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Peter Shirlow, Twenty Years after the Belfast Agreement, Parliamentary Affairs, Volume 71, Issue 2, April 2018, Pages 392–394, https://doi.org/10.1093/pa/gsx028
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Twenty years after the Agreement with two names (Belfast and Good Friday) we have, following W.B. Yeats, shifted from the intensity of the ‘great hatred’ but remain confined in the ‘little room’. Hatred remains but the daily drip of sectarian and state violence has lost flow. Northern Ireland is always located in discursive moments. Tussling as it does with the main narratives and tropes of identity. The Northern Ireland Assembly has been part success as much as it has been part failure. It has been brought down by various scandals and an inability to square circles. Up until the Assembly election of 2017, that was driven by the latest scandal and the cultural war, the Assembly had successful driven ethnic tribune voting while at the same time delivering a greater number of non-voters. The great divide was as much to do with orange and green as it was ethnic tribune versus a rejection of the politics of war by other means. The Agreement’s greatest achievement has been the removal of the gun from Irish politics which is a seismic shift from what was a wearied and predictable series of events.