional media in Northern Ireland become increasingly more vulnerable to the promotional efforts of `spin doctors' or media relations personnel from all four parties. This research, while acknowledging that there are undoubtedly multiple factors involved in how people decide to vote, argues that the 71.12% Yes vote in favour of the Good Friday Agreement can be partly explained by the significant impact of public relations strategies and techniques employed by a number of key behind-the-scenes players and conducted publicly by influential, high-profile figures. Essentially, it challenges the argument prevalent in the vast majority of literature on elections that public relations campaigns have very little `effect' on voting behaviour or that those changes of voting behaviour are due either to other factors or to long-term media campaigns and influences. This research also argues, on the one hand, that the electoral success of both Sinn Fein and the DUP in recent years (the two parties `hungry' for political power, who became the leading political parties in nationalism and unionism respectively) can be partly explained by their `courting' of the media and their development of strong and efficient communications structures. On the other hand, the recent electoral failure of both the SDLP and the UUP can be partly explained by their laissez-faire or complacent approach to both public relations and the media, and their weak and inefficient communications structures in comparison to both Sinn Fein and the DUP.

The thesis considers an understudied form of third party peacemaking, namely peacemaking interventions with kin-state involvement. The main research question this thesis seeks to analyse is how local actors, their kin-states and third party peacemakers interact within the context of a peacemaking intervention for power-sharing in deeply divided societies. The literature on third party peacemaking largely neglects the role of kin-states in peacemaking, while in the literature on power-sharing the role of external actors, including kin-states, remains understudied. This thesis aims to address these gaps by investigating the recent peacemaking interventions for power-sharing with kin-state involvement in Cyprus, Bosnia and Northern Ireland. The findings of the case studies are combined and assessed through the use of a five-level analytical framework, which includes the local actors level; the local actors-third party peacemaker level; the local actors-kin-state(s) level; the third party peacemaker-kin-state(s) level; and the kin-states level. The analysis identifies a number of conditions pertinent to each of these levels which affect peacemaking interventions for power-sharing in deeply divided societies with kin-state involvement. There are two main original contributions of this thesis to the above mentioned literatures. First, it proposes a typology of kin-state involvement in peacemaking, which categorises kin-state involvement into four roles: promoter; quasi-mediator; power-broker; and enforcer. Second, through the use of game theoretical analysis, more specifically a nested games approach, it illustrates how the interaction between local actors, their kin-states and third party peacemakers can be modelled in the context of a peacemaking intervention for power-sharing. The empirical and theoretical conclusions of this study indicate that kin-state involvement in third peacemaking interventions is more complex and fluid than widely assumed.

This work is based on the belief that the Provisional IRA developed its combat effectiveness through enhancing its small-unit effectiveness. Although PIRA ultimately failed in its objective to reunify Ireland, it successfully waged a thirty-year long campaign against the British military. The current state of terrorism studies does not explain how this was possible. It can explain the development of PIRA’s strategy, membership type and weapons used but it lacks sufficient explanation of small-unit dynamics. By drawing on the ideas of Huntington and King, among others, this work argues that PIRA successfully professionalised its small-unit tactics and this was the source of its increased effectiveness. By examining changes in structure, training, specialisation, motivation and identity it will be possible to demonstrate whether professionalism did have an effect. Ultimately, the findings of this research will provide an example for others to follow in their efforts to understand past and present terror threats.

Although Northern Ireland is a part of United Kingdom and so Europe, it belongs to regions which are characterized as unstable. Lately, there has been a significant improvement in implementing desired measures, however, one can still encounter street rioting stemming from the history of Northern Irish conflict. The Master thesis conducts a survey of the situation after the crucial signing of Belfast Peace Accord. It aims to evaluate the rate of success of introduced post-conflict reconstruction and holds the opinion that the progress in social sphere is especially significant, meaning cross-community relations and mutual respect. Gradually, in three chapters, the thesis unveils the theoretical concept of post-conflict reconstruction with a special attention to social sphere and culture. Moreover, it refers to the milestones of history and comes to the conclusion where it evaluates the current situation in society in disputed areas. Main idea of the thesis is to assess the hypothesis if the adopted measures do have an effect on current development and if a change in society could influence the perception of the roots of the conflict mainly in the question of interpersonal relations.

