Brendan O’Leary is Lauder Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. John McGarry is Professor of Political Studies at Queen’s University, Canada, and Canada Research Chair in Nationalism and Democracy.

• Introduction1. Auditing the Antagonism2. The Colonial Roots of Antagonism: Fateful Triangles in Ulster, Ireland, and Britain, 1609-19203. Exercising Control: The Second Protestant Ascendancy, 1920-24. Losing Control: The Collapse of the Unionist Regime, 1963-725. Deadlock, 1972-85: The Limits to British Arbitration6. The Meaning(s) and Making of the Anglo-Irish Agreement: An Experiment in Coercive Consociationalism7. The Impact of the Anglo-Irish Agreement, 1985-9: The Limits to Coercive Consociationalism8. Transcending Antagonism? Resolving Northern Ireland in the 1990s9. Epilogue: The Brooke Initiative and After, 1990-10. Postscript: A Tract of Time between War and Peace11. Addendum: War about Talks, and Talks about War, February-March 1996GlossaryBibliographySubject IndexNames Index