Abstract
This chapter charts an in-depth description of how the European Union (EU) Programme for Peace and Reconciliation in Northern Ireland (the EU PEACE programme) was structured and implemented as a model for peacebuilding and regional development. It will reflect on how the initiative promoted the cross-border and peacebuilding activities of networks. Such activity, implemented from the bottom-up, gave functional value to regional cross-border governance and helped to ameliorate conflict by providing positive-sum outcomes for cross-community relations. This chapter argues that EU officials, civil servants, and policy networks in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, embraced a networked style of metagovernance as a means to implement the PEACE initiatives. Administration and policy-processes must be understood as interaction processes in which actors at all levels exchange information about problems, preferences, trade-off goals, and resources. At the same time, networks and grassroot organisations, while supported by the EU in their attempts at carving out a role for themselves in the peace process, were subjected to the omnipresent ‘hand’ of the national governments, which fits with the metagovernance perspective.
Published Version
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call