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This special issue of Ethnopolitics takes the tenth anniversary of the signing of a peace Agreement in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on Good Friday 10 April 1998, as an opportunity to reflect on, and assess, developments in Northern Ireland since the Agreement. This introductory article provides both an outline of the articles which make up the main body of this special issue, and some background information on the Agreement. The first part provides a brief outline of the process through which the Agreement came about. The second part examines the contents of the Agreement and the main institutions which it established. The third part provides a brief outline of the contents of the contributions to this special issue. The final part explores some of the themes covered in the special issue. (Ethnopolitics)

This paper examines changing housing provision and policies in Northern Ireland during the period 1998-2007. The theoretical framework derives from the political economy of housing and the focus is on the extent to which devolution has impacted upon housing provision and policy since 1998. The distinctive history of housing provision in Northern Ireland since partition is reviewed. The period since the good Friday Agreement has been characterized by periodic suspensions of the Northern Ireland Assembly and most housing policy initiatives, as between 1971 and 1998, have come from direct rule ministers following Westminster developments. Some distinctive features of social housing administration have been retained, with the Northern Ireland Housing executive still playing a major role, despite a high level of sales to tenants. Housing provision in Northern Ireland has come also more to resemble the situation in the Republic of Ireland, where a long economic boom has been associated with rapid growth in house prices despite greatly increased levels of new building. It is concluded that there is no significant evidence that devolution after 1998 has resulted in distinctive housing policy or housing provision developments in Northern Ireland and that, as in Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland, housing provision has become increasingly market-driven. (Ethnopolitics)

Outlining Ireland's long history of ethno-national conflict, and the recent protracted 'peace process' in Northern Ireland, contextualises a critique of the problems underlying such conflicts, and the difficulties in transforming externally imposed conflict management into self-sustaining conflict resolution. It is argued that the problems and difficulties are deeply rooted in a thoroughly modern complex of nationalism, ethnicity, sovereignty and representative democracy. These are knotted together in a common denominator of territoriality, an the nub of the problem is the 'double paradox' of democracy's undemocratic origins in the present. Territorially, the use of bordered geographical space, is a powerful and ubiquitous mode of social organisation which simplifies social control. But it can grossly oversimplify and distort social realities, particularly at borders and especially where territory is contested, thereby reinforcing other distorting simplifications typically found in the ethno-national conflicts. In consequence, radical remedies are needed if the problems are to be overcome. Making ethno-national peace paradoxically calls for more creative border-crosing conflicts around other issues. (Nations and Nationalism)

Civil society organizations in Northern Ireland played an important role in the peace process during the 1990s under the Peace I program sponsored by the European Union. Their impact on government decision making declined after 1999 under the iinfluence of Peace II, even though civil society organizations remained dynamic and active. This challenges a central claim in theories that assert strong social capital, related to a dynamic civil society sector, is necessary for effective democratic governance. Whether a strong civil society sector is implicated in processes of government decision making is an empirical question. Theory must treat the relationship as problematic. (Ethnopolitics)

Advocates of one or another set of institutions for new democracies have typically neglected the question of adoptability. The omission is especially evident in institutional prescriptions for the reduction of ethnic conflict in severely divided societies. These have been advanced with little regard for obstacles likely to be encountered in the process of adoption. Yet adoption is problematic. Processes of negotiation and exchange open the possibility of mixed outcomes reflecting the asymmetric preferences of majorities and minorities. The Northern Ireland Agreement of 1998, however, is a glaring exception, for it produced institutions that are intended to be clearly and consistently consociational. An examination of the process by which the agreement was produced suggests that the coherent outcome in Northern Ireland was the result of some very special conditions conducive to a consensus on institutions that spanned party lines. These conditions are unlikely to be widely replicable, and the fact of consensus does not imply that the agreed institutions are apt for the divided society whose problems they are intended to ameliorate. (British Journal of Political Science / FUB)

This article examines the debate on ways of dealing with the past in Northern Ireland from the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 to the present. The British government's recent creation of a consultative group, due to report in June 2008, has re-focused attention on whether or not, and in what form, Northern Ireland might adopt past-focused mechanisms as part of its post-conflict transition process. Against the backdrop of wider international and theoretical perspectives, the article examines the context and character of some of the issues this process is likely to face, particularly around the issue of collusion, and explore public attitudes towards the possible creation of a Truth Commission for Northern Ireland. (Ethnopolitics)