ABSTRACT
Before the dust settles on the bloody tracks left by political partisans in Northern Ireland over the last 30 years one last discussion of political prescriptions for the region may be intellectually fruitful. We begin from the premise that democracies have two broad and principled choices for managing diversity that are compatible with liberal values. Integration is one. Integrationists aspire to construct a single public identity. Since they believe in political
institutions they link diagnosis and prescription. To avoid a partisan state, integrationists condemn ethnic or religious political parties or civic associations, and praise the virtues of non-ethnic or cross-ethnic agendas officially promoted by the Conservative or Labour parties in Great Britain, or by the Republican and Democratic parties in the United States.1
