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Language policy in the Republic of Ireland has an unusual starting point: the geographical base of the Irish language is very weak and territorially dispersed, yet the constitutional status of the language is extremely strong. The article explores this paradox. It sets Irish language policy in two contexts: that of successful nationalist movements mainly in Central and Eastern Europe in the early twentieth century, and that of the struggling Celtic languages of Western Europe. It explores the evolution of the language and its weakening demographic status since the nineteenth century, noting that while its demographic weakness mirrors that of the other Celtic languages, its constitutional entrenchment resembles that of the national languages of Central and East European states. It attempts to explain this by suggesting that the language has played a marginal role in nationalist mobilisation; the language served as a symbol of a specific cultural heritage rather than as the vital lingua franca of the community. The central role of the language in nationalist ideology, however, failed to address the reality of continuing decline in the Irish-speaking districts, notwithstanding the emergence of a sizeable population of ‘new speakers’ of the language outside these districts.

Support for Brexit in Northern Ireland has been substantially associated with the unionist community, and has evolved against a backdrop of changing patterns of relationships between Northern Irela...

Electronic and electromechanical devices continuously emit electromagnetic (EM) signals while in use. These EM emissions (EMEs) contain unique spectral characteristics that can be leveraged for a variety of purposes, including identification of the device's unique EM “fingerprint,” and characterization of software processes running on the device. In this study, we implemented a novel method for automatic identification and characterization of these EMEs inspired by a classification/decoding scheme used to extract neural correlates of brain state from magnetoencephalographic data. Utilizing a sparse bilinear formulation of logistic regression as our “neural” decoder, we extracted device- and software-specific spectrospatial patterns from five identical Arduino Uno prototyping boards as they cycled through five program states. In the device fingerprinting task, we were able to discriminate all five boards from each other with near-perfect accuracy using this method. For software characterization, within a single device, we detected all five programs with 90% accuracy, and across devices, we were able to identify 3/5 programs with 99% accuracy, and achieving 77% accuracy for the other two. Overall, this neural-decoding approach performed well in all scenarios tested, and the corresponding EME “maps” it provides quantify the differences between device and software-specific EMEs in an easily interpretable way.

Prior to the eighteenth century, the words ‘pirate’ and ‘privateer’ had no comprehensive English legal meanings. Scholars today who attempt to determine who in history was a ‘pirate’ run afoul of this language problem; this article aims to clarify it by tracing the etymology of ‘privateer’ in late seventeenth-century English Jamaica, where the word saw a great deal of use. Seeing Jamaica as a laboratory for language use and legal development, rather than simply a site of problematic lawlessness within the empire, it reconsiders the consolidation of English state power at the turn of the century. This article argues that ‘pirate’, an ancient but ill-defined word in early modern England, generally referred to a sea robber who acted unlawfully, but that much lawful sea raiding also occurred under various names. In about 1660, the word ‘privateer’ was born, first taking root in the new English colony of Jamaica, where it referred to the island's growing community of private seafarers. After an Anglo-Spanish treaty in 1670, Jamaicans gradually conflated ‘privateer’ and ‘pirate’, a process that culminated in a law that promised death to both. The law spread from the periphery to the metropolitan centre, but English imperial officials, prompted by the events of the Glorious Revolution, repurposed the Jamaican words, clarifying and distinguishing them to exert greater control over state violence.

This article revisits a well-known dichotomy (the ‘territorial’ and ‘personal’ principles) and develops a four-element classification of state approaches (from the most generous to the most menacing, from the perspective of speakers of minority languages). The article examines the implications for language policy of geographically dispersed or spatially concentrated patterns of distribution of speakers of particular languages. We begin by exploring the general literature on language policy, focusing in particular on the territorial and personal principles, the use of ‘threshold rules’ at municipal and other subnational levels, and the hybrid language regimes that are often a consequence of sociolinguistic complexity. We consider the extent to which responses to linguistic diversity across Europe may be understood by reference to these principles and categories. We explain why we have selected particular case studies (the Baltic republics, Transylvania, Switzerland, Belgium and Ireland) for further exploration. We conclude that, notwithstanding the value of the typologies we consider, real-life cases are almost invariably more complex, with states implementing policies that defy categorisation, that may change over time, and that may treat different language minorities by reference to different principles.

