No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

If students of world politics can be reasonably accused of ignoring the Troubles in Northern Ireland—in part because they seemed to have little to do with the larger East-West confrontation and partly because they were so obviously about something distinctly national in character—then by the same token specialists on Northern Ireland can justly be accused of a certain intellectual parochialism and of failing to situate the long war within a broader global perspective. The quite unexpected outbreak of peace however only emphasizes the need for a wider understanding of the rise and fall of the Northern Irish conflict. This article explores the relationship between the partial resolution of the Irish Question—as expressed in the Good Friday Agreement of 1998—and the changing character of the European landscape. Its central thesis is that while there were many reasons for the outbreak of peace in the 1990s, including war weariness, it is difficult to understand what happened without situating it in a larger European framework and the new definition of sovereignty to which the EU has given birth.

This article examines agency responsiveness to mass comment campaignscollections of identical and near-duplicate comments sponsored by organizations and submitted by group members and supportersin administrative rulemaking in the United States. Focusing on 1,049 mass comment campaigns that occurred during 22 Environmental Protection Agency rulemakings between 2012 and 2017, the article develops and assesses expectations regarding responsiveness to campaigns relative to comments submitted outside of campaigns. The analysis demonstrates that, procedurally, the agency references mass comment campaigns in its responses to comments, but cites campaigns at lower rates than other comments. In terms of outcomes, the agency's regulations are generally not consistent with changes requested in comments, a lack of association that holds especially for mass comment campaigns. These patterns suggest that legal imperatives trump political considerations in conditioning agency responsiveness, given that mass comment campaignsrelative to other commentsgenerally contain little "relevant matter."