Brendan O'Leary
Biographic Data
| ID | 4532491 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Brendan O'Leary |
| GIVEN NAMES | Brendan |
| FAMILY NAME | O'Leary |
| SIGNATURE | LEARY B O |
| AFFILIATIONS | Lauder Professor of Political Science and Director of the Solomon Asch Center for the study of Ethnopolitical Conflict at the University of Pennsylvania |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 63 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 686 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 61 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1987 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2019 |
| H-INDEX | 14 |
A Treatise on Northern Ireland, Volume II: Control
O’Leary’s authoritative treatment of the history of Northern Ireland and its current prospects is genuinely unique. Beginning with an in-depth account of the scale of the recent conflict, he sets out to explain why Northern Ireland recently had the highest incidence of political violence in twentieth-century western Europe. Volume 1 demonstrates the salience of the colonial past in accounting for current collective mentalities, institutions, and …
A Treatise on Northern Ireland, Volume I: Colonialism
O’Leary’s authoritative treatment of the history of Northern Ireland and its current prospects is genuinely unique. Beginning with an in-depth account of the scale of the recent conflict, he sets out to explain why Northern Ireland recently had the highest incidence of political violence in twentieth-century western Europe. Volume 1 demonstrates the salience of the colonial past in accounting for current collective mentalities, institutions, and …
A Treatise on Northern Ireland, Volume III: Consociation and Confederation
O’Leary’s authoritative treatment of the history of Northern Ireland and its current prospects is genuinely unique. Beginning with an in-depth account of the scale of the recent conflict, he sets out to explain why Northern Ireland recently had the highest incidence of political violence in twentieth-century western Europe. Volume 1 demonstrates the salience of the colonial past in accounting for current collective mentalities, institutions, and …
The Twilight of the United Kingdom & Tiocfaidh ár lá: Twenty Years after the Good Friday Agreement
The Good Friday or Belfast Agreement was reached just over 20 years ago. This article introduces a special issue devoted to appraising its subsequent trajectory. It provides a brief resumé of the Agreement’s contents as a peace agreement, and as a regional consociation with confederal and federal possibilities. The outworkings and partial implementation of the Agreement are reviewed against a theoretical appraisal of the circumstances under which…
Orientalism
European social and political thought about Asia, the Middle East, and Islamic civilization has been called “orientalism” by its critics; it is seen as a subset of “Eurocentric” understandings of the world. One rejoinder to orientalism is to make counter‐accusations of “occidentalism.” These arguments are descendants of arguments about oriental despotism, oriental society, and the Asiatic mode of production, which were especially prominent during…
Walker Connor (1926–2017): A tribute
Walker Connor was born in 1926, and was contemporaneous with my own father, so not surprisingly he was a father figure to me. Unlike my own father Walker made it past 90. Those of us privileged to have been Walker's friend will miss his mischievous humor and twinkling eyes, and his fondness for combining rich conversation with craft beers. Indeed his son Dan told me Walker deliberately had a beer a couple of days before he died. All will be pleas…
Politics of Ethnic Conflict Regulation: Case Studies of Protracted Ethnic Conflicts
Europe's Embers of Nationalism
There are dangerous sparks and embers of national, ethnic, and cultural conflict throughout the continent, capable of causing new conflicts and reanimating old ones, but they are mostly subdued by historical standards
Power Sharing in Deeply Divided Places
This volume considers an array of power-sharing systems in divided cities and states, with critical evaluations of their merits and defects as well as explanations of their emergence, maintenance, and failings
Books by our Readers
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button
The Federalization of Iraq and the Break-up of Sudan
In 2005, after the making of the Constitution of Iraq and the making of Sudan's Comprehensive Peace Agreement, many analysts expected the imminent break-up of Iraq, and that the South Sudanese would eventually opt for federalism and power-sharing rather than secede from Sudan. Six remarkable parallels in the histories of Iraq and Sudan suggest that analysts should have predicted that the Kurds and the South Sudanese would have been equally ardent…
Must Pluri-national Federations Fail
This article questions the widely held assumption that pluri-national federations are likely to break down or break apart. It shows that the case against pluri-national federalism needs to be substantively qualified, and then outlines the conditions that facilitate successful pluri-national federations. The argument is preliminary in nature, but suggests a more balanced and nuanced account of the durability of pluri-national federations than is a…
