Northern Ireland Peace Process Research Articles

Marilynn Richtarik, Getting to Good Friday: Literature and the Peace Process in Northern Ireland

Marilynn Richtarik, <i>Getting to Good Friday: Literature and the Peace Process in Northern Ireland</i>

Young people with LGB identity and their sense of belonging: Evidence from Northern Ireland – A society emerging from violent social conflict

In 2023 Northern Ireland celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Belfast Good Friday Agreement (GFA) which is regarded as a milestone of the Northern Ireland peace process. Via the 1998 Northern Ireland Act, the peace process saw equality and anti-discrimination legislation being implemented in Northern Ireland that legislates that public authorities must carry out their duties with due regard to equality of opportunity, including between persons of different sexual orientations and gender identities. Using time series data from 2013 to 2023 taken from the annual Young Life and Times (YLT) survey conducted among a randomized sample of 16-year olds in Northern Ireland (N = 15,162), this article explores the extent to which same-sex attracted young women and men express a sense of belonging to, and influence in, their local neighborhoods and Northern Ireland. We argue that the sense of belonging and influence can be used as suitable policy indicators to assess how same-sex attracted young people fare in Northern Ireland, a society emerging from significant violent conflict. The YLT dataset allows us to track, if any change in attitudes can be detected over the last decade. Our analysis shows that there was an increase in the proportion of young people, especially among young women, expressing same-sex attraction. However, our study also indicates that, regardless of gender, LGB 16-year olds consistently felt a lesser sense of belonging and influence than their non-LGB individuals. We found no LGB-specific differences among respondents with different religious affiliations. LGB respondents disproportionately rejected both Protestant and Catholic faiths and community affiliations, unlike their non-LGB counterparts. Our findings are a strong indicator that religion still plays a major part in the relationship between ethno-national communities in Northern Ireland and that there still is a long way to go until LGB young people feel valued and feel that they belong.

Marilynn Richtarik, Getting to Good Friday: Literature and the Peace Process in Northern Ireland

Marilynn Richtarik, Getting to Good Friday: Literature and the Peace Process in Northern Ireland

Learning Behind Bars: How IRA Prisoners Shaped the Peace Process in Northern Ireland by Dieter Reinisch (review)

Learning Behind Bars: How IRA Prisoners Shaped the Peace Process in Northern Ireland by Dieter Reinisch (review)

Power Sharing in Deeply Divided Societies: Consociationalism in Wonderland and the Northern Ireland Peace Process

Consociationalists have claimed nearly 50 successful cases of conflict management. This article argues that Classic Consociationalism has been constantly revised so that the theory has become ambiguous, incoherent, and even contradictory. Consociationalists have entered Wonderland in the sense that their theory now appears to be anything that they want it to be. Paradoxically, theoretical incoherence has made Consociationalism academically powerful because the theory can be marketed as all things to all people. Consociational theorists have revised their theory to claim a successful Northern Ireland case study and used its academic prestige to advance an anti-unionist political agenda.

Civil Society Organizations, the Good Friday Agreement, and the Northern Ireland Peace Process

Abstract A qualitative methodology was used to interview 120 participants from 2010 and 29 participants from 2020 who shared their experiences and perceptions about the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) and their peacebuilding work. Longitudinal findings reveal that the participants were critical of the Agreement and the disconnect between politicians and the grassroots as well as recognizing that the Agreement has brought about relative peace in Northern Ireland. While the participants attest to the relative success of the GFA, they also note several criticisms including sectarian politics, new paramilitaries, Brexit, legacy of the past, continuing divisions in Northern Ireland, and the disconnect between politicians and local community peacebuilders. The participants’ criticisms are significant as they attest that while the social peace at the grassroots level is moving forward the political peace is not as evidenced by the recent Unionist backlash against Brexit.

Marginalized Voices and the Good Friday Agreement: Inclusion and the Northern Ireland Peace Process

Abstract This article explores building transnational queer and disabilities communities, disability-queer peace, and disability-queer activism in post-peace accord Northern Ireland (NI). Through in-person and virtual interviews with activists, staff, and leaders who are disabled, queer, and/or in allyship, it became clear in the data that respondents were ashamed, frustrated, and sad that ableism and queerphobia continues in NI. Attacks on disabled and LGBTQIA+ people have escalated as a result of the Brexit fallout and the COVID-19 pandemic that negatively impacted marginalized communities that are targeted by legal exclusion, discriminatory, and hateful practices as well as structural and interpersonal violence. Dialogue, diversity, and inclusive practices and policies and a political system that benefits all NI citizens are crucial to building sustainable peace in NI.

