Dup discourses on violence and their impact on the northern ireland peace process

This paper analyses the Democratic Unionist Party's (DUP) discourses about paramilitary violence in Northern Ireland. Drawing on narrative analysis of DUP discourses reported in Northern Ireland's largest unionist newspaper, the News Letter (1998-2006), it explores the relationship between the party's identity, its discourses about republican and loyalist paramilitaries, and the impact of these words on the DUP's electoral success and on the peace process. The paper argues that these discourses may haunt the progress of peace-building, not least because the DUP will find it hard to disentangle itself from a history of scepticism and nay-saying even as it takes a leading role in a devolved Executive designed by an Agreement it longscorned.

Preaching to the Choir? An Analysis of DUP Discourses about the Northern Ireland Peace Process

This article analyses the Democratic Unionist Party's (DUP) discursive responses to the Northern Ireland peace process. Drawing on narrative analysis of DUP discourses in the Belfast News Letter (1998–2005), it argues that the party has articulated five themes: the de‐legitimisation of David Trimble and the Ulster Unionist Party, the immorality of the peace process, the security threat, the victimisation of Protestants, and the ‘renegotiation’ of the Belfast Agreement. These discourses are analysed in light of a framework for understanding the relationship between the party's public discourses and the political strategies that have allowed for its electoral success. The framework includes the relationship between discourses, agenda‐setting in the media, ‘the politics of support’, and ‘the politics of power’. It considers how the DUP's discourses may impact on its relationships with nationalists and unionists. However, efforts by the DUP to communicate with the unionist grassroots may allow it to minimise alienation, thus contributing to a space in which principles such as power‐sharing can become bedded down.

Equality, justice and feasibility: an ethical analysis of the WBGU’s budget approach

According to the Budget Approach proposed by the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU), allocating CO2 emission rights to countries on an equal per-capita basis would provide an ethically justified response to global climate change. In this paper, we will highlight four normative issues which beset the WBGU’s Budget Approach: (1) the approach’s core principle of distributive justice, the principle of equality, and its associated policy of emissions egalitarianism are much more complex than it initially appears; (2) the “official” rationale for determining the size of the budget should be modified in order to avoid implausible normative assumptions about the imposition of permissible intergenerational risks; (3) the approach heavily relies on trade-offs between justice and feasibility which should be stated more explicitly; and (4) part of the approach’s ethical appeal depends on policy instruments which are “detachable” from the approach’s core principle of distributive justice.

Exploring the Influence of Reporting Delay on Criminal Justice Outcomes: Comparing Child and Adult Reporters of Childhood Sexual Abuse

Delay between disclosure and reporting child sexual abuse is common and has significant implications for the prosecution of such offenses. While we might expect the relationship to be a linear one with longer delay reducing the likelihood of prosecution, the present study confirms a more complex interaction. Utilizing data from 2,079 police records in Northern Ireland, the study investigated the impact of reporting delay on pretrial criminal justice outcomes for child and adult reporters of child sexual abuse. While teenagers were found to be the group most disadvantaged by reporting delay, increased delay actually appeared advantageous for some groups, notably adult females reporting offenses that occurred when they were 0 to 6 years old. Conversely, adult males reporting child sexual abuse did not appear to benefit from increased delay, suggesting both an adult and gender bias within decision-making processes. The implications for future research are discussed. 

Using Comparative Reasoning in Human Rights Adjudication:The Court of Justice of the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights Compared

This article examines the relationship between the methods that the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) use to decide disputes that involve ‘human’ or ‘fundamental’ rights claims, and the substantive outcomes that result from the use of these particular methods. It has a limited aim: in attempting to understand the interrelationship between human rights methodology and human rights outcomes, it considers primarily the use of ‘comparative reasoning’ in ‘human’ and ‘fundamental’ rights claims by these courts. It is not primarily concerned with examining the extent to which the use of comparative reasoning is based on an appropriate methodology or whether there is a persuasive normative theory underpinning the use of comparative reasoning. The issues considered in this chapter do some of the groundwork, however, that is necessary in order to address these methodological and normative questions.

The first major step in the peace process’? Exploring the impact of the Anglo-Irish Agreement on Irish Republican thinking

This article supports interpretations of the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985 as a significant factor contributing to the development of the Northern Ireland peace process. However, it also emphasises a certain serendipity in the Agreement's effect on northern nationalist, and more specifically republican, politics in the region. In particular, it stresses that a specific interpretation of the Agreement promoted by the Social Democratic and Labour Party inspired a dialogue with republicanism, encouraging an ongoing reappraisal within the latter about the nature of Britain's role in Northern Ireland. This, the article argues, reinforced the movement towards a more political approach that republicans had begun in the 1980s, and encouraged their eventual embrace of a constitutional strategy in the 1990s. However, in advancing this argument, the article notes that such an outcome was far from the minds of the British and Irish officials who negotiated the Anglo-Irish Agreement. The Agreement was intended to marginalise rather than accommodate republicans. Despite this, it provided an inadvertent incentive to draw militant republicanism into the democratic process in Northern Ireland.

The first major step in the peace process’? Exploring the impact of the Anglo-Irish Agreement on Irish republican thinking

This article supports interpretations of the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985 as a significant factor contributing towards the development of the Northern Ireland peace process. However, it also emphasises a certain serendipity in the Agreement’s effect on northern nationalist, and more specifically republican, politics in the region. In particular, it stresses that a specific interpretation of the Agreement promoted by the SDLP inspired a dialogue with republicanism, encouraging an ongoing re-appraisal within the latter about the nature of Britain’s role in Northern Ireland. This, the article argues, reinforced the movement towards a more political approach that republicans had begun in the 1980s, and encouraged their eventual embrace of a constitutional strategy in the 1990s. However, in advancing this argument, the article notes that such an outcome was far from the minds of the British and Irish officials who negotiated the Anglo-Irish Agreement. The Agreement was intended to marginalise rather than accommodate republicans. Despite this, it provided an inadvertent incentive to draw militant republicanism into the democratic process in Northern Ireland.

Young People’s Offending Careers and Criminal Justice Contact: A Case for Social Justice

This article draws on an analysis of young people’s offending careers. The research was initiated against a backdrop of changing discourse around youth justice in Ireland with a shift towards prevention of offending and diversion from the criminal justice system. Locating crime and criminal justice contact within a biographical context indicated that participants’ offending, and lives generally, was bound up in marginalized transitions to adulthood, and embedded within social and economic environments characterized by high deprivation. The findings support a further shift in focus towards addressing social injustice as a necessary prerequisite to tackle the origins of youth offending.