This major new textbook will equip students with a complete understanding of contemporary politics, state and society in the United Kingdom today.

Key underlying themes include:

• The differences between traditional and alternative 'sites of power' and what we mean by 'political'
• the relationships between politics, society and how individuals become and remain engaged with politics
• the rapid transformations in contemporary social structures and their impact on social and political life
• the role of human agency and its significance to social...

A timely assessment of loyalist history, identity and community in Northern Ireland today which provides a comprehensive picture of how loyalism has reacted to changes since the Good Friday Agreement. Challenging simplistic stereotypes of loyalism this book provides a complex multi-faceted explanation of the loyalist imagination.

Drawing on over 150 interviews with former IRA, INLA, UVF and UFF prisoners, this is a major analysis of why Northern Ireland has seen a transition from war to peace. Most accounts of the peace process are 'top-down', relying upon the views of political elites. This book, available for the first time in paperback, is 'bottom-up', analysing the voices of those who actually 'fought the war'. What made them fight, why did they stop and what are the lessons for other conflict zones? Based on a Leverhulme Trust project and written by an expert team, the book offers a new analysis, based on subtle...

This volume is an exciting contribution to debates about identity and citizenship both in the UK and elsewhere. By examining the view from abroad, through popular cultural transmission, education, and travel and migration, the transnational nature of Britishness and the political and cultural dynamism of the concept and its contemporary relevance becomes apparent. The multi-layered relationships uncovered in this work have historically shaped both the transmission and reception of Britishness and continue to do so. The international group of contributors, from a range of disciplinary...

This book uses original research and interviews to consider the views of contemporary members of the Orange Order in Canada, including their sense of political and societal purpose, awareness of the decline of influence, views on their present circumstances, and hopes for the future of Orangeism in Canada.