Extremist Outbidding in Ethnic Party Systems is Not Inevitable: Tribune Parties in Northern Ireland
The ethnic outbidding thesis predicts centrifugal polarisation in ethnically divided party systems. We argue instead that the incentives of power-sharing institutions can encourage the development of electoral strategies based on ‘ethnic tribune appeals’ in which parties combine robust ethnic identity representation with increased pragmatism over resource allocation. We test these arguments in Northern Ireland and show that though evidence of dir…
Analysing partition: Definition, classification and explanation
Consociational Theory, Northern Ireland's Conflict, and its Agreement. Part 1: What Consociationalists Can Learn from Northern Ireland
In the first of two articles the authors show what consociational theory may learn from the case of Northern Ireland, namely, the importance of external agencies in making and implementing consociational settlements, the relations between consociational and self-determination settlements, the ‘complexity’ of internal settlements, the merits of STV (PR) in electoral arrangements, innovations in using proportional representation decision rules to a…
Debating Consociational Politics: Normative and Explanatory Arguments 1
The Future of Kurdistan in Iraq
Divisor Methods for Sequential Portfolio Allocation in Multi‐Party Executive Bodies: Evidence from Northern Ireland and Denmark
Some proportional representation (PR) rules can also be used to specify the sequence in which each party in a parliament or each member in a multiparty governing coalition is given its choice about (unique) desired resources, e.g., “indivisible goods” such as cabinet ministries or executive positions, thus providing an algorithmic method for determining “fair” allocations. Divisor rule sequencing using the d'Hondt method was recently used to dete…
Divisor Methods for Sequential Portfolio Allocation in Multi-Party Executive Bodies: Evidence from Northern Ireland and Denmark
Some proportional representation (PR) rules can also be used to specify the sequence in which each party in a parliament or each member in a multiparty governing coalition is given its choice about (unique) desired resources, e.g., “indivisible goods” such as cabinet ministries or executive positions, thus providing an algorithmic method for determining “fair” allocations. Divisor rule sequencing using the d'Hondt method was recently used to dete…
Political Settlements in Northern Ireland and South Africa
The chapter offers a comparative evaluation of Northern Ireland's Agreement and the one reached in South Africa, and underlines the differences between them. It argues that the analogy between Northern Ireland and South Africa should be read in different ways than it is by nationalist and unionist integrationists, and by social transformationists. It explains that the Northern Ireland conflict has important exogenous dimensions that are missing i…
Five Fallacies: Northern Ireland and the Liabilities of Liberalism
This chapter criticizes five popular arguments central to the thinking of liberal integrationists: (i) extremist political and religious elites are responsible for conflicts; (ii) conflicts have fundamental economic and material foundations; (iii) conflicts flow from archaic religious and non-religious political cultures; (iv) segregation is the key social and structural cause of conflict; and (v) individual discrimination is the primary motor of…
The Nature of the Agreement
The chapter provides a comprehensive constitutional and political evaluation of the Agreement of 1998. It explains that the Agreement is consistent with the four central pillars of consociational democracy, but it also addressed the self-determination dispute at the heart of the conflict through a number of complex federal and confederal elements, involving both parts of Ireland, and Ireland and Great Britain. The chapter has an appendix which ex…
The Conservative Stewardship of Northern Ireland 1979–97: Sound-bottomed Contradictions or Slow Learning?
The chapter gives an evaluation of the inconsistencies in the conservatives' approach to Northern Ireland under Prime ministers Thatcher and Major. It applauds the Conservatives eventual recognition that intergovernmental cooperation with Dublin was essential to the successful management of the conflict - even if it took some ministers nearly two decades to relearn what Conservative prime minister Heath had appreciated in 1973.
Globalization, European Integration, and the Northern Ireland Conflict
The chapter examines the effect of a number of changes in the international order on the Northern Ireland conflict. Its central argument is that while globalization and European integration have done little to transform Northern Ireland's rival identities in the way that some integrationists hope or claim, the internationalisation of Northern Ireland's conflict has had important and positive effects on conflict management.
