Reflecting on the Northern Ireland Conflict and Peace Process: 20 years since the Good Friday Agreement John Doyle Director, Institute for International Conflict Resolution and Reconstruction Dublin City University Editor of Irish Studies in International Affairs This special issue of Irish Studies in International Affairs has been produced to mark the twentieth anniversary of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. It is also appropriate to reflect on the period of conflict itself, as we approach the fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of the modern Northern Ireland conflict.The volume draws on ten articles that were published in Irish Studies in International Affairs between 1994 and 2018. These articles are reproduced exactly as they were first published, without any updating or editing of the text. They need therefore to be read in the context of the year in which they were written. However, bringing them together in this one volume provides a strong reference for scholarship in Irish Studies in International Affairs on different dimensions of the Northern Ireland conflict and peace process, over the past 25 years. The articles are arranged by topic and period they cover, rather than the year in which they were published, to provide the reader with a chronological approach to the conflict from its early days to the implementation of the agreement. The articles are reprinted with their original pagination to ensure consistency between those who cite this volume and the original printing. Inevitably when producing a volume based on previously published works not all aspects of the conflict and peace process are covered or covered equally. However, the ten selected articles do represent some of the most important issues which scholars of the peace process have discussed. To quote former US Senator George Mitchell, chair of the talks which led to the agreement, ‘By itself, the Good Friday Agreement does not provide or guarantee peace and stability, but it makes them possible’.1 The articles that follow look at the conflict and its escalation, but in particular, they explore the basis for the Good Friday Agreement, and why it was possible to negotiate it in 1998 and not in earlier years. 1 George Mitchell ‘Conflict Resolution: Ireland and Beyond’, Irish Studies in International Affairs’ 14 (2003), 3–8: 6. 2 Irish Studies in International Affairs The volume begins with an article by Martin Mansergh, first published in 1995, setting out the background to the peace process.2 Mansergh is a former diplomat and a former member of both Seanad Éireann and Dáil Éireann, but he is best known for his role as advisor on Northern Ireland to Fianna Fáil governments (and oppositions) from 1977 onwards and as one of those who were involved in the earliest secret talks with Sinn Féin. His article seeks to explore why the conflict erupted and why it went on so long. It also provides a fascinating summary of the early years of the peace process—events to which he was so often a direct witness and participant. The next article, by Michael Kennedy, on the reaction of the Irish Department of External Affairs to the outbreak of the troubles in Northern Ireland, was first published in 2001.3 Kennedy draws on the archival records of that period to clearly show how ill-prepared the department was for the emerging crisis in Northern Ireland. It also demonstrates that there was no agreed strategy on how Ireland might influence a change in the status quo. This article represents an excellent micro-study of how we can consider the broader issues around the origins and escalation of the conflict.Armed conflict was not inevitable, but there were clear structural features which increased the possibility of conflict, including decades of intense discrimination against the Irish nationalist minority in Northern Ireland and their effective exclusion from public life. Northern Ireland also featured a classic ‘rising expectations’ context, as a generation of young nationalists, growing up in a more internationalised environment, demanded more of the state. The international context of the US civil rights movement was hugely influential, in the approach and even the name of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, as were the new left and student protests of the...