scholarly journals The Relative Success of Consociational Institutions in Deeply Divided Societies

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 77-93
Author(s):  
Chloé Bernadaux
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Systems Design ◽  
Political Stability ◽  
Research Note ◽  
Reverse Effect ◽  
Divided Societies ◽  
Good Friday ◽  
Relative Success ◽  
External Relations ◽  
Positive Nature

Lebanon and Northern Ireland conjure opposite images on consociationalism in the minds of many political scientists. While in Lebanon, the consociational system widely proved inefficient in preventing the outbreak of ethno-national conflicts, the Northern Ireland’s experience of consociationalism remains vastly positive. Following a “Most Similar Systems Design” defined by Adam Przeworski and Henry Teune (2000), this research note tests the hypothesis that the positive nature of exogenous influences participates to a higher political stability in Northern Ireland relative to Lebanon, where external influences of negative nature had the reverse effect. For the sake of this study, the developments taking place after the signature of the agreements shaping both consociational systems – the Ta’if Agreement of 1989 in Lebanon and the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 in Northern Ireland – are analysed through a particular focus on elites’ external relations with patron states and their interactions with their regional or global environments.

scholarly journals Northern Ireland and Brexit: Three effects on ‘the border in the mind’

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 497-511 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cathy Gormley-Heenan ◽  
Arthur Aughey
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Political Stability ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Good Friday ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The People ◽  
Waking Up ◽  
The Mind

For those who spoke on behalf of Leave voters, the result on 23 June 2016 meant the people of the United Kingdom were taking back ‘control’ or getting their ‘own country back’. However, two parts of the United Kingdom did not vote Leave: Scotland and Northern Ireland. Here, the significant counterpoint to ‘taking back control is “waking up in a different country”’, and this sentiment has unique political gravity. Its unique gravity involves two distinct but intimately related matters. The first concerns the politics of identity. The vote was mainly, if not entirely, along nationalist/unionist lines, confirming an old division: unionists were staking a ‘British’ identity by voting Leave, and nationalists an Irish one by voting Remain. The second concerns borders. The Good Friday/Belfast Agreement of 1998 meant taking the border out of Irish politics. Brexit means running the border between the European Union (EU) and the United Kingdom across the island as a sovereign ‘frontier’. Although this second matter is discussed mainly in terms of the implications for free movement of people and goods, we argue that it is freighted with meanings of identity. Brexit involves a ‘border in the mind’, those shifts in self-understanding, individually and collectively, attendant upon the referendum. This article examines this ‘border in the mind’ according to its effects on identity, politics and the constitution, and their implications for political stability in Northern Ireland.

Understanding aspiration, anxiety, assumption and ambiguity: the anatomy of Sunningdale

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arthur Aughey
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Political Stability ◽  
Power Sharing ◽  
Good Friday ◽  
Good Friday Agreement

Lord Bew has argued in his Ireland: The Politics of Enmity 1789-2006 that the failure of the power-sharing experiment in 1973-74, and especially on the proposal for a Council of Ireland, was largely the product of inflated nationalist aspirations encountering raised unionist anxieties amidst exaggerated official assumptions about what was politically achievable. These three As can be said to have fostered a fourth A - ambiguity - which was destructive of the project for political stability. If these four As together constitute a template for instability, there appears at first sight to be an irony. Has not ‘constructive ambiguity’ contributed to the enduring peace since the 1998 Belfast/Good Friday Agreement? This chapter suggests that the experience of 1973-74 still applies in Northern Ireland and that it is the absence of ambiguity which makes aspiration, anxiety and assumption institutionally manageable.

Symbolic Equality: Law and National Symbols in Northern Ireland

2012 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 339-358
Author(s):  
Alex Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
General Principle ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Public Culture ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Good Friday ◽  
Relative Success ◽  
National Symbols ◽  
Good Friday Agreement ◽  
The Way

The way in which the law regulates the display of national symbols has important consequences for minority national groups. If the majority is allowed to monopolise the official display of national symbols, members of the minority may be further alienated and discouraged from participating in public life. In contrast, a more even-handed approach to national symbols has the potential to foster an inclusive and pluri-national public culture. This article evaluates the regulation of national symbols in Northern Ireland. It contrasts the relative success of legislation regulating the display of symbols in the workplace with the latest equality litigation under Northern Ireland’s Good Friday Agreement of 1998 (‘the Agreement’). With respect to the latter, it is argued that the case-law suffers from a general failure to apreciate the implications of the Agreement for the display of national symbols. The article goes on to explain how equality with respect to the display of national symbols – or ‘symbolic equality’ – should be understood as an extension of the Agreement’s commitment to the more general principle of ‘parity of esteem’.

