Ideology matters. The return of this insight to the study of civil war has sparked a new line of literature. Drawing on its insights, I argue that ideology can affect civilian victimisation in two ways. The first is the adoption by armed groups of exclusionary frames that justify the killing of civilians; the second is the need of armed groups for civilian approval – what I call ideological licence – from their home constituencies.Civilian victimisation is expected to peak in places where exclusionary group frames and civilian attitudes are dominant. For the empirical analysis, I turn to The Troubles, the thirty year-long armed conflict between Northern Ireland’s Catholic and Protestant communities. I construct a novel dataset using ideological attitudes, based on a pre-conflict survey among over 1200 respondents across Northern Ireland, and new, detailed casualty data on more than 2700 conflict-related fatalities. Although Catholics were the most lethal side in the conflict, I find that the Protestant community is significantly more likely to kill civilians. This finding is driven by national differences between Catholics and Protestants. Subnational differences in civilian attitudes are found to be less relevant.

Abstract The purpose of this study is to examine the international news coverage of the 1981 Northern Irish hunger strike. The media had plenty of emotionally and politically charged incidents to report, and they rendered it in various manners. This study discusses why these different representations of the hunger strike were born. This thesis analyses news about the hunger strike published in fifteen international newspapers. For this kind of research, historical contextualization is of great importance. Methodological starting point lies in the traditions of imagological methods. A mental image is understood here as something in our thoughts that steers us to see the world in a certain way. A newspaper depicts news stories in a way the newspaper and the society in which it operates see its worth. Media representations have a very complex background. Based on the findings, it seems likely that existing mental images play a major role in the way a news topic is covered and given meaning. In this case, news coverage was not based solely on the hunger strike but also on historical discourse which had created a certain meaning for the event. The coverage of each newspaper was based on their own worldviews. Internationally, the level of interest is determined by varied cultural and political factors. News coverage both reflects and affects. News from other countries is more likely to be reported if some links exists, something to identify and consider significant. The findings of the research suggest that news coverage is not always just the reporting of events. It can reflect more profound features. Each media source has its own reasons to represent news in a certain way. Primarily, the reasoning points to the medium itself. However, we can argue that news coverage also reflects the values of a community. News is usually produced to appeal to the majority of the intended audience. This case illustrates that international news coverage is a useful method in revealing and understanding mental images and their influence. / Tiivistelmä Tässä tutkimuksessa tarkastellaan Pohjois-Irlannin tasavaltalaisvankien nälkälakon kansainvälistä uutisointia vuonna 1981. Tapahtuma sisälsi poliittisesti ja emotionaalisesti latautuneita tilanteita, joita kansainvälinen media uutisoi eri tavoin. Tässä tutkimuksessa selvitetään, miksi erilaisia mediarepresentaatioita syntyi. Tutkimuksen päälähteenä käytetään viittätoista sanomalehteä eri puolilta maailmaa. Historiallisella kontekstoinnilla on suuri merkitys tämänkaltaisessa tutkimuksessa. Tämän työn metodologinen lähtökohta nojaa voimakkaasti mielikuvatutkimuksen periaatteisiin. Tässä tutkimuksessa mielikuva käsitetään ajattelua ja maailmankuvaa ohjaavana käsityksenä, ja sanomalehtiuutisoinnin luomat mielikuvat heijastavat niin lehden itsensä kuin ympäröivän kontekstin käsityksiä. Median luomilla mielikuvilla on monitahoinen tausta. Tutkimustuloksien perusteella on todennäköistä, että jo olemassa olevat mielikuvat vaikuttavat voimakkaasti uutisoinnin luonteeseen ja annettuun merkitykseen. Nälkälakon uutisointi ei perustunut pelkästään itse lakkoon ja sen tapahtumiin, vaan uutisointiin vaikuttivat myös historian kautta annetut merkitykset. Jokainen lehti uutisoi tapahtumasta omaan maailmankuvaansa perustuen. Uutisointi sekä heijastelee että vaikuttaa: media uutisoi herkemmin tapahtumista, joilla koetaan olevan merkitystä. Tämän tutkimuksen perusteella uutisointi ei aina ole pelkästään raportointia. Jokaisella tiedotusvälineellä on omat syynsä uutisoida tietyllä tavalla. Ensisijaisesti syyt ovat mediassa itsessään, mutta media heijastelee myös ympäristönsä arvoja ja käsityksiä.

The thesis is focused on the process of demise and disintegration of nationalist terrorist groups. The case studies of terrorism in Northern Ireland and Basque region in Spain demonstrate and analyze the development of local terrorist organizations from the beginning to the cessation of violent actions. An emphasis is put especially on the end of armed campaign and transformation of nationalist activities within a legal framework. In the case of Northern Ireland, the focus is put on the activities of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) from the beginning of the Troubles to the Belfast Agreement in 1998. The research in this thesis includes the influence of affiliated political parties - Sinn Féin in this case - on the process of negotiations and the continuation of Northern Irish nationalism after the end of armed campaign. The Basque case is devoted to the development of Basque nationalism since the beginning of the 20th century, the creation and development of Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) and its terrorist campaign within both the Francoist regime and Spanish democracy. An emphasis is put on the development of the organization until its official dissolution in 2018, activities of the political parties of the Nationalist Left affiliated to ETA and the attitude of Spanish authorities to...

