Abstract
Border arrangements are often critical to the successful negotiation of peace settlements and the broader politics of post-conflict societies. However, developing an understanding of popular preferences about these arrangements is difficult using traditional surveys. To address this problem, we used a conjoint survey experiment to assess preferences about post-Brexit border arrangements in Northern Ireland. We mapped areas of convergence and divergence in the preferences about post-Brexit border arrangements of unionist and nationalist communities, simulated the degree of public support for politically plausible outcomes and identified the border arrangements that both communities could agree upon. In so doing, we outlined an empirical approach to understanding public preferences about border arrangements that could be used to understand the degree of support for similar institutional arrangements in other divided societies.
Highlights
Border arrangements are among some of the most publicly recognised institutions in contemporary societies, governing both international relations and domestic politics (Diener and Hagen, 2012; Simmons, 2005)
Elites may end up negotiating with each other in relative isolation from public opinion, and it can be difficult for politicians to gauge the level of popular support for different peace or border settlement options (Lederach, 1997)
The methodological innovation that we propose in this paper is to apply conjoint analysis to identify citizen preferences about borders
Summary
Border arrangements are among some of the most publicly recognised institutions in contemporary societies, governing both international relations and domestic politics (Diener and Hagen, 2012; Simmons, 2005). To explore how public opinion in the region evaluates these characteristics of border regulation, we analysed the results of a survey experiment administered to Northern Irish citizens in May and June 2018. We gathered a sample of 759 respondents (age 18+)2 from the Qualtrics Northern Irish Online Panel comprising the unionist and nationalist communities, as well as citizens who did not identify with either group.3 Respondents were presented with pairs of hypothetical border agreements and asked to choose one.
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