ISSN 1062-7421
Vol. 11 No. 11 (November 2001) pp. 506-508.

HUMAN RIGHTS, EQUALITY AND DEMOCRATIC RENEWAL IN NORTHERN IRELAND by Colin J. Harvey (Editor). Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2000. 275pp. Cloth $50.00. ISBN: 1-84113-119-9.

Reviewed by Craig R. Ducat, Department of Political Science, Northern Illinois University.

Normally, one doesn't do book reviews unless one has been begged, but in this instance I thought I'd take a chance and volunteer. I have some familiarity with issues of constitutional law-chiefly in the American context-and I regularly have taught courses on jurisprudence and on British politics, the latter with a substantial component on Northern Ireland. I asked to review this book because I wanted to come away with a better understanding of the background, issues, and prospects for success surrounding the Good Friday Agreement from people well qualified to provide it. Most of the chapters in this book rewarded my effort, some handsomely; a few punished me, one of them severely.

The volume collects a series of essays that develop various themes that make the Good Friday Agreement both a distinctive and hopeful constitutive document, among them: how it challenges an understanding of the traditional unitary nature of the United Kingdom; how its specific features address the sources of conflict that have made Northern Ireland's politics so violent; and how it reaches beyond purely governmental and political structures to found a community of values accentuating equality and respect for individual human rights. The volume presents less an inventory of steps in a how-to manual than a series of investigations that illuminate major dimensions behind the Agreement, with specific features of the Agreement used as illustrations. In a sense, the volume asks what a modern constitution (as
opposed to a traditionally-understood constitution) must do to succeed, and it examines how well the Good Friday Agreement measures up, particularly in a
society riven by high-intensity conflict.

This is a volume for readers who are already pretty familiar with the terms of the Good Friday Agreement and conversant with the history and specific problems (economic, social, legal, religious, and otherwise) that have plagued Northern Ireland. Simply supplying a copy of the Agreement as an appendix won't suffice as background and nowhere in the book is there really a good, readable summary of the terms of the Agreement. This is a book for the advanced reader, then, not the neophyte. The text of the Agreement is there to enable the reader to more conveniently compare the actual text with contributors' observations, not as something you should check out first before you begin the book.

There are ten chapters in all, and several stand out. Gordon Anthony and Andrew Evans' piece on "Northern Ireland, Devolution, and the European Union" is particularly good for the insights it offers on how the law of the European Union treats or ignores-mostly ignores-political entities that are not nation-states. However, the chapter's examination of the EU's limitations in addressing the reality of multi-

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level governance is almost wholly focused on the EU. It treats the Agreement as but a jumping off point for an otherwise comparative focus on the issue across Europe, so the chapter-although very good-is almost tangential to this volume.

Christopher McCrudden's essay on "Equality" is a snappily-written exploration of what it means to "shift from an anti-discrimination to a mainstreaming approach," which he defines as "the principle that equality be seen as an integral part of all public policy-making and implementation, rather than as something separated off in a policy or institutional ghetto." "Mainstreaming" is distinguished from the brittle, negative, legalistic notion of what Americans call "intentional discrimination" or "de jure
segregation"- in other words, the conception adopted by the U. S. Supreme Court in its equal protection decisions of the last 20 years. Mainstreaming "concentrates on achieving equality rather than simply eliminating discrimination. [It] involves government proactively taking equality into account." One cannot read this chapter and fail to appreciate how applicable the approach is beyond the shores of Northern Ireland.

I found the chapters on policing, criminal justice, and the paramilitaries more nuts-and-bolts oriented, although I was struck by how-as is typical of all the chapters-they focused on the need for reconstituting the community of Northern Ireland along cross-religious, cross-gender, cross-everything lines that go well beyond the traditional, narrow, limited, legalistic view associated with merely reforming Government. These are chapters that could have appeared as articles in LAW AND SOCIETY REVIEW. The discussion of the sources of embitterment and discrimination (not limited to simply cleavages drawn along religious lines), the need for the appearance of even-handedness as well as its reality (symbolized in the importance of renaming the Royal Ulster Constabulary), and the impact of the monitoring of the paramilitaries by non-governmental organizations (such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch), enriched the focus on democratic renewal.

Best of all, I thought, was the concluding chapter by John Morison on the role of the voluntary sector in renewing society in Northern Ireland. Taking its lead from Foucault, the chapter is a fine essay on the nature of modern governance (where Government doesn't have all the answers and must make do with less money). Its exhortation of the "third way,"-that is, developing a partnership of the voluntary and public sectors in solving the community's problems-could have been written by British Prime Minister Tony Blair himself and titled "New Labour Looks at Northern Ireland." Although it uses Northern Ireland as the example, the essay is a superb presentation about the future of governance in the modern world. It ends the volume on a very high note.

Much less successful, I'm afraid, were the chapters by the volume's editor. In all, three of the ten are his and I found them wanting-maddeningly so in the case of Chapter 2. I gather the function of that chapter was to introduce, describe, and illuminate strands of the Agreement. In my judgment, it does these things badly. My quarrel is not with the depth of knowledge that must lie behind the piece, but the manner in which it is expressed. I found his chapters a deterrent to reading the book. Introductory pieces (the editor wrote Chapter 1 as well) to a book of essays written by others are understandably difficult: How to produce a framework
that

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will introduce and integrate the pieces of the jig-saw puzzle that follow without duplicating what is covered in those succeeding chapters. Depth of knowledge and great intelligence are not enough, clarity in presentation is essential.

In my judgment, the editor eschewed directness and clarity too often in favor of obliqueness. I found his chapters repeatedly marked by a far too-frequent use of the passive voice that obscured what was being said. The conclusory language that pervaded the sentences did not present or develop arguments but simply announced them. The editor repeatedly engaged in name-dropping of other scholars' work-work that was presumably both relevant and important-but without connecting it to the point being made. Footnotes substituted for explanation. The prose often conveyed the impression of observations being dropped from the heights of Olympus. Finally, the writer used vague language and undefined terms that too often left the reader holding a bag of empty generalities. I found myself repeatedly relying on my
knowledge of specifics to translate what was being said. These negative attributes frustrated my understanding and exhausted my patience.

On balance, I thought that my eagerness in reviewing the book was rewarded-well rewarded, even-and it increased the further I read. One can only hope, for the sake of all those who have suffered so much, that the general-if cautious-optimism of the contributors to this volume has not been effectively undercut by the recent mood swing, especially among the Protestants of Northern Ireland. In the June 2000 election for seats in the Commons at Westminster, it unfortunately needs to be noted, that the extreme parties, Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party (DUP)-the unforgiving and unforgetting opponents of the Good Friday Agreement-and Sinn Fein, were the big winners. Each at least doubled the number of seats previously held and the two parties increased their portions of the total popular vote by two-
thirds and one-third, respectively. The DUP moved from being the fourth-place party to second. The perceived moderates, the Social Democratic and Labour Party and the Ulster Unionists, were the losers. One can only wonder, then, what kind of future will be foretold in the next election of the Northern Ireland Assembly at Stormont and how much-or even whether-it will resemble the one discussed in this book.

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Copyright 2001 by the author, Craig R. Ducat.