There is No Alternative: Prospect Theory, the Yes Campaign and Selling the Good Friday Agreement

This article examines how the non‐party ‘Yes Campaign’ orchestrated the successful passage of the 1998 referendum for the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland. It argues that the Campaign’s use of strategies based upon the tenets of prospect theory – focusing on the risks of failure rather than the benefits of success – had numerous impacts throughout the six‐week campaign, ultimately resulting in the referendum’s passage with enough unionist support to insulate the Agreement from some degree of criticism. The article does this by tracing the Campaign’s main themes and the narratives surrounding their use by the Campaign itself, by other pro‐agreement individuals and parties and by their reflection in voter choices and rationales for supporting the Agreement. More than 200 documents were analyzed, largely focusing on news accounts, but also including books, journal articles, websites, images and interviews with key players in the Campaign.