'The Northern Ireland Peace Process transformed a violent conflict into a cold peace.'IntroductionThe Northern Ireland Peace Process describes the period of increasingly public and ceasefire negotiations which took place in the wake of the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985. It culminated in the bilateral Good Friday Agreement (the GFA or Agreement) in 1998, on which referendums were held with success in both Northern Ireland (NI) and the Republic of Ireland (RoI). The agreement became synonymous with the subsequent 2006 San Andreas Agreement and the 2010 Hillsborough Agreement as part of this process. The Agreement provided a consociationalist framework for power sharing in NI as a means of political settlement, requiring cross-community support for decisions through various mechanisms to ensure that no one party or community was able to dominate the Assembly. The reference to the consociationalist model, if necessary, is however not sufficient to grasp the complexity of the Agreement. A commitment to a culture of equality, a new human rights regime, reform of both the RUC and the criminal justice system, and an accelerated prisoner release program contributed to the uniqueness of the Agreement. However, almost sixteen years after the equality referendums According to the GFA, the Northern Ireland peace process remains incomplete according to most interpretations available to the "academic crows that feed on the carrion of conflict". Indeed, often, where the peace process is believed to have been completed, it is also believed to have failed. This essay will attempt to reason whether or not you continue on a path of progression towards a completed process, or whether regression and inertia have created a step back from completion. Measuring peace before 2010... half of the document.... ..bad transfers that undermined moderate players in the long game. Most people would agree that the triumph of hardliners such as Sinn Féin or the DUP is preferable to no devolution or a return to the “Troubles”. However, the more sectarian the parties in power, the less likely they are to address the high levels of segregation and economic inequality that continue to blight NI and prevent the end of sectarianism and the completion of the peace process. The optimal outcome can be traced back to a combination of structural weaknesses and inadequacies of the political class. Structural reforms, linked to a renewal and realignment of policy, are therefore necessary to rekindle the sense of common purpose that motivated the more idealistic supporters of the Agreement in 1998 and which has dissipated in subsequent years..