Indivisible Territory and the Politics of Legitimacy: Jerusalem and Northern Ireland
Cambridge University Press, 9/21/2009
EAN 9780521439855, ISBN10: 052143985X
Hardcover, 304 pages, 23.5 x 15.8 x 2.5 cm
Language: English
In Jerusalem and Northern Ireland, territorial disputes have often seemed indivisible, unable to be solved through negotiation, and prone to violence and war. This book challenges the conventional wisdom that these conflicts were the inevitable result of clashing identities, religions, and attachments to the land. On the contrary, it was radical political rhetoric, and not ancient hatreds, that rendered these territories indivisible. Stacie Goddard traces the roots of territorial indivisibility to politicians' strategies for legitimating their claims to territory. When bargaining over territory, politicians utilize rhetoric to appeal to their domestic audiences and undercut the claims of their opponents. However, this strategy has unintended consequences; by resonating with some coalitions and appearing unacceptable to others, politicians' rhetoric can lock them into positions in which they are unable to recognize the legitimacy of their opponent's demands. As a result, politicians come to negotiations with incompatible claims, constructing territory as indivisible.
1. Introduction
2. Constructing indivisibility
a legitimation theory of indivisible territory
Part I. Constructing an Indivisible Ireland
3. Home rule
a divisible Ireland
4. Ulster will fight
the orange card and an indivisible Ireland
Part II. Jerusalem, the Eternal, Indivisible City
5. Dividing the holy city
6. Jerusalem, indivisible
7. How Northern Ireland became divisible (and why Jerusalem has not)
Conclusion.
'Stacie Goddard's book makes a sophisticated contribution to the literature on legitimacy in international politics and takes an especially significant step forward in bridging rationalist and constructivist approaches to international conflict and cooperation. Goddard deftly uses network theory to develop hypotheses about the effects of legitimation rhetoric on bargaining, and she provides a pathbreaking articulation of the causal mechanisms at work in the process by which certain territories come to be seen as indivisible.' Mlada Bukovansky, Smith College