This thesis explores the historical imaginations exhibited by the key political architects of the Northern Ireland Peace Process: Gerry Adams, John Hume and David Trimble. It compares and contrasts ways in which each has engaged the ideological resource of history throughout their respective biographies, exploring the various visions of history, both Irish and otherwise, that have intrigued them, and the environments and experiences that moulded their view of the past. Exploiting a wide range of archival sources, along with original interviews and conversations with the ‘peacemakers’ themselves, it considers how Adams, Hume and Trimble learnt about history; how they subsequently imagined and wrote about it, and how they ultimately applied it within their influential political thinking. It is a study of the relationship between historical and political imagination, delivering fresh and revealing intellectual profiles of the ‘peacemakers’. Significantly, it demonstrates how ideas and visions of history, commonly perceived as somehow to blame for conflict in Northern Ireland, were put to positive use by Adams, Hume and Trimble. It therefore considers how visions of history contributed to the ideological evolution of peace and political stability on the island.

No description available.

Né à Belfast en 1941, Stewart Parker débuta sa carrière dans les années 70. A sa mort en 1988, il laissa une œuvre très dense, comprenant des pièces pour la scène, ainsi que des pièces pour la radio et la télévision. Bien qu’il soit aujourd’hui reconnu comme un des dramaturges les plus importants de sa génération, son œuvre n’est que rarement abordée dans les cercles académiques et aucune étude exhaustive sur son théâtre n’a pour le moment été publiée. Cette étude porte sur le thème de la quête identitaire dans ses pièces pour la scène. Tout d’abord, elle explore sa quête d’identité en tant qu’écrivain. Bien qu’il fut né et élevé au sein de la communauté protestante nord-irlandaise, il ne cessa de clamer son appartenance à une large tradition théâtrale anglo-irlandaise. Cette thèse vise à montrer comment Parker, confronté à la crise nord-irlandaise, chercha à réinventer complètement le théâtre, en faisant émerger de nouveaux modèles de représentation. Elle explore comment tout en affirmant ne pas écrire du théâtre politique, il croyait en le pouvoir du théâtre à faire naître une prise de conscience collective. Enfin, cette étude étudie la quête identitaire à l’échelle individuelle et collective dans ses pièces. Conscient de l’enjeu de la question identitaire en Irlande du Nord, il fut un des premiers dramaturges à ouvertement interroger et subvertir la notion unioniste d’une identité protestante nord-irlandaise unique et distincte. Cette thèse montre comment, en rejetant l’opposition traditionnelle entre catholiques et protestants, il chercha à construire un modèle d’unité sur la scène, qui amènerait finalement les Nord-Irlandais à reconnaître leur identité commune. / Born in 1941 in East Belfast, Stewart Parker came to prominence as a playwright in the 1970s. When he died in 1988, he left behind him an impressive body of work which included stage plays, radio plays and screenplays. Although he came to be recognized as one of the leading theatrical stylists of his generation, his work has received little attention in academic circles and no comprehensive study has been published yet. This study looks into the quest for identity in his stage plays. First, it explores his quest for identity as a writer who was born and raised in the Northern-Irish Protestant community, but always claimed to belong to a wider Anglo-Irish theatrical tradition. This thesis seeks to show how Parker, faced with the Northern Irish crisis, committed himself to reinventing theatre all over again with new ways of showing. It also explores his quest for identity as a playwright, who claimed to be non-political, but nevertheless believed firmly in the power of drama to change perceptions, and wrote extensively about the responsibility of the artist to his own people in a time of crisis. Finally, this thesis explores the quest for individual and collective identity in his plays. Aware of the stake of the question of identity in Northern Ireland, he was the first playwright to overtly question and subvert the Unionist notion of a singular Ulster Protestant identity. This thesis shows how, rejecting the traditional binary opposition between Catholics and Protestants, British and Irish, republican and loyalist, he was devoted to create a model of wholeness on stage that would finally lead the people of Northern Ireland to acknowledge their common identity.

