Editor's introduction: Thirty years of "Irish Studies in International Affairs"Author(s): John DoyleSource: Irish Studies in International Affairs, Vol. 20 (2009), pp. 1-5Published by: Royal Irish AcademyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25735144 .

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Editor's introduction

Thirty years of Irish Studies in International Affairs

John Doyle

Centre for International Studies, School of Law and Government, Dublin City University

In addition to having a strong focus this year on the concept of the 'responsibility to

protect' (R2P), this issue of Irish Studies in International Affairs marks the thirtieth

year of publication of the journal?something of a milestone and one that provides an opportunity to look back over the development of the journal itself and the wider

study of international affairs in Ireland over that time period. A National Committee for the Study of International Affairs had been established

by the Royal Irish Academy in 1977, and the first issue of this journal two years later

published a series of papers from seminars and the committee's first annual conference. That issue, edited by Liam de Paor and Patrick Keatinge, had a focus that would not be out of place today?Ireland's relationship with the League of Nations and United Nations, Anglo-Irish relations, Ireland's development policy and the direction of Irish foreign policy. The committee that oversaw the launch of the journal included, in addition to the editors, some people who have retained a connection with the Academy's international affairs committee to the present day?Garret FitzGerald and Noel Dorr?and academics who went on to publish in the journal frequently in the following years.

The demand to publish the journal reflected a wider sense that Ireland needed a

greater level of academic reflection on foreign affairs. The low level of debate on

foreign policy matters was also of concern to members of Dail Eireann at that time. In 1978, a future leader of the Labour party, Ruairi Quinn, speaking in the first debate on foreign affairs after Fianna Fail's overwhelming victory in the 1977 election, called for a public debate on the values that should inform foreign policy. In the course of his speech, Quinn said that 'there appears to be a lack of interest in foreign affairs' and that in the past, even during the period of external affairs minister Frank Aiken's high-profile activity in the United Nations in the late 1950s, the decisions made in relation to Ireland's foreign affairs activities were 'of concern perhaps more to the individuals [involved] and the parties rather than to the public'.1 He argued that this was set to change,

by virtue of our entry into and membership of the EEC which includes the present situation where the nine member states are attempting to move towards common

lDdil Debates, vol. 306, cols 465-75,4 May 1978.

Author's e-mail: john.doyle@dcu.ie

Irish Studies in International Affairs, Vol. 20 (2009), 1-5.

doi: 10.3318/ISIA.2009.20.1

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2 Irish Studies in International Affairs

policy positions on major issues of foreign affairs, we no longer have to depend purely on our powers of persuasion. We have in a vague and perhaps ill-defined form a power which we never previously had, albeit a negative one, and to that extent foreign affairs is no longer an irrelevant luxury that can be talked out on a

Thursday afternoon by people who happen to have an interest in things beyond the seas. It affects us in a very real way...we have a responsibility by virtue of

having a say and therefore some power.2

There was at that time no parliamentary forum for consistent discussion on foreign affairs. Academia had been equally slow to formalise the interests of individuals.

While there were individual academics with an interest in international affairs, many of them involved in the launch of the journal, no Irish university offered a specialised degree in international relations at either primary or postgraduate level. Those who

gave impetus to the study of international affairs through the journal are due a debt of gratitude, as now, 30 years later, the formal university study of international relations is one of the fastest growing sub-disciplines in the broad social sciences/humanities area in Ireland. Students can now take modules in international affairs at every Irish university and have the option in a number of colleges of taking a full degree in international relations/studies at BA, MA or PhD level, and in

specialisms such as development, international security, peace and conflict studies or EU studies.

