Introduction

Nation, state and politics on a divided island The island of Ireland, divided between two jurisdictions and shared by two competing national projects, provides a richly distinctive context in which to examine the contemporary power of nationalism and the nation-state in a postcrisis, globalised and culturally diverse Europe. The political division of Ireland in 1920-1921 resulted from the failure of two competing nation-building projects: those of Irish nationalism and the British state (Coakley et al. 2005; O’Leary and McGarry 1993), neither of them capable of securing sovereign control over the whole island. The subsequent political development of the two jurisdictions in Ireland transformed the shared island into a space in which political structures, ideologies and action at all levels simultaneously reinforced and transcended the international border. This shared space has been characterised variously as ‘one country, two nations’, ‘one nation, two states’ or simply ‘two different countries’. Precisely because of the awkwardness and ambiguity of this relationship between nation and state, the interrelated politics of the two Irish jurisdictions provides a uniquely valuable site at which to explore the relationship between action and structure in ‘making and breaking nations’ (Coakley 2012): between party politics, social change and political ideologies on the one hand and state institutions and international borders on the other. The assumption of many that the relationship between the two parts of Ireland had reached some kind of stable equilibrium in recent years and that any future change would be glacially incremental was shaken when, on 23 June 2016, the UK electorate voted to leave the EU. Voters in England and Wales voted to leave but the fact that a majority in Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain ensured that this crisis over the EU also became a crisis over the future of the UK. It provided a sharp reminder that political structures such as the nation-state or the EU are neither permanent nor natural: they are created and sustained through human action and they can always be remade and transformed by human agency. One immediate effect of this shaking of the European system was to bring home the fact that the political division of the island creates shared challenges that now appear much more urgent and immediate. In raising the possibility of a much harder Irish border than has existed at most times since the

island’s partition, it raised the spectre of deep shifts in political life on the island and in the way in which unionism and nationalism and the two jurisdictions relate to one another. Questions surrounding the relationships between national identity, state structure and political action suddenly became much more urgent and immediate. Legitimation of state power and consolidation of a sense of national identity require political action and social compliance. Securing acceptance of the nation-state as an enduring, superordinate political form requires a process of constant renewal and adaptation. The Irish nation-state has been a curiously paradoxical success in this regard: a deeply embedded, widely dispersed notion of its own brokenness and incompleteness has provided a vital focus for processes of ‘othering’ and distinction that proved central to the creation of twentieth-century Ireland. North of the border, by contrast, attempts to naturalise the jurisdiction and legitimise its institutions collapsed in the 1960s under the weight of competing visions of the nation. The painstaking efforts over many years to provide a new foundation for legitimacy in the 1998 Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement involved a stretching of relationships beyond the boundaries of the state and the building of new relationships between Britain and Ireland as well as between the two jurisdictions in Ireland. As we approach the centenary of partition, it is timely to assess the legacy of the territorial division of the island and the persistent shaping influence of this division on the dynamics of political competition and change on both sides of the border. Through a fresh analysis of the political environment and culture on both sides of the border since the Agreement of 1998, examining party politics, ideological struggle and institutional change, this book demonstrates the deep symbiotic connections between political processes on the two sides of the border after almost 100 years of division and upheaval. The symbiosis of North-South political action has negative as well as constructive consequences, of course, as is still evident in the conception of ‘the other’ that is engrained in political ideologies, religious cultures, social norms and collective symbols across the island; the more they define themselves by reference to the other, the closer they are pushed together. This uneasy equilibrium of push/pull forces on the island has been maintained throughout the major endogenous and exogenous changes affecting both jurisdictions. This book examines the nature of these changes and their effects across the island in the highly complex, globalised and mediatised context for political action today. Detailed consideration of the case of Ireland, North and South, offers an opportunity for an informed critique of the power of state borders to put boundaries on political thought and action. Questions of territory, identity and institutions have taken on a special urgency in Ireland, Britain and the EU in the past few years as political structures and territorial frameworks that we had come to take for granted became the focus of urgent political debate. The referendums in 2014 on Scottish independence and in 2016 on UK membership of the EU highlighted the mutability of territorial arrangements and the provisional character of all political institutions, however permanent and natural they may come to seem. In causing the UK as a

polity to flicker before our eyes, and in calling into question a shared future in the EU, it unsettled easy assumptions about the permanence of the political settlement in Ireland. It also reinforced understandings of politics and power as process rather than permanent structure. The politics and power of nationalism as political process were particularly evident in both Britain and Ireland in 2016, albeit in quite different ways. The enthusiastic centennial commemorations of the Easter Rising in Ireland and the British vote to leave the EU demonstrated the continued power of nationalism to act as a focus for solidarity and popular mobilisation. This open-ended character of states and territorial sovereignty provides then the context in which this book examines the interrelated political dynamics that stretch across the Irish border. It aims to provide a fresh perspective on the entanglement of state and nation, situating the Irish case firmly in a wider European and geo­ political context while also contributing to our understanding of broader questions about the relationship between states, nationalism and political competition. The book has four distinctive strengths in addressing this challenge. First, it brings together some of the foremost scholars of Irish politics, from various career stages – blending the experience and knowledge of a range of senior scholars with a fresh perspective from early career academics. Second, it benefits from an interdisciplinary approach, drawing contributions from across the disciplines of history, law, sociology and political science. Third, the book draws on a rich body of knowledge and original research data. This includes data from specially designed survey questions that facilitate direct comparison of party supporters North and South, and data from election studies on the spatial unevenness of party support. New qualitative data is also drawn upon, utilising discourse analysis and ethnography as well as interview material. Finally, it sets the Irish case in the context of wider debates on nationalism and political action in the modern era and in so doing offers a new analysis of the relationship between state and nation in this contested territory.