Ce travail analyse les enjeux et les modalités de résurgence de l’héritage classique dans la poésie de Louis MacNeice, Derek Mahon, Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley et Tom Paulin. Des années 1930 au début du XXIe siècle, la poésie nord-irlandaise se réapproprie les grands genres de la littérature et de la pensée grecques, à travers une fragmentation du modèle épique notamment, et la réécriture et la modernisation d’oeuvres de théâtre. Ainsi, des textes canoniques tels que l’Odyssée d’Homère ou les tragédies de Sophocle, d’Euripide et d’Eschyle, deviennent les filtres au travers desquels les poètes élaborent leur vision du contemporain. Une poésie centrée sur le présent se construit alors, en suivant ou en renversant les règles aristotéliciennes de la composition poétique, et en revisitant des notions essentielles de la philosophie grecque, tel que l’energeia d’Aristote par exemple. La place de l’héritage classique, de la méthode mythique à la traduction, interroge les fondements de la création poétique et des rapports entre le poète, la société dans laquelle il vit, et le temps. L’insertion de ces poètes dans un contexte souvent violent, à l’aube de la Seconde Guerre mondiale pour MacNeice et dans les années les plus sanglantes des Troubles nord-irlandais pour les autres poètes, nourrit un questionnement sur les liens entre histoire et poésie. Ceux-ci sont explorés dans le renouveau des méthodes historiographiques des pères de l’Histoire, Hérodote et Thucydide. Leur usage primordial du témoignage oculaire notamment bénéficie d’un renouveau poétique d’une grande diversité. / This thesis explores the diverse aspects of the renewal of the classics in the poetry of Louis MacNeice, Derek Mahon, Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley and Tom Paulin. From the 1930s to the beginning of the XXIst century, Northern-Irish poetry has fruitfully tackled the most prominent genres of Greek literature and thought, through for instance a fragmentation of the epic model, as well as the rewriting and modernization of Greek drama. Canonical texts such as Homer’s Odyssey, Sophocles’, Euripides’ and Aeschylus’ tragedies are the filters which allow these poets to envision their contemporary circumstances. A poetry for the present, concerned with temporality, which either exemplifies or rejects Aristotle’s rules of poetic composition, is thus enacted and revisits central notions from Greek philosophy, as for instance Aristotle’s energeia. The status of the classical heritage, from the mythical method to translation, questions the very basis of poetic creation and redefines the link between the poet and his society. On the eve of the Second World War for MacNeice and during the bloodiest years of the Troubles for the other poets, particularly violent contexts blur the frontier between poetry and history. Both interact in the poets’ interest in Greek historiography, specifically in Herodotus’ and Thucydides’ sole reliability on visual testimony, which triggers very diverse poetic incarnations.

本論文嘗試去了解一般性的族群理論,並對北愛爾蘭問題加以分析與解釋,以期對北愛爾蘭的族群衝突原因,民族自決如何落實,以及族群社會的政治穩定如何獲致等等能提供更有效的理解模式. / Northern Ireland is caught beteen war and peace.On the one hand, there is a widespread desire for a permanent end to violence, but on the other hand big political divisions continue to keep unionism and nationalism apart. The conflict in Northern Ireland has economic, political ,history, and cultural aspects.Otherwise,from the outset, the conflict in Northern Ireland has had an international dimension. Then this thesis goes on to show and assess how the British state offered for a resolution of the conflict.

The mainline railway track between Dublin and Belfast in Northern Ireland was constructed during the 1850's. Substantial lengths of railway embankment were constructed over poor-quality peaty soils. This was accomplished using tree trunk fascines placed directly on the natural ground surface; with poor-quality local peaty soils used as light weight fill.<p>In recent years, Northern Ireland Railways have noticed that these sections of railway track have been deteriorating more rapidly than sections of the track where the foundations are more competent. The magnitudes of displacement of the track under train loading appear to be increasing gradually over time and train speeds have had to be reduced.<p>This thesis is based on the research done to monitor the response of these railway track and embankment structures to dynamic train loading. The displacements were monitored for two different embankments under a variety of loading conditions and for various seasonal conditions. These displacements were recorded using a sensor created for this task. The sensor consisted of a photo-sensitive array mounted on the sleepers and a laser, which was placed outside the area of influence of train loading, and shone on the photo-sensitive array. <p>Analytical (Winkler) modelling was conducted to determine the effects of train speed and the cause of the large train-induced displacements. Analytical and finite element modelling were used to determine the effectiveness of alternative methods of embankment stabilization.<p>The results from the analytical modelling suggest that the deformation of the embankment under train loading was not due to dynamic excitation, but static deformation of the poor-quality fill and soft foundation materials. From both the analytical and finite element modelling of possible remediation techniques, methods that stiffen the embankment and foundation material are shown to be the most effective at reducing the train induced deflection of the embankment.