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The 1990s has been one of the most momentous of the entire post-war period. Nowhere more so than in Northern Ireland where a 30 year war finally and painfully began to wind down - starting in August 1994 with the first Republican cease-fire and concluding over three years later with the historic Good Friday Agreement. But what brought the war to an unexpected end? Why did the IRA decide to abandon the armed struggle? And what are the chances for a permanent settlement to the Irish Question? These are at least three of the questions this wide-ranging study seeks to address. Written by some of the most influential experts on the history of the "troubles", the volume opens with a series of evaluations of the Good Friday Agreement itself, continues with serveral essays on the global dimensions of the peace process, and goes on to look at the impact of peace on Northern Ireland as a deeply divided society. Neither naively optimistic nor hopelessly pessimistic, the authors here paint a series of realistic pictures of one of the many peace processes that have dotted the international landscape, in the post Cold War era.