The existing body of theory explaining how religion contributes to conflict is inadequate. This is because no existing theory is both sufficiently comprehensive, in that it describes most of the ways in which religion can become involved in conflict, and sufficiently dynamic, in that it takes into account the interrelationships between the various components of the theory. Also, few attempts are made to integrate such a theory into the general literature on conflict, and few such theories are tested, or even testable, in a large-n format (the use of statistical methodology to analyse a large number of cases in order to test theories and look for general trends). A more comprehensive and dynamic theory of religion and conflict is developed here based on the argument that religion has four basic functions in politics, society and conflict: to provide a value-laden belief system; to supply standards and criteria of behaviour based on that belief system; to organise adherents through its institutions; and to legitimate actors, actions and institutions. This theory is then integrated into Gurr's theory of ethnic conflict in a dynamic format that is testable in a large-n format.

The collapse of the Soviet empire and subsequent rise and spread of ethnic and national conflict in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe have sparked a wave of research on ethnicity and nationalism among scholars and policy makers alike (Brubaker 1996; Diamond and Plattner 1994; Greenfeld 1992; Horowitz 1985; Smith 1991). This recent surge of interest in ethnicity and nationalism particularly concerns the potential danger that ethnic nationalism poses to social stability and political developments such as democratisation. There is a strong tradition in the scholarship on nationalism, from Hans Kohn (1945) to Donald Horowitz (1985) which views political nationalism as civic, integrative and constructive while ethnic nationalism is dangerous, divisive and destructive. Ethnic cleavages are considered more fundamental and permanent than other forms of cleavage, and conflicts arising from them are therefore said to be the most difficult to deal with.

To a large extent, the Lithuanian nationalist movement of the late nineteenth century was founded on language. Although this is typical of many nationalist movements, the Lithuanian case was special because of the amount and type of attention that was focused on the Lithuanian language, and the qualities that were ascribed to that language. This article discusses the influence that scholarly research into the Indo-European language family, in combination with the romantic nationalism typical of the nineteenth century, exerted on Lithuanian nationalists, and considers the symbolic importance of the Lithuanian language for this movement as a whole.

The poets William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) and Chaim Nachman Bialik (1873–1934) were among the builders of their respective Irish and Jewish national cultures. Their lives and careers were in limited ways remarkably alike and throw light on the dynamics of cultural nationalism. Each emerged in an historical watershed, leading to the establishment of an Irish state in 1921 and a Jewish state in 1948. Though their circumstances, styles, receptions and fates differed, each represented a profound moral vision in an age of declining faith, expressed his people's sense of victimisation and exposed their weaknesses as he saw them. Each saw his culture as being humanist and universal, not narrowly nationalistic. Each identified with his nation for reasons that were in part intensely and disturbingly personal. Each found a poetic voice in a rich heritage of ethnic myth, legend and symbol but was conscious of tension between the need for self-expression and national demands. It is argued that the creative powers of both Yeats and Bialik were set free by the national movements of which they were a part, and that the national struggle for self-determination was, in effect, mirrored on the private scale by the poet striving for artistic freedom and originality.

This article, which is presented in two parts, analyses the changing conceptions of the status of the two sovereigns (the United Kingdom and the Irish Republic) whose competing claims to sovereignty over Northern Ireland has been the ultimate cause of conflict. In Part I (presented here) I adapt Ian Lustick's theory of state contraction and expansion to the British-Irish relationship as it affected the negotiation of the Sunningdale Power-sharing Agreement of 1973–1974. I argue that the failure to address the competing claims to sovereignty limited the possibilities of achieving and maintaining the consent of sufficient proportions of each ethno-national community. Part II of the article (forthcoming) will extend the analysis to explain the relative equalisation of sovereignty status between Britain and Ireland and presents a modification of a ‘liberal intergovernmentalist’ explanation of the evolution of the Anglo-Irish Agreement (1985) and Belfast Agreement (1998).

On 22 May 1998 Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland held successful referenda on the so-called Good Friday Agreement that provided a proto-constitutional settlement to the violence that had plagued Ulster for almost thirty years. This article analyses the prospects for a lasting, stable settlement in Northern Ireland. Experience has shown that construction, like reform, of constitutions and constitutional frameworks in deeply divided societies is no mean task. This article draws lessons from Canada's failed Charlottetown Accord (1992) to suggest that two fatal flaws – expanding the agenda to include the demands of multiple groups, and opening the constitutional process to mass legitimisation through use of referenda – can undermine political stability and the prospect of settlement. Canada, a country that like Northern Ireland features a long string of failed constitutional settlements, provides an excellent illustration of the problems involved. As is the case in Northern Ireland, the Canadian constitutional quagmire has grown out of the imperative to reconcile the rights of an entrenched ethno-national minority with majority rule. In both countries the traditional defining cleavage is ascriptive. In both, centuries of resentment, as well as expectations raised and dashed by constitutional failure, have led to political instability. In Canada, this has meant threats to the integrity of the country itself. In Northern Ireland the consequences have been even more serious.

Gellner, Ernest. Language and Solitude: Wittgenstein, Malinowski, and the Habsburg dilemma. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Modernity and nationalism are intrinsically linked. This verdict is shared by most scholars of nationalism, and even ‘anti-modernists’ subscribe at least partially to this view – although they prefer to focus on the doctrine's more ancient roots. But perhaps none better than Ernest Gellner (1925–95) has expressed this relationship with such a sharp rigour. For Gellner describes with powerful metaphors and ‘mathematic’ lucidity the emergence of nationalism following the shift from agricultural to industrial society. During this passage, the basis and legitimation of the social order mutuated from religious-theocratic to scientific-secularist forms.