The Protection of Human Rights under the Belfast Agreement
The chapter addresses a fundamental aspect of Northern Ireland's Agreement: the need to institutionalise rights protections. While a Bill of Rights should uphold traditional liberal norms of freedom and individual equality, an appropriately designed Bill also needs to entrench the basic political compromise at the heart of the Agreement. It should protect (or at least not endanger) the principles of inclusive power-sharing; proportionality; commu…
Extremist Outbidding in Ethnic Party Systems is Not Inevitable: Tribune Parties in Northern Ireland
The ethnic outbidding thesis predicts centrifugal polarisation in ethnically divided party systems. We argue instead that the incentives of power-sharing institutions can encourage the development of electoral strategies based on ‘ethnic tribune appeals’ in which parties combine robust ethnic identity representation with increased pragmatism over resource allocation. We test these arguments in Northern Ireland and show that though evidence of dir…
The Northern Ireland Conflict: Consociational Engagements
The book collects some of the major essays, past and new, of two of the leading authorities on the Northern Ireland conflict. The essays cover a wide range of topics, from the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, and the management of Northern Ireland by successive Labour and Conservative governments between 1974 and 1997, to an analysis of the 1998 Agreement, and the issues of policing and human rights reform in the aftermath of that agreement. The bo…
Consociational Theory, Northern Ireland's Conflict, and its Agreement. Part 1: What Consociationalists Can Learn from Northern Ireland
In the first of two articles the authors show what consociational theory may learn from the case of Northern Ireland, namely, the importance of external agencies in making and implementing consociational settlements, the relations between consociational and self-determination settlements, the ‘complexity’ of internal settlements, the merits of STV (PR) in electoral arrangements, innovations in using proportional representation decision rules to a…
The Limits to Coercive Consociationalism in Northern Ireland
The merits of consociation as a means of solving the Northern Ireland conflict are presented through contrasting it with other ways of stabilizing highly divided political systems. Why voluntary consociation has been unsuccessful in Northern Ireland and unfortunately is likely to remain so is explained. The signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement (AIA) must be understood against the background of the failure of previous consociational experiments. T…
An iron law of nationalism and federation: A (neo-Diceyian) theory of the necessity of a federal Staatsvolk, and of consociational rescue
The Conservative Stewardship of Northern Ireland, 1979–97: Sound-Bottomed Contradictions or Slow Learning
Oscar Wilde thought it took a heart of stone not to laugh at the demise of the heroine of one of Dickens' sentimental novels. The same idea arises when asked to re ect upon eighteen years of Conservative government on the politics of Northern Ireland. Solemnity is called for, but the oddities of these years mean that horselaughs are tempting. Remarkable inconsistencies or contradictions, as Marxists say, have characterized the Northern Irish poli…
Divisor Methods for Sequential Portfolio Allocation in Multi‐Party Executive Bodies: Evidence from Northern Ireland and Denmark
Some proportional representation (PR) rules can also be used to specify the sequence in which each party in a parliament or each member in a multiparty governing coalition is given its choice about (unique) desired resources, e.g., “indivisible goods” such as cabinet ministries or executive positions, thus providing an algorithmic method for determining “fair” allocations. Divisor rule sequencing using the d'Hondt method was recently used to dete…
Must Pluri-national Federations Fail
This article questions the widely held assumption that pluri-national federations are likely to break down or break apart. It shows that the case against pluri-national federalism needs to be substantively qualified, and then outlines the conditions that facilitate successful pluri-national federations. The argument is preliminary in nature, but suggests a more balanced and nuanced account of the durability of pluri-national federations than is a…
A Treatise on Northern Ireland, Volume III: Consociation and Confederation
O’Leary’s authoritative treatment of the history of Northern Ireland and its current prospects is genuinely unique. Beginning with an in-depth account of the scale of the recent conflict, he sets out to explain why Northern Ireland recently had the highest incidence of political violence in twentieth-century western Europe. Volume 1 demonstrates the salience of the colonial past in accounting for current collective mentalities, institutions, and …
Five fallacies: Northern Ireland and the liabilities of liberalism
Five fallacies in the misinterpretation of conflict in Northern Ireland, which are characteristic of liberal readings of ethno-national conflicts, are identified and criticized in this article: (i) blaming the conflict on extremist political and religious élites; (ii) assuming that the conflict has fundamental economic and material foundations; (iii) assuming that the conflict flows from archaic religious or non-religious political cultures; (iv)…
On the Nature of Nationalism: An Appraisal of Ernest Gellner's Writings on Nationalism