The international significance of the Northern Ireland peace process: Revisiting the lessons 25 years after the Good Friday Agreement

This article revisits scholarly, political, and practitioner debates surrounding the international implications of the Northern Ireland peace process: the so-called lessons. It begins by reviewing the literature on the epistemological and political dimensions of comparing conflicts. It identifies three different approaches to learning from peace processes. These are termed analytical-technical, political-strategic, and educative-psychological. The article applies this framework to Northern Ireland, assessing the conduct, potential, and challenges of each approach. The analysis draws on academic and political sources, as well as unique primary research on ‘lesson-sharing’ dialogues. The article discusses how the educative-psychological approach – which has been the dominant mode of lesson learning/sharing in Northern Ireland and is under-researched – demonstrates the potential for local-to-local connections to support ongoing learning within peace processes. Applying the threefold framework to other peace arenas can further advance understanding of the global dissemination of conflict resolution knowledge.

The European Dimension of the ‘talks process’ in Northern Ireland

Abstract Analysis of efforts to develop peace in Northern Ireland often attributes the foundation of the peace process to the dialogue between the then Sinn Fein president, Gerry Adams, and the Social Democratic and Labour Party’s (SDLP) former leader, John Hume, in the late 1980s. However, it has been recognized that attempts to forge peace have a longer timeline, involving the interplay of several national and international historical contexts in which the European Community (EC) / European Union (EU) dimension and the role of the EU institutions in restoring peace and reconciliation has been generally neglected. The objective of this article is therefore to examine the European dimension of the Northern Ireland talks process, addressing the whole range of relationships affecting the political stalemate in the years preceding the signing of Belfast/Good Friday Agreement (GFA). Drawing on never-before-seen United Kingdom (UK) government and EC/EU archival documents and semi-structured élite interviews, this article highlights how the original dialogue on power-sharing and devolution in Northern Ireland included a much stronger EU dimension that it is publicly acknowledged. This article constitutes an emblematic case-study on the ‘Europeanisation’ of British politics in Northern Ireland, with findings uncovering a new and subtle dimension of the EC/EU role in the Northern Ireland peace process.

From the Beltway to Belfast: The Clinton Administration, Sinn Féin, and the Northern Ireland Peace Process

From the Beltway to Belfast: The Clinton Administration, Sinn Féin, and the Northern Ireland Peace Process

Choreographed Fan Displays: The Case of Israeli Sports

Choreographed Fan Displays: The Case of Israeli Sports

The Power of Voice: Storytelling as Peacebuilding in Post-Troubles Northern Ireland

The Northern Ireland peace process has been long and tumultuous, yet 20 years after the Good Friday Agreement, peace has not become a reality for many Northern Irish citizens. For those who have been excluded from the state and the institution-led peace process, grassroots methods of peacebuilding are needed to create an everyday peace that is owned by and includes all Northern Irish citizens. A narrative approach to peacebuilding is one that addresses many of the challenges to everyday peace following the “Troubles.” By exploring the use and impact of storytelling and narrative on everyday experiences, the narrative approach proves to be a viable tool for elevating and giving ownership of the peace process to marginalized members of Northern Irish society.

SERVING DIVIDED COMMUNITIES: CONSOCIATIONALISM AND THE EXPERIENCES OF PRINCIPALS OF SMALL RURAL PRIMARY SCHOOLS IN NORTHERN IRELAND

ABSTRACT Previous studies suggest that small rural schools experience a range of challenges relating to their size, financial difficulties and geographical isolation, as well as potential opportunities relating to their position within their communities. In Northern Ireland, these schools are situated within the comparatively rare context of a religiously divided school system. However, research on these schools in this jurisdiction is scarce. The notion of consociationalism is highlighted as central to an understanding of the prevailing schooling system and the peace process in Northern Ireland as a post-conflict society. Set against this backdrop, the paper reports on a survey of principals of small rural schools in Northern Ireland; the challenges they face and their engagement with the communities they serve. The findings reveal how these small rural primary schools, while encountering many similar challenges to such schools globally, continue to play a central consociational role in serving their respective divided communities. Their relationship with the Church is seen as particularly important. The findings raise important broader questions as to the extent to which the current system of schooling is able to contribute to the building of a more integrated society.

Building Peace in Northern Ireland: Hopes for the Future

Since the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, over 2 billion Euros have been poured into Northern Ireland for peacebuilding. This article presents the hopes and experiences of workers in CSOs funded by either or both funds, development officers, and civil servants employed by the funders. They confirm that peacebuilding and reconciliation projects funded by the European Union (EU) Peace and Reconciliation Fund and the International Fund for Ireland (IFI) have positively contributed to the peace process in Northern Ireland. Civil Society Organizational (CSO) projects support peacebuilding, reconciliation, and greater cooperation between the Protestant and Catholic communities. This study explored the perceptions of 120 respondents working with these funders. They indicated that designated peacebuilding funding promotes bridging, needs to be balanced, and is important to building the peace dividend and that local knowledge, practices, and skillsets should be built into the funding process. The politics of post-Brexit Northern Ireland means that understanding how to best fund peacebuilding and reconciliation is critical. At time of writing, tensions have risen.

