Transforming a Divided Civil Society? Governance, Conflict Transformation and NGOs in Northern Ireland, 1970–2006

Abstract

In recent years, bureaucracy has come under increasing criticism. Branded as rigid, elitist and unresponsive to citizens, there has been a widespread effort to replace it with the apparently fluid, energetic and dynamic qualities of traditional social movements. This is one of the central goals of the public policy paradigm known as ‘governance’ which has gained considerable influence in the United Kingdom (UK) and European Union (EU).1 Governance is based, in large part, on fusing the public institutions and the organisations and actors known as ‘civil society’ within the realm of public service provision. In Northern Ireland, the development of governance was closely intertwined with peace-building policies, in particular the paradigm of conflict transformation.2 The policies that arose from these paradigms aimed to transform the social movements that were thought to generate conflict into a set of stable, community-based non-governmental organisations (NGOs), integrated firmly within governing structures and supportive of the ‘formal’ peace process. The marriage of the reforms of governance with conflict transformation is expected to satisfy the need for socio-political change that emerged during the Troubles, whilst the bureaucratic aspects are intended to undergird the formal peace-building process.KeywordsEuropean UnionCivil SocietySocial MovementCommunity SectorStatutory BodyThese 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.