Voluntarist democratic theory and the origins of the Irish civil war

Abstract

This article examines elite behaviour and the origins of the Irish Civil War by looking at the efforts of the Irish political elite to avert civil war in the period between the signing of the Anglo‐Irish Treaty in December 1921 and the outbreak of civil war the following June. It tests a central assumption of contemporary democratic theory: that political elites can always have a decisive impact of the fate of transitional regimes. More particularly it focuses on the making and unmaking of the Collins‐de Valera electoral pact and explains why tactics that have been shown to be effective ways of preventing conflict and stabilising democratic regimes, elsewhere, failed to prevent the outbreak of civil war in the Irish case.