Credit positive or negative? Credit rating agencies’ framing of Brexit’s implications for the Republic of Ireland, the United Kingdom, the EU, and the Northern Ireland peace process

ABSTRACT Among Brexit’s implications was its potential to destabilise the Northern Ireland peace process, cast doubt on the future status of the Irish border, and weaken the constitutional integrity of both the UK and the EU. A less publicly visible aspect of Brexit, however, was the weight such implications carried in how international credit rating agencies evaluated the creditworthiness of the EU, the UK, and the other state most affected by the Leave vote, the Republic of Ireland (ROI). A frames analysis of the agencies’ discourse during the withdrawal period, from 2016 to 2020, suggested that their privileging of market perspectives had the effect of shaping but also of limiting their engagement with Brexit’s socio-cultural, identity and political implications for the border and the peace process. In particular, the agencies drew weak discursive links between Brexit as an instance of EU disintegration and its implications for the peace process and for the ROI’s shifting geopolitical relations as a continuing member state. This was further reflected in the agencies’ tendency to underplay socio-cultural, identity and political implications in their discourse on potential future processes of UK and EU disintegration.

‘The Troubles’ and the Peace Process in Northern Ireland in Seamus Heaney’s "The Cure at Troy"

Based on "Philoctetes", the tragic play by Sophocles, the poet Seamus Heaney creates his own version in "The Cure at Troy" to present the political and social problems in Northern Ireland during the period that became known euphemistically as ‘the Troubles’. This paper aims to highlight the significance of Heaney’s play in the final years of the conflict. Heaney uses the classical Greek play to bring to light the plight and suffering of the Northern Irish people as a consequence of the atavistic and sectarian violence between the unionist and nationalist communities. Nevertheless, Heaney also provides possible answers that allow readers to harbour a certain degree of hope towards peace and the future in Northern Ireland.

Bringing politics back in: interpretations of the peace process and the security challenge in Northern Ireland

ABSTRACT There are contrasting interpretations of the Northern Ireland peace process which have competing implications for the lessons to be drawn from the conflict. This article offers a Constructivist Realist critique of three leading perspectives on the peace process: Neoconservative, Cosmopolitan and Conservative Realists (or Consociationalists). The Neoconservative perspective emphasises the importance of security policy in defeating terrorists before negotiations. By contrast, Cosmopolitans and Conservative Realists emphasise the importance of constitutions and tend to ignore security. Constructivist Realists argue that all three accounts are over-generalised, provide inadequate understandings of politics and, therefore, the relative success of the peace process.

‘Attempting to deal with the past’: historical inquiries, legacy prosecutions, and Operation Banner

ABSTRACT Over the summer of 2019 a number of maroon banners appeared across towns and cities in Northern Ireland, declaring that the local population ‘stands with Soldier F’. Soldier F was a member of the Parachute Regiment who, in March of 2019, was charged with the murders of James Wray and William McKinney and five additional attempted murders as a result of his actions on Bloody Sunday, 30 January 1972. These charges were announced at a time when it was reported that up to 200 former members of the British Army could face official investigation for their conduct in Northern Ireland. These cases sit at the centre of the sensitive and divisive issue of the legacy dimension of the Northern Ireland conflict, posing a challenge to the continuing success of the Northern Ireland peace process. Engaging a developing literature on post conflict reconciliation processes, this article will analyse the issue of legacy prosecutions from Operation Banner.

Identity, the politics of policing, and limits to legitimacy in Northern Ireland

This paper draws connections between the lived experiences of community-based stakeholders in the Northern Ireland peace process and dominant discourses and practices of political leaders to identify (de)legitimation processes and the concomitant reproduction of ethnopolitical identities. Findings reveal ontological planes animated by narratives about the so-called political policing of public disorder and disputes over the past which align the identities of otherwise quite different and conflicted intra-ethnic constituencies. Policing processes which become disputed, due to their historically central role in constituting and reflecting the contested logic of the state provide events or social and organizational ‘fields’ in which opportunistic actors can effectively reconstruct ethnopolitical boundaries, in ways which provide both rational (for political and organizational leaders) outcomes, and, inexplicable phenomenological or cultural ends of ‘groupness’. The implications of such processes on intercommunal and internecine conflict are discussed.

A Valuable Piece of the Liberal Hegemony Puzzle: The United States’ Involvement in the Northern Ireland Peace Process

A Valuable Piece of the Liberal Hegemony Puzzle: The United States’ Involvement in the Northern Ireland Peace Process