Getting to Yes in Northern Ireland

Abstract

My emphasis is on the implementation of the peace agreement, the downstream after a peace agreement has been negotiated and signed, the output and outcome side of what is now commonly called the “peace process.” Peace agreements are to peace processes what policies are to implementation. Political scientists warn that “implementation changes policy,” an insight expressed crisply in the 1800s by an anonymous limerick author: We all place a great deal of reliance On the theory and practice of science But the hopeful intentions Of so many inventions Can be quite buggered up in appliance. (Parrott, 1983, 65) To list but a few explanations of the peace process, the agreement is “buggered” by excessively high expectations, by the Irish Republican Army’s (IRA) refusal to decommission weapons, by inadequate, one-sided policing, by enforced residential segregation, by ingrained habits of violence, by disconnected policy ideas, by neglect of root causes, by sectarian rigidity, by lack of a truth commission, and so on. Voter frustration in Northern Ireland (NI) is expressed through electoral shifts and has tilted toward unreconciled hardliners.KeywordsEuropean UnionSocial CapitalCivil SocietyCommunity RelationVoluntary SectorThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.