Such programmes are also available on both a full-time and part-time basis, and it is interesting to see classes in the universities now including a consistent stream of students from the Irish Defence Forces, the Department of Foreign Affairs, the

internationally linked units of the wider civil service and the Irish-based NGOs, who are taking formal programmes in international relations/studies at postgraduate level as part of their own career development. It is to the credit of the leadership in those

departments, organisations and the military that those professionals are often

undertaking formal studies with the support of their organisations, which have seen the value of investing in higher-level educational qualifications for staff. In the last few years, following the Irish government's adoption of an aggressive policy on 'fourth-level Ireland', with a target to double the number of PhD students in the Irish education system,3 we have also seen a significant increase in the number of PhDs in international relations being undertaken in Ireland. PhDs were once seen as a form of study only to be considered by those seeking an academic career, but students and recent graduates now include a significant proportion of military officers, policy advisers and NGO staff, as organisations seek to increase their own internal capacity to conduct high-quality and rigorous research in international affairs. Irish universities have also responded to this trend, and many PhD programmes in international relations now include structured training in research skills and

quantitative and qualitative research techniques, with the aim of producing more flexible graduates, who not only have a PhD-level expertise in the single topic of their dissertation, but also have the ability to be part of and lead research teams

working on a variety of academic or policy-focused research work. This development is reflected in Irish Studies in International Affairs, in that most issues now contain articles by scholars who are not working in a university environment.

The journal, launched in a context of limited formalised or institutionalised study of international affairs, clearly found a space in Ireland and has since gone on to

successfully establish itself as Ireland's premier academic publication in this area. There have been relatively few editors over the years?see Table 1?and the style of the journal has been relatively stable. From 1982 onwards (with the exception of one

2Ddil Debates, vol. 306, cols 465-75, 4 May 1978. 3See http://www.4thlevelireland.ie/ (7 September 2009).

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Doyle?Editor's introduction 3

issue) the journal has had a thematic section, in recent years always reflecting the

previous year's International Affairs Committee annual conference theme. From 1985 onwards the journal has included a review of the previous year's foreign relations of the Republic of Ireland. This was written by Patrick Keatinge until 1997 and has been authored by Nicholas Rees since then. An annual review of Ireland's

foreign aid was added in 1994, and remarkably has been authored by Helen O'Neill ever year since then. These reviews provide a unique and consistently presented series of data that has been of immense value to scholars over the years. In the years before the widespread availability of on-line sources they were often the only readily available source for the material presented. Table 1. Editors of Irish Studies in International Affairs

1979 Patrick Keatinge and Liam de Paor 1980-4 P.F. Doran 1985-93 John Bradley 1994-6 Michael Cox and D.J. Driscoll 1996-2003 Michael Cox 2004 to date John Doyle

The thematic sections of the journal, in addition to recording the proceedings of annual conferences, have served to provide a neatly collected set of essays on issues of topical or historical importance. They have provided a good source of expertise from academia and policy-makers and a neat introduction for students to the literature on a topic. They have also, since 1994, included an important annual

keynote address by the Irish minister of foreign affairs or the minister of state in the

Department of Foreign Affairs, providing another useful time series of data. Table 2 overleaf shows the wide range of issues that have been so addressed in thematic sections of the journal over the years.

In the last few years the journal, in common with most academic journals, has moved to allow full on-line access. A deal with one of the world largest data-banks of back-issues of academic journals (JSTOR) has allowed academic libraries across the world access to Irish Studies in International Affairs through their 'political science' and 'Ireland' collections.4 This allows access to digitised copies of all issues back to issue one in 1979. There is a three year 'moving wall', meaning that issues are automatically added to the JSTOR system three years after publication. Newer issues are available in electronic access from the Academy itself.5 Paper copies of the

journal continue to be printed and are available, but the electronic availability of the

journal has hugely increased its visibility and the ease with which readers can access the journal?wherever they are.

In parallel with the development of the journal, the Academy was also centrally involved through an initiative with the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs in launching the Documents in Irish Foreign Policy (DIFP) project,6 led by its executive editor Michael Kennedy. DIFP is an essential public resource for the study of

twentieth-century Irish history. The project aims to make the history of Irish foreign policy accessible to all, and promotes public engagement with the history of Ireland's international relations by publishing the text of key documents taken from the

country's archives. The published volumes of documents are selected from the

4The political science and Ireland collections can be accessed at: http://www.jstor.org (7 September 2009).

5See http://www.ria.ie/publications/journals/isia/ for previous issues of Irish Studies in International

Affairs (7 September 2009). 6The project website is http://www.difp.ie/ (7 September 2009).

