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Challenge from the Peripheries

Comparative study of Sinn Féin and the SNP, theoretically the two principal opponents of the continuation of the present form of the UK state. What headaches do they cause its ruling parties?

Church Militant

Daniel Finn on Giuliana Chamedes, A Twentieth-Century Crusade. Unsparing account of the Vatican's political role in the European age of catastrophe.

Crosscurrents

After decades of hawkish neoliberalism, the British Labour Party has become the stage for an unprecedented experiment. To what extent has Corbyn’s leadership been able to transform Blair’s party into a vehicle for egalitarian renewal? Can his project survive the maelstrom of the UK’s Brexit crisis?

Erdoğan’s Cesspit

As the AKP’s crackdown on political dissent continues and Erdoğan’s autocratic ambitions become ever more apparent, his Western apologists lament the fall from grace of a man—moderate and liberal-minded—who never existed.

Luso-Anomalies

How and why has Portugal differed from Spain since the downfall of their respective dictatorships in the mid 70s? The course of political and economic development since the Revolution of 1974 was contained, and its current discrepant outcome: a conventional social-democratic government obliged to break with Euro-austerity under the pressure of a pact with the radical left.

A Guide to Successful Defiance

Daniel Finn on Diarmaid Ferriter, A Nation and Not a Rabble. History of the Irish revolution, between popular struggle and conservative nationalism.

Ireland’s Water Wars

Ireland’s status as poster-child for Eurozone austerity has been shaken by mass protests against privatized water charges, as the discredited Labour–Fine Gael government heads into elections. Daniel Finn investigates the rise of the movement and its political prospects, with local activists pushing beyond a cautious trade-union leadership.

Rethinking the Republic

Nowhere else in the West does a single figure occupy the same position in national life as the political writer Fintan O’Toole in Ireland. The first full consideration of the cursus and corpus of this powerful critic of the island’s establishment, and the society over which it has presided. Merits and limitations of another understanding of ‘republicanism’ in Ireland.

Order Reigns in The Hague

Daniel Finn reports on September’s Dutch election, where the Liberal and Labour parties rallied to prevent Holland following the Greek example. Origins and orientations of the Socialist Party that briefly threatened the Pax Bruxelliana, and strategic lessons for the left from its campaign.

The Soldier’s Swansong

Daniel Finn on Tommy McKearney, The Provisional IRA. Trenchant history of Irish republicanism by a critical participant-observer.

Ireland on the turn?

In a landmark study, Daniel Finn surveys the political and economic consequences of the 2008 crash, on both sides of the Irish border. Looming austerity and entrenched sectarian divides in the North; with the demise of the Celtic Tiger in the South, the unravelling of Fianna Fáil’s long dominance and emergence of a new-model Sinn Fein as the one all-Ireland party