University of Liverpool Department of Politics
Professor Jon Tonge Professor of Politics

Research§ 02

Northern Ireland politics

Northern Ireland has been the central subject of my research since the 1990s: its parties, its institutions, the peace process that produced them, and the identities that shape how people vote. The work is empirical and survey-based, and deliberately covers unionism, nationalism and those who claim neither.

Strand § 02.1

Political parties

A sequence of books, each grounded in original membership surveys and interviews, has examined the parties in turn: the Democratic Unionist Party (2014), the Ulster Unionist Party (2019) and the Alliance Party (2024), alongside earlier work on Sinn Féin and the SDLP. The aim across the series is the same — to describe what party members actually think, rather than what their leaderships say.

Strand § 02.2

Institutions and reform

Power-sharing has repeatedly stalled since 1998. My recent work examines why the 1998 institutional design now struggles, and what could be changed without reopening the Agreement itself. I gave oral and written evidence to the Northern Ireland Assembly's Executive Review Committee on institutional reform in 2025, and to the House of Commons Northern Ireland Affairs Committee in 2018 and 2024.

Strand § 02.3

Identity and the constitutional question

Survey work on national identity, on how far a shared sense of ‘Northern Irishness’ has emerged since the Good Friday Agreement, and on the growing bloc of voters who describe themselves as neither unionist nor nationalist — including what they want from any future border poll.

Strand § 02.4

Peace process and conflict transformation

Comparative Peace Processes (Polity, 2014) sets Northern Ireland alongside other cases of negotiated settlement. Related work covers republican and loyalist former prisoners and conflict transformation, dissident republicanism and its lack of an electoral mandate, and the Orange Order and Britishness.

Books § 02.5

Books on Northern Ireland

All books

2011

Loyal to the Core? Orangeism and Britishness in Northern Ireland

Irish Academic Press, 2011

with James McAuley and Andrew Mycock

Book

2008

Irish Protestant Identities

Manchester University Press, 2008

edited with Mervyn Busteed and Frank Neal

Edited book

2006

Northern Ireland

Polity, 2006

Book

Evidence § 02.6

Evidence to legislatures on Northern Ireland

All policy evidence

Oral and written evidence given to committees at Stormont, Westminster, the Oireachtas and the European Parliament.

2025

Executive Review Committee

Northern Ireland Assembly · Institutional reform · Oral and written

2018, 2024

Northern Ireland Affairs Committee

House of Commons · Various aspects of democratic reform · Oral and written

2018

Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee

House of Commons · Oral

2017

Committee on Constitutional Affairs

European Parliament · The implications of Brexit for Northern Ireland · Oral and written

2017

European Union Committee

House of Lords · Brexit: devolution inquiry · Oral and written

2017

Defence Committee

House of Commons · Public attitudes towards amnesties, truth, reconciliation and the identification and treatment of victims in Northern Ireland · Written

2010

Dáil Éireann Constitutional Committee

Oireachtas · Votes at 16 · Oral and written

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Joint Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement

Oireachtas · Oral and written

Reading § 02.7

Recent articles on Northern Ireland

Full publication record