This book examines the post-ceasefire evolutions and histories of the main Irish republican terrorist factions, and the interconnected character of politics and militarism within them. Offering the first comparative study of the two leading Irish republican terrorist movements the Official IRA and the Provisional IRA (PIRA), this book presents the lesser-known Officials? political-military evolution and analyses whether they could have been role models for the Provisionals. Not only does it compare the terrorism and the politics of the Officials and Provisionals in the aftermath of their seminal ceasefires of 1972 and 1994, it also presents the Irish republican history in a new light and brings to the fore the understudied and disregarded Officials who called their seminal ceasefire twenty-two years before their rivals in 1972. In doing this, the work discusses whether the PIRA might have learned lessons from the bitter and ultimately unsuccessful experience of the Officials.