The intra-national struggle to define "us": External involvement as a two-way street

Three perspectives on the causes of communal conflict are visible in extant work: a focus on ancient hatreds, on leaders, or on the context that leade rs "find" themselves in. Leaders therefore have all the power to mobilize p eople to fight (or not to) or leaders are driven by circumstantial opportun ities or the primordial desires of the masses to resist peace or coexistenc e with historical enemies. Analysts who focus on leaders or context recogni ze that external actors affect internal conflicts, but little systematic re search has explored the processes relating the domestic politics of nationa list mobilization to factors in the international arena. How does the inter national arena affect the competition among leaders? How do skillful leader s draw in external actors to lend credibility to their own views? This arti cle asserts that leaders compete to frame identity and mission, and explore s the degree to which international factors affect whose "definitions of th e situation" are successful in precipitating mobilization shifts among pote ntial followers. A unique finding of this longitudinal study of Northern Ir eland is that the role played by international institutions and actors is a ffected by how domestic actors perceive, cultivate, and bring attention to the linkages between the two spheres.