This book aims to restore gender to a central position in the history of radical nationalism through a study of women's participation as members and supporters of Euskadi ta Askatasuna (ETA) during the organisation's first two decades (1959 to 1982). In the absence of significant written records of women's participation in radical Basque nationalism, this study also depends on oral history interviews with former activists for evidence of the changing patterns of women's activism in ETA. The interviews explored in the book highlight the importance of feelings of love and happiness, often above anger and hatred, in memories of radical nationalist activists.

This introductory chapter discusses the theme of this volume, which is about direct rule governance in Ireland from 1972 to 2007. This volume identifies, describes and explains the key features of direct rule as it developed into a distinctive system of governance and evaluates its impact on the institutions of government which had previously existed in Northern Ireland as well as the impact on the British government and the Westminster Parliament. It highlights the relative merits and short-comings of direct rule and devolution as systems of government for Northern Ireland.

This chapter investigates how the International Finance Corporation (IFC) became embroiled in environmental debates over its loans and guarantees. It explains that though the IFC operates separately and has different role and function than the World Bank, it has overlapping member states with similar power structures and espouses the same development norms of economic growth and poverty alleviation. This chapter describes the IFC's first big project, the controversial Pangue Dam in Chile, and examines how transnational environmental advocacy networks (TEANs) pushed for IFC to have its own environmental and social safeguard policies and information disclosure.

This chapter investigates the role of individual leaders and the peculiarly Catholic transnational dimension in bringing about change, and some of the ways in which religious organisations contributed to the negotiation of transition. It explores how Catholic hierarchies and churches have coped with the realities of democratic politics. The ability of the Catholic Church to play the ‘defender of the nation’ role was aided by the fact that the ‘occupying’ power was perceived to be of a different religious tradition. The process of democratic consolidation is explored. In most of the ‘third wave’ countries, the dominant religious institutions have made public their commitment to democratic politics and acceptance of democratic norms. The limits of religious contributions to democratic consolidation are then assessed. The hegemonic theory and rational choice theory perhaps offer slightly more insight into why national hierarchies adopted a primarily supporting or constraining position with regard to political change.

This chapter examines the role of the family in the history of the Basque nationalist movement in the post-Civil War period, looking at the reproduction of Basque nationalism in the 1940s and 1950s, the years of the most intense Francoist repression, through the childhood and adolescent memories of narrators. It explores the different and changing place of women in relation to family life and argues that the family should not be considered a separate, private sphere, but must be understood in the context of the complex and changing relationship between private and public realms during the Franco dictatorship. This chapter also discusses the gender politics of early Basque nationalism and provides examples of those so-called independent women during this period.

This chapter considers the way Sinclair addressed the sense of ‘decline’ that is characteristic of British society. It looks at his use of the ‘savage comedy’, Gothic overtones, and apocalyptic satire in order to study the matter of Britain, which indicates his rejection of collectivist politics. It examines his ‘open-field narratives’ in Downriver and the evident tension between agency and witness. It reveals that Downriver serves as an angry critique of Margaret Thatcher's policies and an ugly caricature of the prime minister as ‘the Widow’. This chapter also reviews the wider implications of Sinclair's small-press publication activities in the period between Suicide Bridge and White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings.

This chapter discusses the meaning and significance given to ‘borders’ by official Irish discourse when defining Irish ‘territory’ and European ‘space’. The model of national territory is of a physical, bordered polity made live by the narrative of a common homeland. The framework of European space is also constructed with the aid of an ideal model and narrative in which cross-border co-operation meets shared needs. This chapter explores the way in which the traditional and new frameworks, narratives, and models of the territory and European space have been brought together in Irish official discourse since the 1970s. It presents a summary of the traditional conception of the Irish territory with an analysis of the way in which this conception has been upheld in Ireland's approach to the European Union. The chapter concludes by examining how a ‘European’ notion of shared space has been present in Irish official discourse on Northern Ireland. The idea of changing barriers into bridges was one such concept that gradually became less contentious in the Irish context through reference to its ‘European’ inspiration.

This text highlights Cixous's notions and thought, which offer to an individual a very different picture of the subjects of divine love from that which derives from the concept of mutuality that is currently favoured in many feminist theologies. It has noted that mutuality undoubtedly challenges the underlying hierarchical power structures which have informed inter-subjective possibilities within patriarchal cultures and retains a commitment to dualism which undoes the very assertion that subjectivity itself is a relational concept. On the other hand, Cixous's attention to the epistemological conditions of subjectivity, that is, to the relationship between knowledge, self and other, and to the phenomenal conditions which open the category of knowledge to ways of living, provides an alternative foundation for rethinking the structure of self/other relations. For Cixous, as the text suggests, everything happens in the instant, and it is in a feminine approach to the instant that we find the passage to divinity which is truly paved with the love of the other as other.

This chapter analyses the views of George W. Bush on the issues of sex education, contraception and abstinence, and considers how his election campaign was influenced by these issues. It suggests that the Christian right secured much from the Bush administration's sex education policy and explains that the dramatic expansion of funding for abstinence-only programmes not only fulfilled the moral agenda advanced by social conservatives, but also created an influential and vocal constituency which had a direct interest in the maintenance and development of abstinence projects. The chapter argues that the character of public opinion influenced the decision of the Bush administration to give a great deal of political ground to the Christian right on the issue of sex education.

This chapter describes the various ombudsman offices, commissioners, and commissions that were set up in Northern Ireland under direct rule. It examines their structures, powers, effectiveness and inter-relationships, and compares them in relation to their uniqueness or otherwise in governance in the United Kingdom. It explains that action to safeguard against discrimination and respond to complaints became a major feature of direct rule and that the institutions developed were either ground breaking or largely followed models adopted from Britain. This chapter describes the structure and functions of some of the institutions including the Human Rights Commission, the Police Ombudsman and Equality Commission.

This chapter examines the ‘British poetry revival’ that Sinclair was engaged in when he wrote and published Lud Heat and Suicide Bridge. It considers the importance of William Blake to Suicide Bridge, and examines the factors that were used to define the poetic practice of the British poetry revival poets. It then shows how Sinclair adopted Michael Faraday's conception of the field for the purposes of cultural and social critique, and how Sinclair included the fourth dimension—namely time—in the Suicide Bridge. Finally, it shows how Nicholas Hawksmoor helped Sinclair reimagine London and its myths, and discusses Sinclair's troubling and conflicted understanding of the workings of myth and the scientific metaphors he used in his works.

This volume compares how the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) have responded to sustainable development norms espoused by transnational environmental advocacy network (TEANs). It examines the process and extent of environmental change within three institutions of the WBG and proposes a holistic and a dynamic account of international organisation (IO) change that recognises the mutual constitution of IOs and international norms promoted by non-state actors. This chapter argues that while lending patterns fluctuate, how the WBG promotes and practises development depends upon what they understand ‘development’ to mean.

This chapter presents an overview of public policy-making in Northern Ireland under direct rule. It discusses the degree of convergence and divergence in policy and legislation with Great Britain and examines the major influences on policy and the nature of policy networks. The local contribution to policy debates under direct rule was not so significant. Northern Ireland had a rather limited policy-making capacity and the policy community can be seen as limited to the Civil Service and senior professionals and administrators who were often strongly influenced by decisions in Britain.