With a starting point in the Together: Building a Shared Community strategy (T:BUC) published in 2013 by the Government of Northern Ireland’s Executive Office, this study examines two of the strategy’s Key Priorities: Our Shared Community and Our Safe Community, in order to analyze contemporary peacebuilding efforts carried out by the Northern Irish government. The study is guided by the research question: Why might the strategic aims such as removing all interface barriers by 2023 in the T:BUC fail in their attempts to build peace? To answer this question, the thesis takes a qualitative methodological approach relying on both primary and secondary data and Carol Bacchi’s method of ‘What’s the Problem Represented to Be’ approach to poststructural policy analysis. This methodological approach is accompanied by Audra Mitchell’s theoretical framework of plural world-building. The study finds that the T:BUC strategy problematizes the interface barriers in Belfast, the usage of symbols such as flags, as well as the division of communities within Northern Ireland - all concepts that in this thesis are argued as important ‘threatworks’ and ‘world-building’ means of the conflicting communities in order to avoid violence. The thesis concludes that by interfering with these types of world-building means, the Northern Irish government risks inducing ‘radical violence’ to these ethno-national groups and perhaps provoking escalating violence amongst them.

Diploma thesis "The Theory of Consociational Democracy and the Development of the Northern Ireland's Conflict" examines the ongoing conflict in Northern Ireland and also the possibility to apply this theory in this particular case. The principal objective of research is to analyze the long-standing conflict and explore the possibility to apply one of the most famous political science's theories, the author of which is Dutch political scientist A. Lijphart, currently on situation in Northern Ireland. This conflict lasting for many decades culminated in the 60s of the last century accompanied by violent and bloody clashes between opposing groups. Actors led by British government tried to solve this situation through the introduction the principle of power-sharing. This research offers an analyses of this conflict and also his changes in time, but also different actors and transformation of their attitudes, which were the reason of the movement from violent and armed conflict to the peaceful solution. This research offers not only an analyses of the conflict of itself but what more an analyses of the peace process, in which shows if the conflict resolution in Northern Ireland has had elements of consociational. One more objective of the diploma thesis is make a statement, if there is any possibility...

Post-liberal, hybrid peace, a new model of peacebuilding, aims to step away from the top-down imposition of liberal peace. In order to recognise the local, the new model considers the interaction between the international and the local as a dynamic power interaction, through which the means and ends of peace can be mediated. Yet, it has already been criticised for its theoretical underpinnings which would, ultimately, impede it to achieve its objectives. This thesis aims to determine the concrete impacts of the elements pinpointed by the critiques. It adopts an alternative focus on both the programme itself and the affected population’s perspectives. Through an instrumental case study of the EU Peace III Fund’s peacebuilding in Northern Ireland and the Border Region, the thesis highlights that these critiques can take different, practical forms. It enables to unveil the importance of exploring the affected population’s perspectives, of the initial context as well as the external peacebuilder’s belief that it knows, still, what is best over the affected populations.

Ireland had, by the year of 1998, been an island of war and conflict to some extent for almost 1000 years. The northeast part of the island, called Northern Ireland, had been under British domination for over 25 years when “the Troubles” ended by the year of 1998. This essay aims towards explaining how the first generation after “the Troubles” has been shaped in terms of political and religious beliefs and attitudes in the society of Belfast. Furthermore, this study seeks to understand the complex nature of the peace agreement and the political consociational power-sharing system that permeates Belfast and it’s people. By conduct interviews with six, picked young persons from Belfast, this essay will, in a qualitative and theoretical way, explain what, and even more so, why the prevailing attitudes exists, and which influences they are derived from. By a socialisation and Marxist theory, these articulated attitudes will be explained, compared and analysed on a deep level.

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The State of Northern Ireland has been home to a significant amount of violence between a minority of Catholic Irish nationalists and a majority of Protestant British unionists. As a result, violence has plagued the region, with the loss of over three thousand five hundred lives during the course of three decades, colloquially known as "the troubles." In 1998, the Belfast or "Good Friday" Agreement was signed by officials from The United Kingdom and The Republic of Ireland to ensure a diplomatic means of cooperation amongst the various political parties of Northern Ireland, and disarmament of paramilitary groups. However, the desire for nationalists to unify the island and to seek total independence from the United Kingdom still endures. In spite of a significant decrease in violence, dissident republicans continue to target the Police Service of Northern Ireland, with the intent to disrupt the peace process; the people of Northern Ireland are still polarized regarding their political and national standings, which decrease the chances of Irish reunification in the near future. The intent of this thesis is to explore the feasibility of Irish reunification in the 21st century, and its reasons why a united Ireland will not be obtained. By examining the global policy towards terrorism after September 11th 2001, the recent net-immigration to Ireland preceded by the "Celtic Tiger" period in The Republic of Ireland's economic boon, and the complexities of the perceived identities in Northern Ireland, the unlikelihood of reunifying Ireland under one government, independent from the United Kingdom will be reiterated.