This chapter explores one potential mechanism through which formal, government-level, cooperation between North and South may influence ordinary people's lived experiences, namely, the provision of public services, with a focus on the health sector. It sketches the evolution of North-South relations, from the suspicion and avoidance of the early post-partition decades to the 1998 Belfast Agreement, and outlines current priorities and developments in cross-border cooperation. One of the most striking features of cross-border cooperation in the post-Agreement period, particularly when considered against the fate of the Sunningdale Agreement, has been the relative lack of political controversy. The tentative efforts, described to develop practical cooperation in the health sector demonstrate that cross-border service provision can be feasible, publicly acceptable and mutually beneficial. In addition to the continuance of parallel policy-making, experience in the health sector demonstrates significant structural constraints on cross-border working at administrative level.

This chapter reiterates the main points of the book. Essentially, it confirms that while the Irish Parliament clearly was a colonial assembly in its origins and in its development, there is also a clear line of development that is more local and more organic than might first meet the eye. It brings together the many strands of the book to make some strong concluding statements about the nature of the institution and its place within the kingdom, its constitution, and the institutional history of Ireland.

This chapter examines women from the English and colonial elite. It draws from women’s letters and correspondence to lawyers and family members to examine the depth of women’s legal knowledge, and how women participated in litigation even while they were under coverture. Different demographic patterns and inheritance laws across England and the colonies affected how elite women managed and protected their property, and defined the legal conflicts between women and their male relatives. In England the relative shortage of land and the likelihood of parents to live into old age often resulted in family feuds: widows who sought to gain their dower rights came into conflict with heirs eager to receive their full inheritance. In the colonies the fact that land was more abundant released some of the pressure between generations. However, the longer life-spans of people in New England, compared with those of people in the Chesapeake, had a significant impact on elite women’s control of property.

This chapter examines the expansion of the economy and how the development of equity law posed an increasing challenge to coverture and patriarchy in the eighteenth century. The legal regimes of England and the southern colonies gave women wide latitude to pursue investment and trade, and allowed married women greater financial independence than ever before. In urban areas of England and colonial America, married women were increasingly allowed to make contracts in their own names as feme sole traders. Equity law also expanded married women’s ability to retain control of their own property during marriage through the creation of new legal devices such as the simple agreement, equity to a settlement and restraint upon anticipation. Because of these economic and legal changes in the eighteenth century, family relationships came to be more defined by legal notions of contract rather than the mutual obligations that underpinned the patriarchal family.

Petitioning, either as a general call for favour and assistance, or as the opening salvo in a legal action, was a common process in the Irish Parliament and there is strong evidence that it took up a considerable amount of time, frequently much more than legislation did. This chapter considers both the theory and practice of petitioning. It discusses how and why it happened, the methodology and materials of the process, the role of counsel, officers, and members. It also provides the statistical evidence of how the system worked and to what extent certain petitioners and types of petitions were more successful than others.

Initially, this chapter discusses the position of the Irish Parliament within early modern Irish historiography and whether it has served Irish institutional history well. This is followed by a consideration of the development of parliamentary history in England, and whether there is a potential usefulness of applying such a historiographical model to Ireland. It also considers how an institutional history of the Irish Parliament might be written and to what extent this can be achieved, considering to what extent the relevant source material is available to us. The day-to-day records of the two houses, the parliamentary journals, are discussed in great detail – their original purpose and to what extent they might direct such an institutional study.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores how depoliticisation of Northern Irish society is occurring at the level of everyday life in Northern Ireland. It examines how it is being resisted and how, in spite of the apparent enshrinement of an unquestioning acceptance of the benevolence of the current political leaders, a politics of normality is emerging from the years of conflict. The book explores the argument that conflict management should mean more than simply security-based or violence-related initiatives; rather, a 'sustainable peace is dependent on the political, economic and social choices which the relative absence of violence allows'. It also explores the role of integrated education in breaking down residual sectarianism in Northern Ireland. The book focuses on women's involvement or women's marginalisation in society and politics.

This chapter presents a concept of an evangelical subculture to explore how both the politics of the post-Agreement period, as well as more mundane, everyday concerns about God, faith and life, have helped shape changes in evangelicals' personal religious practices and identities. In Northern Ireland, evangelicals have maintained much higher rates of church attendance, with up to four-fifths attending services at least once a week. Evangelicals repeatedly tell their testimonies to one other, formally and informally, so telling conversion stories is central to the evangelical subculture. Most evangelical churches offer a staggering variety of social activities. People have the opportunity to participate in something nearly every day of the week. The chapter outlines the ways in which post-Agreement politics have affected evangelicals' religious journeys.