Ernest Gellner's is the best-known modernist explanatory theory of nationalism. This article summarizes its expression and development before considering its strengths and weaknesses. Discussion centres on Gellner's functionalist mode of explanation, the place of nationalism in his philosophy of history, the predictive and retrodictive nature of his theory, and the merits of his typology of nationalism. The apolitical character of his writings is…
Autonomy, Sovereignty and Self-Determination: The Accommodation of Conflicting Rights
Analysing partition: Definition, classification and explanation
The Dynamics of Cultural Nationalism: The Gaelic Revival and the Creation of the Irish Nation State
The Anglo‐Irish agreement: Folly or statecraft
This article analyses the significance of the Anglo‐Irish Agreement, and using research and interview material critically assesses explanations as to why it was signed. An interim evaluation of the consequences of the Agreement up to 12 July 1986 is made before considering the prospects of the Agreement's survival. A brief normative defence of the Agreement is also presented
The Federalization of Iraq and the Break-up of Sudan
In 2005, after the making of the Constitution of Iraq and the making of Sudan's Comprehensive Peace Agreement, many analysts expected the imminent break-up of Iraq, and that the South Sudanese would eventually opt for federalism and power-sharing rather than secede from Sudan. Six remarkable parallels in the histories of Iraq and Sudan suggest that analysts should have predicted that the Kurds and the South Sudanese would have been equally ardent…
Afterword: What is framed in the Framework Documents
The texts published in February 1995 by the British and Irish governments, known as the Joint Framework Documents (although only one document was properly joint), are scrutinized in this article. The documents show the extent to which both governments have learned to manage and analyse the conflict as nationally driven. They also offer the most imaginative texts produced by liberal democratic sovereign governments negotiating the future of a bi-e…
Frameworked futures: Intransigence and flexibility in the northern Ireland elections of may 30 1996
The elections of May 30th 1996 were a precursor to potentially extensive negotiations over the future of Northern Ireland. However, the rejection of compromise by even their chosen representatives among Protestant voters may effectively shackle attempts at negotiation. Protestant inflexibility over constitutional change, or the proposals for revised electoral procedures, power sharing, parity of esteem, or a North‐South body contained within the …
Why was the GLC abolished
A Treatise on Northern Ireland, Volume I: Colonialism
O’Leary’s authoritative treatment of the history of Northern Ireland and its current prospects is genuinely unique. Beginning with an in-depth account of the scale of the recent conflict, he sets out to explain why Northern Ireland recently had the highest incidence of political violence in twentieth-century western Europe. Volume 1 demonstrates the salience of the colonial past in accounting for current collective mentalities, institutions, and …
Intransigence and flexibility on the way to two forums: The Northern Ireland elections of 30 May 1996 and public opinion
The following article presents polling evidence on the attitudes of Northern Ireland's unionist and nationalist communities to options for a political settlement
Symposium on David Miller's On Nationality
Introduction: Reflections on a cold peace
The complete cessation of armed violence by the major paramilitary organizations in Northern Ireland provides an opportunity for academic reflection on the past twenty-five years of ethnic conflict. This article introduces a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies. It provides a brief account of how the shooting stopped, reflects on the quietist nature of much recent academic commentary on the region, explains the contents of the special issue…
Setting the Record Straight: A Comment on Cahill's Country Report on Ireland
The implications for political accommodation in northern Ireland of reforming the electoral system for the Westminster parliament1
There are strong arguments for Northern Ireland's members of parliament being elected by STV whatever the Jenkins Commission proposes for the rest of the United Kingdom
Theories of the State: The Politics of Liberal Democracy
This book offers the first accessible, systematic study of the five schools of thought that dominate modern political science in the West. The authors give an account of the intellectual origins and the methodology of pluralism, the New Right, elitism, Marxism, and neo-pluralism-concentrating on the models of political mobilization, state organization, and crisis that are posited by each. Dunleavy and O'Leary end with a strikingly original evalua…
The Anglo‐Irish agreement: Folly or statecraft
This article analyses the significance of the Anglo‐Irish Agreement, and using research and interview material critically assesses explanations as to why it was signed. An interim evaluation of the consequences of the Agreement up to 12 July 1986 is made before considering the prospects of the Agreement's survival. A brief normative defence of the Agreement is also presented
The Odyssey of Jon Elster
Jon Elster has made the story of Ulysses and the Sirens a central motif in his philosophical odyssey. In Elster's philosophy a paradigm of imperfectly rational behaviour is to bind yourself against the mast, as a precaution against the predictable weakness of your will which would otherwise leave you ensnared by the sirens. The use of literary analogies is frequent in Elster's work, whether he is Explaining Technical Change or Making Sense of Mar…
Why was the GLC abolished
The Asiatic mode of production: Oriental despotism, historical materialism, and Indian history