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Irish Studies in International Affairs

Table 2. Special focus themes of the journal

Year Volume/issue number Thematic focus of journal

1982 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989

1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996

1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

2007 2008

2009 2010

1.3

1.4

2.1

2.2

2.3

2.4

3.1

3.2

3.3

3.4

Vol.4

Vol.5 Vol.6 Vol.7

Vol. 8 Vol.9 Vol. 10 Vol. 11 Vol. 12 Vol. 13 Vol. 14 Vol. 15 Vol. 16 Vol. 17

Vol. 18 Vol. 19

Vol. 20 Vol. 21

Neutrality European political cooperation Anglo-Irish relations The United Nations

Development aid Parliaments and foreign policy East-West relations and the new detente and

Perestrioka in the USSR The European Community '1992' programme Re-building Eastern Europe No thematic section

US-European relations

New forms of interventionism in world politics Nuclear non-proliferation The role of the United Nations in the twenty-first

century The making and re-making of Europe Small states and European security Human rights after the Cold War Ireland and the Kosovo conflict

Challenges to liberal internationalism Values and interests in the international system Conflict resolution: Ireland and beyond New world order? The 'War on Terrorism'

The fiftieth anniversary of Ireland joining the United

Nations?looking forward The rise of Asia in international affairs Russia's global perspective: defining a new relationship

with Europe and America The 'Responsibility to Protect' The politics of the global financial crisis

Department of Foreign Affairs archives collection and relevant material from the archives of other government departments held in the National Archives of Ireland,7

along with some papers of relevant individuals. Since its establishment in 1997, DIFP has published six hard copy volumes covering discrete periods from 1919 to 1941. All have been published to schedule. Volume VII (1941 to 1945) will be published in November 2010. In another successful e-scholarship initiative, volumes I to III

(1919-32) are freely accessible online on through the project website. Further volumes will shortly be added. These collections of papers are of immense value to

researchers?giving scholars who do not have ready access to the National Archives a carefully selected series of the key documents on Irish foreign policy. They provide a terrific teaching resource, allowing campus library and electronic access to original documents so that classroom teaching of foreign policy can draw on primary material on an ongoing basis.

7See http://www.nationalarchives.ie/ (7 September 2009).

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Doyle?Editor's introduction 5

ISIA 2009

This year's journal has a strong focus on the concept of the 'responsibility to protect', which was the theme of the International Affairs Committee's conference in 2008. It contains an opening address from Gareth Evans, then and now one of the world's

leading proponents of the R2P concept. We are also grateful to have a contribution from Minister for State Peter Power, TD, setting out the Irish state's perspectives on the concept. Col. Colm Doyle considers the international community's responsibility to protect civilians during conflict, examining the UN operations in former

Yugoslavia and emphasising the need now to bring the General Assembly's endorsement of the R2P concept to reality. Other contributions from academics David Chandler, Alynna Lyon and Jakkie Cilliers, Sabelo Gumedze and Thembani

Mbadlanyana (of South Africa's Institute for Security Studies) offer a very strong analytical flavour of the current debates on R2P; and in an article that was not part of last year's conference but that has relevance for this thematic section, Ben Noble

Frapin gives a interesting background to internal politics in Sudan and Darfur?

repeatedly invoked as a possible case where R2P might be applied. Samantha Newbery, in examining the intelligence aspects of the controversial

British interrogation techniques used in Northern Ireland in 1971-2, has written a

remarkably contemporary article based on material from the historical archives. Given the ongoing debates about the legitimacy, but also the dubious utility, of

intelligence information gained using similar techniques in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and in CIA detention centres, Newbery's article presents a sharp context using a case where (at least some of) the archival materials are in the public domain. Neil Southern provides a well-written ethnographic study of the micro level of religion and politics, primarily in 'Protestant' West Belfast. This type of study has become all too rare in the academic literature in recent years, and I am very glad to include it in the journal.

Paul Loftus's article, 'The politics of cordiality: continuity and change in Irish American diplomacy during the Johnson presidency, 1963-9', provides a good review of Irish-American relations in a neglected period?in the aftermath of the

Kennedy era and just before relations became dominated again by Northern Ireland. Michael Mulqueen has a very timely article on the merits and dangers of the newly introduced measures on allowing surveillance material from military intelligence to be used as evidence in trials in the Republic of Ireland. Finally, I am (once again) very grateful to Helen O'Neill and Nicholas Rees for writing the annual reviews of

foreign aid and foreign relations, respectively.

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