This chapter describes the events on polling day, and the statistics relating to voter turnout and to the number of yes votes. The results are examined and an assessment of how the people’s decision was finally implemented into law follows.

The introduction charts the efforts made to reach peace in Northern Ireland from Sunningdale to the Good Friday Agreement via the Anglo-Irish Agreement. It provides an overview of the interview chapters and the dynamics that influenced attempts to end the conflict in Northern Ireland. The introduction also explains the interview approach and highlights some of the dilemmas that come into play when interviewing.

This chapter identifies how a consensual approach to negotiations was developed between the Irish and British Governments and how this approach informed understanding about what an agreement would look like.

The conclusion summarises the key elements that shaped attempts to build peace in Northern Ireland and highlights the value of a common approach to dialogue and negotiation as well as the need for a coherent strategy to support political aspiration and objectives.

Sarah Fine begins her response by calling Ayelet Shachar's lead essay "a Leviathan for the twenty-first century." We have become accustomed to a “traditional” picture of the modern state where sovereign authority is clearly delineated by borders lying at its territory’s edges, but as Shachar shows, this is an illusion. Just as Hobbes's Leviathan was a protean entity, capable of changing its form when required, so borders are transforming to suit the evolving legal and political landscape. Fine proceeds to outline Shachar's analysis of how borders function in practice. She then describes and assesses three possible responses to "living among monsters." The first of these is to admit defeat. The second—Shachar's preference—is to try to tame the monsters through legal methods: extending protections to follow the de-territorialized model, making available more safe, legal routes to places of protection. Fine observes that Shachar's preference for such methods derives from a “non-idealist” attitude to the shifting border that recognizes states’ sovereign authority to regulate movement. While agreeing that this response would be "much better than what we have now," Fine argues that it would leave many of the “dark corners” of migration control unlit. Her preference, the third response, is to fight back through grassroots political resistance. At the same time, she observes that the power of the shifting border is rooted in the belief that migration control is a fundamental sovereign right of states, and questions whether this belief is really justified.

This chapter elaborates on the impact of the Anglo-Irish Agreement and how the Irish worked in Belfast to create closer ties with the British by monitoring and assessing policing and justice issues and raising questions about possible discrimination and anti-equality activities.