Centres, Peripheries and Party Systems: nested secession processes in Great Britain and Ireland

The seminal work of Lipset and Rokkan, which explores how party systems evolved organically from nineteenth-century roots, has generally been applied in states which have enjoyed a long-standing territorial identity. Their model's emphasis on stability and predictability can, however, be reconciled with circumstances where the very identity of the state itself is an issue. This article explores the capacity of the model to explain party divisions in three nested contexts: the pre-1922 United Kingdom, which encountered problems with its Celtic peripheries, and especially with Ireland; independent Ireland, where a unique party system developed, largely in response to a broader historical and geographical context; and Northern Ireland, where party politics fossilised in the 1880s, and began to unfreeze only in the 1970s. The article argues that the Lipset–Rokkan model casts valuable light on these processes, which in turn contribute to the theoretical richness of the model.

Mapping and understanding organizational change:Ireland 1922-2010

Capturing, mapping, and understanding organizational change within bureaucracies is inherently problematic, and the paucity of empirical research in this area reflects the traditional reluctance of scholars to pursue this endeavor. In this article, drawing on the Irish case of organizational change, potential avenues for overcoming such challenges are presented. Drawing on the resources of a time-series database that captures and codes the life cycle of all Irish public organizations since independence, the article explores the evolution of the Irish administrative system since the independence of the state in 1922. These findings provide some pointers toward overcoming the challenges associated with studying change in Whitehall-type bureaucracies. © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

John Rich as Opera Patron

This article traces the sustained support that theatre manager John Rich offered to operatic endeavours in 18th-century London. Rich effectively entered the contemporary discourse regarding the valid definition of opera through the kinds of works he supported, and also through the prefatory comments to two works staged at his theatre.