Norman Porter, 'The Elusive Quest: Reconciliation in Northern Ireland': (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 2003), 290 pp., £14.99, 0856407305

In this sequel to Norman Porter’s 1996 book, Rethinking Unionism, the author continues his task of attempting to persuade the competing factions in the troubled Province that reconciliation and politicaldevelopment are realisable. At the same time, he shows how much ground there is to cover before the divisions between the two communities are healed. Porter argues that there has been insufficientconstitutional and political progress, despite the great reduction in the level of paramilitary sectarian violence since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. The success of Ian Paisley’s DUP negativism in theelections of 2003 have since reaffirmed Porter’s argument that the major political parties continue to feed on a diet of hatred and social exclusion.