This chapter analyses the motivations underpinning participation in the conflict in Northern Ireland. It shows that experiential and situational factors were more important than historical belief and family tradition, and that motivations for joining were often reactive and ideological development followed, rather than preceded, violent actions and imprisonment. In engaging with the narratives presented by former prisoners, the chapter seeks to capture the complexity of combatant lives and experiences. Whilst drawing upon the interpretations of events and life histories, it aids the contextualisation of some broader arguments presented elsewhere in the book. The narratives presented are structured around past events that shaped the views of combatants; whether ‘combatants’ engaged in ‘military’ activity primarily because of strongly held personal beliefs, deeply held ideological perspectives, or some combination of both. As in other societies, Northern Ireland is characterised by dominant sets of competing and contested attitudes bounded and reinforced by patterns of political socialisation.

This chapter considers Kosovo and Chechnya as examples of contemporary conflict. It examines the history, geopolitics, trends and features of Kosovo and Chechnya that helped write the character of violence in those regions. It then looks at an analysis that uses the account of storied identity, cultural narratives and founding events discussed in Chapter 1. It then locates Kosova and Ichkeria within a broader historically conditioned narrative space.

This chapter studies the contributions to debates about war within international relations. It first criticises modernity in order to understand global politics, and then studies the two axes of compression and decompression as a way to understand postmodern war. The next section focuses on the hybridisation of war and the evolving nature of contemporary conflict. This chapter also reveals the overlaps between those who focus on new and late-modern conflict and those who focus on technology as a way into postmodern war.

This chapter analyses the impact of domestic pressures and the Europeanisation of environmental policy on the domestic institutional framework in Ireland. It presents case studies to highlight the range of environmental problems Ireland has faced and how public and private actors have responded to these challenges. This chapter argues that Europeanisation has led to adaptational pressures resulting in legal harmonisation and some institutional innovation. It also investigates whether the progressive change that has occurred in environmental policy, and the way in which public and private actors seek solutions to environmental problems, are reflected in new patterns of governance.

This chapter examines Gilles Deleuze's understanding of cinema, which is fleshed out in relation to his extraordinary claim that ‘cinema produces reality’. He argues that films offer orders of experience that are normally hidden or unavailable in everyday life. Cinema presents new modes of perceiving and experiencing, modes which are not derivative of experiences in the ‘real’ world, and not modes that insist upon an adherence or faithfulness to the ‘real’ world. Rather, cinema produces modes of perceiving and experiencing that offer the possibility of another kind of world. Perhaps most challenging about his claim is that, in making it, Deleuze signals his intention to refrain from all forms of judgement. His discussions of films and types of films do not revolve around questions of which films are better or more valuable than others, they refuse to draw up tables of judgement which determine that some types of films are bad while others are good. Instead, he tries to uncover the significance of the system of reality that is proposed by Jean Renoir's The Golden Coach (1952).

This chapter deals with the contamination of animal feed with dioxin and other persistent and harmful chemicals that can accumulate in the human body. The strength of the public's reaction to news that food supplies had been contaminated, the political consequences of that news, the amplification of public anxiety about exposure to contaminated food products within Belgium and around the world, and the willingness of governments and international authorities, outside of Belgium and on the basis of quite limited information, to criticise the Belgian authorities, makes the dioxin crisis a particularly instructive and interesting case study.

This chapter is devoted to the interventionist discourse. Though interventionists are aware of the relevance of international law and human rights, they oppose the legalistic idea that human rights are best enforced by professional legal bodies such as the ICC. Instead, they argue that the implementation of human rights on a global scale should be left to powerful states, to which they attribute the role of vigilantes. Vigilantes are actors that enforce legal provisions on behalf of the international society, thereby substituting themselves for the central authority that the international society is lacking. Interventionists hold that the ICC in its eventual shape represents an impediment to the enforcement of human rights on a global scale rather than facilitating this task, since the Rome Statute does not reflect the exceptional role of great powers.

The contribution of paramilitary prisoners to conflict transformation remains a surprisingly under-stated aspect of the Northern Ireland peace process. Former prisoners have utilised the organisational capacity and structures of paramilitary groups and developed these as agents of conflict transformation. ‘Management systems’ and structures evidently mobilised to engage in violence were reoriented towards developing positive community roles in respect of restorative justice, opposition to violence and reducing sectarian tensions at interfaces. Concurrently, former prisoners and their representative groups have developed client relations with the local state, in the search for funding for local conflict transformation and reconciliation projects. These radical developments have been facilitated by dialogue initiated by former prisoners, on an inter-communal basis through meetings with former prisoners on the opposing side and via intra-group dialogue. A combination of tactical flexibility, societal change, perceptions of victory or continuing change and outworking of the longstanding recognition of the limited utility of violence contributed to ceasefires and concentration upon politics.

This chapter draws conclusions about the research design including underpinning theory. It also deals with the empirical evidence and the issues that arise from it. Buzan's frame-work for threat identification has helped capture the scale of several significant problems. The combination of the three models presented has much to offer the study of contemporary national security policies. The defence aspects of Irish national security are clearly inadequate, as is the flow of expenditure to support them. The problems of Irish national security policy are not simply ones of getting the balance right between current and contingency concerns. A favourable legacy of the Troubles is easy cooperation between the Irish and UK security forces especially those in Northern Ireland. Ireland's vulnerability to attack comes from within the security apparatus itself.

The transatlantic debate about the establishment of the ICC involves four discourses, each of which constructs the configuration of sovereignty and human rights in a specific way. This chapter summarises the findings and discusses them with reference to several questions: first, what conclusions can we draw from the US stance on the ICC? And second, how can we explain the fact that the UK and France shifted their positions on the Court in 1997 and 1998, respectively? The conclusion discusses what consequences emerge from the fact that different actors in international relations have different conceptions of international order and the role that sovereignty and human rights are supposed to play within that order. It examines how this affects the concept of international society.