Modern Ireland is a relatively wealthy and politically stable democracy, but it bears the deep marks of its route to this point. This introductory chapter draws together some key themes that run through this volume and profiles the core contributions of each of its chapters. The overall story is one of contradictory influences. The political institutions of the state, notwithstanding much innovation over time, retain a bias toward a remarkably strong executive. The long-standing weaknesses of social democratic electoral mobilization both reflect and reinforce a conservative and market-oriented tilt in policy priorities. The ideas that animate public discourse show a creative but sometimes problematic tension between republican and communitarian ideals on the one hand, and liberal ideas and values on the other. Ireland has assumed a confident role on the world stage and especially within the European Union (EU), but relations with its nearest neighbour, the United Kingdom, can often be problematic, not least because of the complexity of the politics of Northern Ireland. And while on many measures Ireland is among the wealthiest of the EU member states, this is not the lived reality for a great many of its citizens, and the nuances of why this is so need to be carefully assessed. Overall, this introductory chapter offers an overview of the whole Handbook while also making an original contribution in its own right.

This chapter assesses the political role of the President of Ireland, exploring the tension between the authority implied by direct election and the limited powers explicitly granted to the President in the constitution. It outlines the changing role of the President since the creation of the office in 1938, drawing attention in particular to the manner in which incumbents have pushed out the perceived boundaries of the office since 1990. It begins by looking at the manner in which the President is elected and the institutional architecture within which the office is embedded. It continues by exploring the formal constitutional and legal provisions that define the President’s role, evaluating the historical legacy that shaped the office in its early years. The chapter concludes by assessing the manner in which the office has been transformed, most notably by the three most recent presidents (Mary Robinson, Mary McAleese, and Michael D Higgins).

This chapter looks at the election and its aftermath from a historical and comparative perspective. It considers electoral turbulence in general as well as the decline of the two traditionally dominant parties. It shows how Irish voters are now relatively volatile in both historical and comparative terms. The changes that are associated with high levels of electoral volatility have fragmented the party system in a manner common elsewhere. This makes government formation potentially less straightforward as coalition is always necessary. The chapter considers how real these difficulties are, arguing that these stem more from challenges to political identities than from actual policy differences.

We empirically identify the considered views of the Northern Ireland public on the relative merits of two possible models of a united Ireland: an integrated united Ireland in which Northern Ireland is absorbed into an all-island polity, and a united Ireland in which Northern Ireland continues to exist as a devolved entity. We use data from a specially designed one-day citizens’ assembly. We report analyses based on quantitative examination of pre- and post-deliberation surveys and qualitative analysis of the transcripts of participants’ deliberation. We find that, after learning about the different two models, citizens’ support for the devolved model declined, particularly among Protestant participants. We elaborate the implications of our findings for any referendum on the constitutional future of Northern Ireland.

States exert their power over maritime predation only occasionally depending on prevalent circumstances. Historically, when states have perceived and attempted to address a problem of piracy, they have encountered severe limits on their abilities to manage private maritime enterprise in waters under their purported control. Despite the popular conception that piracy falls into the legal category of ‘universal jurisdiction’, such jurisdiction has only been employed sporadically. In reality, despite high-profile ‘terror’ campaigns against pirates, states regularly employed alternative means of suppression, including negotiation, legal posturing and co-optation. The four articles in this Forum provide detailed case studies of the occasional use of state power to regulate maritime predation in diverse waters and contexts. In these examples, states respectively negotiated with maritime communities in medieval England, sought a monopoly on violence in the South China Sea, collaborated with other states to police colonial Hong Kong, and dealt diplomatically with a local pirate hero to defend New Orleans. Across each article, the ‘state’ faced a particular problem of piracy, but could only occasionally exert power to manage it.

Analysis of the process by which a stable peace was secured in Northern Ireland after decades of low-level war and civil unrest suggests a number of features that account for this development. First, policy paradigms and the modes of thought in which they were embedded have evolved: debates about sovereignty, democracy, and equality have followed a distinctive path, from being wedded to specific cultural understandings to becoming broad concepts with application in a much wider domain than that of Northern Ireland. Second, these changes helped to bring the two sovereign states together in cooperative conflict management and peacemaking and permitted the formation of shared policy. Third, political, cultural, and ideological change has also facilitated limited convergence between parties within Northern Ireland. However, these processes of change have not seen the emergence of any consensus on Northern Ireland’s future, highlighting that region’s continuing dependence on effective British–Irish stewardship. Notwithstanding the achievements of the peace process, the new ideological currents unleashed by Brexit and the related political exigencies have exposed strains in Northern Ireland’s political architecture and have shown its vulnerability to stresses in the British–Irish political relationship.