Progressive or regressive? The Anglo‐Irish Agreement as a dynamic in the Northern Ireland Polity

Abstract

This article seeks to compare unionist and nationalist attitudes to the Anglo‐Irish Agreement (AIA), in an effort to determine whether the Agreement has had a positive or negative impact upon the Northern Ireland community. It will be argued that viewed through narrow criteria the Agreement has achieved some success, but that its longer‐term objectives of securing peace and inter‐communal toleration are no closer to being realised today than they were in November 1985. A central theme within the text is that institutional frameworks such as the AIA are often unable to maintain their original strategic objectives due to the essentially reactive nature of government.