The Limits to Coercive Consociationalism in Northern Ireland
The merits of consociation as a means of solving the Northern Ireland conflict are presented through contrasting it with other ways of stabilizing highly divided political systems. Why voluntary consociation has been unsuccessful in Northern Ireland and unfortunately is likely to remain so is explained. The signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement (AIA) must be understood against the background of the failure of previous consociational experiments. T…
The National Question: Decolonising the Theory of Nationalism
Setting the Record Straight: A Comment on Cahill's Country Report on Ireland
The Dynamics of Cultural Nationalism: The Gaelic Revival and the Creation of the Irish Nation State
The Asiatic Mode of Production: Oriental Despotism, Historical Materialism and Indian History
Affairs, partner‐swapping, and spring tides: The Irish general election of November 1992
Autonomy, Sovereignty and Self-Determination: The Accommodation of Conflicting Rights
Inequality in Northern Ireland
Afterword: What is framed in the Framework Documents
The texts published in February 1995 by the British and Irish governments, known as the Joint Framework Documents (although only one document was properly joint), are scrutinized in this article. The documents show the extent to which both governments have learned to manage and analyse the conflict as nationally driven. They also offer the most imaginative texts produced by liberal democratic sovereign governments negotiating the future of a bi-e…
Five fallacies: Northern Ireland and the liabilities of liberalism
Five fallacies in the misinterpretation of conflict in Northern Ireland, which are characteristic of liberal readings of ethno-national conflicts, are identified and criticized in this article: (i) blaming the conflict on extremist political and religious élites; (ii) assuming that the conflict has fundamental economic and material foundations; (iii) assuming that the conflict flows from archaic religious or non-religious political cultures; (iv)…
Introduction: Reflections on a cold peace
The complete cessation of armed violence by the major paramilitary organizations in Northern Ireland provides an opportunity for academic reflection on the past twenty-five years of ethnic conflict. This article introduces a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies. It provides a brief account of how the shooting stopped, reflects on the quietist nature of much recent academic commentary on the region, explains the contents of the special issue…
Symposium on David Miller's On Nationality
Insufficiently liberal and insufficiently nationalist
Proving our points on Northern Ireland (and giving reading lessons to Dr. Dixon)
Intransigence and flexibility on the way to two forums: The Northern Ireland elections of 30 May 1996 and public opinion
The following article presents polling evidence on the attitudes of Northern Ireland's unionist and nationalist communities to options for a political settlement
The Conservative Stewardship of Northern Ireland, 1979–97: Sound-Bottomed Contradictions or Slow Learning
Oscar Wilde thought it took a heart of stone not to laugh at the demise of the heroine of one of Dickens' sentimental novels. The same idea arises when asked to re ect upon eighteen years of Conservative government on the politics of Northern Ireland. Solemnity is called for, but the oddities of these years mean that horselaughs are tempting. Remarkable inconsistencies or contradictions, as Marxists say, have characterized the Northern Irish poli…
On the Nature of Nationalism: An Appraisal of Ernest Gellner's Writings on Nationalism
Ernest Gellner's is the best-known modernist explanatory theory of nationalism. This article summarizes its expression and development before considering its strengths and weaknesses. Discussion centres on Gellner's functionalist mode of explanation, the place of nationalism in his philosophy of history, the predictive and retrodictive nature of his theory, and the merits of his typology of nationalism. The apolitical character of his writings is…
Frameworked futures: Intransigence and flexibility in the northern Ireland elections of may 30 1996
The elections of May 30th 1996 were a precursor to potentially extensive negotiations over the future of Northern Ireland. However, the rejection of compromise by even their chosen representatives among Protestant voters may effectively shackle attempts at negotiation. Protestant inflexibility over constitutional change, or the proposals for revised electoral procedures, power sharing, parity of esteem, or a North‐South body contained within the …
The implications for political accommodation in northern Ireland of reforming the electoral system for the Westminster parliament1
There are strong arguments for Northern Ireland's members of parliament being elected by STV whatever the Jenkins Commission proposes for the rest of the United Kingdom
Right-sizing the State: The Politics of Moving Borders
This edited volume investigates the causes and consequences of the politics of moving borders. The theoretical concept of right‐sizing the state is developed from Ian Lustick's theory of state expansion and contraction as a process of institutionalization of territory and borders. Brendan O’Leary contributes a taxonomy of modes of regulating ethnic conflict. The volume's reaming authors apply Lustick's theory and O’Leary's taxonomy to historical …
Political science (51 works) · Law (48 works) · Sociology (41 works) · Politics (37 works) · Irish and British Studies (34 works) · Law (26 works) · Political economy (22 works) · Philosophy (21 works) · Ethnology (19 works) · Economics (18 works)