Republicanism is not inherently radical. A republican ideology has provided the foundation for the 1937 constitution of modern Ireland, a decidedly stable, highly democratic and largely uncontroversial political system. Yet the 1937 constitution was written by Éamon de Valera who in 1921, in the name of ‘pure’ republicanism, fought against the decision of his former comrades to accept the Treaty offered by Britain to Ireland to end the War of Independence, which offered a limited Free State status rather than full independence. Even after being on the losing side of the resulting Irish Civil War over the Treaty, and with declining public appetite for ongoing conflict, de Valera continued to reject the legitimacy of the Irish Free State. However, with his decision to form Fianna Fáil in 1926 and to challenge the Treaty system from within, de Valera and his followers went through an important process of moderation. Significantly, this did not entail changing their values towards the legitimacy of the Free State or apologising for their history of violent radicalism.

The parallels with the transformation of Sinn Féin and the IRA in Northern Ireland seventy years later are striking. These two transformations highlight that the boundaries between moderate and radical strands of republicanism are not always clear-cut or self-evident. The transformation of radical republicanism in both instances was concerned with redefining republicans’ relationships with institutions and violence, while at the same time remaining committed to their ideological goals.

THE MEANING OF MODERATION

A moderate refers to ‘those who don't rock the boat and … ultimately they accept limited reforms that protect the power bases of the current elites’, while a radical ‘is typically used to label those who demand more substantive systematic change and strongly oppose the power configurations of the status quo’. In other words, the distinction is akin to that between revolutionaries and reformers. The process of shifting from revolution to reform is multi-layered and multi-dimensional, with a radical group moderating on some issues at a different pace than on other more resistant issues. While undoubtedly an important part of moderation is giving up revolutionary ways in favour of accommodation to the existing system, this alone is not sufficient to define moderation. In fact, it is possible that a party may only appear to moderate purely in order to win power and it may subsequently try to impose an authoritarian order upon society.