"Times Higher Education" suggested in 2008 that Hart's work "offers a revisionist version of events that proved highly controversial". Hart denied he was a "revisionist", calling it "pejorative labelling". In his review of "The IRA and its Enemies: Violence and Community in Cork, 1916–1923", John M. Regan wrote:"Hart is neither a statist nor a southern nationalist, though the influence of both ideologies can be traced though his work. His research on localised and specialised topics subverts orthodoxy, but it is his willingness to embrace it when dealing with general explanations which surprises. His exploration of the plight of Protestants in the Free State illuminates the sectarian underbelly of the revolution that a nationalist historiography prefers to ignore. In escalating violence in Cork, Tipperary, or Dublin could Michael Collins, Harry Boland, or Ernie O'Malley be held accountable for raising sectarian tensions in Antrim, Down or Belfast? Was the cost of a southern state the institutionalisation of ethno-religious tensions in a compressed and reactionary northern state? Could revolutionary violence in 1922 and 1968 conceivably be part of one grotesque, protracted process? To accept this argument would, however, be to shatter nationalist icons important to a southern nationalist identity still rooted in its own glorious revolution."