Does Violence Pay? Success of the Unruly and the Northern Ireland Peace Accords.

In 1975, William A. Gamson wrote his seminal work "The Strategy of Social Protest". Within this work, Gamson analyzes the use of violence and other constraints and their influence on a movement group's ability to gain benefits for the their group and acceptance as the legitimate negotiator for their movement. This qualitative paper analyzes the Northern Ireland separatist movement, with a particular analysis of the Good Friday Peace Accords and its surrounding events. I analyze documents, news stories, and several interviews in order to apply Gamson's notion of the success of the unruly to the Northern Ireland movement. I find that Gamson's notion of the success of the unruly is problematic in several respects when applied to the Northern Ireland movement. Findings indicate that the IRA and Sinn Fein are able to achieve some successes while violating several of Gamson's criterions for likely success. This paper contributes to the literature of social movement outcomes by applying Gamson's theory, developed through analysis of United States protest groups in a traditional democratic system, to other forms of government (parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy) and to a violent separatist movement in order to test its applicability to broader realms. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]