Contentious Rituals

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan S. Blake
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Good Friday ◽  
Political Events ◽  
Politics And Culture ◽  
Interview Survey ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Identity Expression

Why do people participate in controversial symbolic events that drive wedges between groups and occasionally spark violence? This book examines this question through an in-depth case study of Northern Ireland. Protestant organizations perform over 2,500 parades across Northern Ireland each year. Protestants tend to see the parades as festive occasions that celebrate Protestant history and culture. Catholics, however, tend to see them as hateful, intimidating, and triumphalist. As a result, parades have been a major source of conflict in the years since the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement. This book examines why, given the often negative consequences, people choose to participate in these parades. Drawing on theories from the study of contentious politics and the study of ritual, the book argues that paraders are more interested in the benefits intrinsic to participation in a communal ritual than the external consequences of their action. The book presents analysis of original quantitative and qualitative data to support this argument and to test it against prominent alternative explanations. Interview, survey, and ethnographic data are also used to explore issues central to parade participation, including identity expression, commemoration, tradition, the pleasures of participation, and communicating a message to outside audiences. The book additionally examines a paradox at the center of parading: while most observers see parades as political events, the participants do not. Altogether, the book offers a new perspective on politics and culture in the aftermath of ethnic violence.

scholarly journals Richard Bean’s The Big Fellah (2010) and Jez Butterworth’s The Ferryman (2017): two plays about the Northern Troubles from outside of Northern Ireland

2020 ◽  
Vol 73 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hiroko Mikami
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Northern Irish ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Good Friday ◽  
Good Friday Agreement

During the three decades of the Troubles of Northern Ireland (1969-1998), a remarkable amount of plays about the Troubles was written and almost of them, it seems, had been ‘monopolised’ by (Northern) Irish playwrights. Recently, however, certain changes about this monopoly have been witnessed and those who do not claim themselves as Irish descendants have begun to choose the Northern Troubles as their themes. Also, there have been growing concerns about violence worldwide since 9.11. This article deals with two plays, Richard Bean’s The Big Fellah and Jez Butterworth’s The Ferryman, neither of which was written by an Irish playwright and examines whether and to what extent it is possible to say that they can transcend regional boundaries and become part of global memories in the context of the post-Good Friday Agreement and the post 9.11.

scholarly journals Resolving international border disputes: The Irish experience

2017 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 377-398 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Coakley
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Specific Model ◽  
Second Phase ◽  
Territorial Dispute ◽  
Civil Unrest ◽  
Good Friday ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Third Phase ◽  
The Uk ◽  
International Border

This article explores the value of a specific model of norm replacement in accounting for the circumstances leading to Ireland’s Good Friday agreement (1998), which formally and finally settled the long-running territorial dispute between Ireland and the United Kingdom (UK). Drawing on the theoretical literature, it identifies three phases in this process. First, from the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922 until the civil unrest in Northern Ireland peaked in 1972 the irredentist norm was substantially unchallenged. It was embedded in the 1937 constitution, which defined the national territory as extending over the whole island of Ireland – including Northern Ireland, a part of the UK. The second phase, from about 1972 to 1998, was one of norm competition. The irredentist norm was severely challenged by new political realities in Northern Ireland, and was potentially destabilising for the state itself. It was increasingly challenged by an alternative ‘consent’ norm, one embracing in effect the geopolitical status quo. The third phase, from 1998 onwards, was one of consolidation of the new norm, now written into the Irish constitution to replace the wording of 1937. The article suggests that this model plays a valuable role in accounting for the changing status of the Irish border, but also that the Irish experience has implications for the broad shape of the model.

‘Britain's Irish Question: Britain's European Question?’ British-Irish relations in the context of European Union and The Belfast Agreement

2000 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
ELIZABETH MEEHAN
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
Northern Irish ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Good Friday ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Irish Question ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Eu

If students of world politics can be reasonably accused of ignoring the Troubles in Northern Ireland—in part because they seemed to have little to do with the larger East-West confrontation and partly because they were so obviously about something distinctly national in character—then by the same token specialists on Northern Ireland can justly be accused of a certain intellectual parochialism and of failing to situate the long war within a broader global perspective. The quite unexpected outbreak of peace however only emphasizes the need for a wider understanding of the rise and fall of the Northern Irish conflict. This article explores the relationship between the partial resolution of the Irish Question—as expressed in the Good Friday Agreement of 1998—and the changing character of the European landscape. Its central thesis is that while there were many reasons for the outbreak of peace in the 1990s, including war weariness, it is difficult to understand what happened without situating it in a larger European framework and the new definition of sovereignty to which the EU has given birth.

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