The People's Peace

The people made peace in Northern Ireland. After 30 years of failure the peace process there has been a great success. Dr. Irwin's contribution to that achievement was to work with the parties on a program of independent public opinion research and public diplomacy that allowed the people to be consulted and brought into the process at each critical stage of the negotiations. He has spent the past ten years applying those lessons in the Balkans, Kashmir, Sri Lanka, the West and Muslim World and 'War on Terror', Israel and Palestine, Darfur Sudan and the Arab Spring. In all the cases where peace polling has been used it has made a positive contribution to peace building and peace making but the ultimate goal of peace, all too frequently, has not been achieved. This book explains why and how such failures might now be turned into success.