scholarly journals “Faith, Crown and State”: Contemporary Discourses within the Orange Order in Northern Ireland

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
James McAuley ◽  
Jonathan Tonge
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Significant Proportion ◽  
Social Attitudes ◽  
The Political ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Good Friday ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Orange Order

Despite a decline in membership in recent decades the Orange Order remains one of the largest and most significant organisations within civil society in Northern Ireland, representing a significant proportion of the Protestant population. The Orange Order claims a moral and political rationale to opposition to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and many of the political consequences that have followed. Drawing upon a large membership survey of the Orange institution (the first such survey ever undertaken), and abetted by in-depth semi-structured interviews, this paper examines core political and social attitudes of Orange Order members in a post-conflict environment. It identifies core discourses on offer within Orangeism, and how these structure responses to contemporary events. It concludes that the maintenance of “traditional” discourses within the Orange Order (seen by its critics as a barrier to the modernisation of unionism) may be key to its endurance against the odds in a changing political context and increasingly secularized world.

Can Civil Society Succeed Where Elites Have Failed in the War on Sectarianism? Towards an Infinitely Demanding Politics for the North

2010 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 126-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Doran
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Future Orientation ◽  
Good Friday ◽  
The North ◽  
Civil Society Organisations ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Good Friday Agreement ◽  
New Community

Caught between the well-armed imaginations of paramilitary organisations competing for the hearts and minds of a divided population, and state engineering of a liberal peace, civil society's impact on Northern Ireland's identity politics was limited during the thirty-year conflict. Specifically, the community and voluntary sector itself has tended to replicate as much as it challenged patterns of segregation in many of its own structures. With plans set out in the Northern Ireland Executive's Programme for Government (2008–11) to engage civil society in opening a new era of ‘good relations’ work to counter sectarianism and racism, civil society organisations will face a complex terrain, facing scepticism about their contribution to peace-making before the Good Friday Agreement, and working in a post-Agreement environment marked by continuing elite and communal antagonism demonstrated by the crisis at the turn of 2009 over devolution of justice and policing powers to the Northern Ireland Executive. A significant aspect of the resolution was a belated agreement by Sinn Fein and the DUP on a new community relation strategy, Cohesion, Sharing and Integration. This article suggests that civil society has a significant role to play in encouraging communities to confront the contradictions and tensions that continue to haunt the political architects of the Good Friday Agreement by affirming a radical and contingent vision of democracy as democratisation at a distance from the identity-saturated politics of the state-region of Northern Ireland. It draws on the work of Simon Critchley, Emmanuel Levinas and Wendy Brown, to offer an approach to identity politics in post-conflict Northern Ireland, focusing on the future orientation of civil society.

Umstrittene Expertise

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Global Dimension ◽  
The Political ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
Controversial Nature

The current political debates about climate change or the coronavirus pandemic reveal the fundamental controversial nature of expertise in politics and society. The contributions in this volume analyse various facets, actors and dynamics of the current conflicts about knowledge and expertise. In addition to examining the contradictions of expertise in politics, the book discusses the political consequences of its controversial nature, the forms and extent of policy advice, expert conflicts in civil society and culture, and the global dimension of expertise. This special issue also contains a forum including reflections on the role of expertise during the coronavirus pandemic. The volume includes perspectives from sociology, political theory, political science and law.

George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Post-Conflict Northern Ireland

2019 ◽  
pp. 259-276
Author(s):  
Andrew Sanders
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Barack Obama ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Hillary Clinton ◽  
Northern Irish ◽  
2008 Presidential Election ◽  
Post Conflict

After Clinton’s second term in office ended, President George W Bush moved the Special Envoy to Northern Ireland to the State Department, but his Envoys, led by Richard Haass and Mitchell Reiss, were no less engaged in Northern Irish affairs as the political figures there sought to create a functional government at Stormont Parliament Buildings. A series of significant obstacles emerged, but the Northern Ireland Assembly finally formed in 2007 before Bush left office. He was succeeded by President Barack Obama who had little interest in Northern Ireland but Obama’s initial Secretary of State, former Senator Hillary Clinton, was well-versed in Northern Irish issues. This chapter also examines the role of Northern Ireland in the 2008 Democratic Primary contest and, to a lesser extent, the 2008 Presidential Election.

Identity on Parade in Northern Ireland

2019 ◽  
pp. 24-50
Author(s):  
Jonathan S. Blake
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Political Context ◽  
The Other ◽  
Good Friday ◽  
The Past ◽  
Marching Bands ◽  
Belfast Agreement ◽  
Political Conditions ◽  
Orange Order

This chapter introduces the history and political context of loyalist parades in Northern Ireland. It traces how parades have changed over the past two centuries in response to shifting political conditions. The chapter then shows how parades influence and are influenced by politics in the post–Good Friday/Belfast Agreement era. In the discussion of contemporary parading, the chapter presents data on the number of parades, paraders, and spectators, which demonstrate the prominence of the movement in Protestant society. It also describes the major parading organizations, including the Orange Order, the other loyal orders, and marching bands, and explains the main sources of disputes between Protestants and Catholics over parades.

The Role of Stakeholders in Post Conflict Peacebuilding in Swat, Pakistan

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 211-229 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qasim Ali Shah ◽  
Bahadar Nawab ◽  
Tahir Mehmood
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Continuous Process ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Development Processes ◽  
The Government

Peacebuilding is a continuous process to transform conflicts into development opportunities for and by the stakeholders. This article explores the role of stakeholders in post-conflict peacebuilding in Swat. Applying Constructivist paradigm and Discourse Analysis, 80 semi-structured interviews were conducted by incorporating local community, civil society and the government. Study finds out that cultural, political, social and economic tiers of peacebuilding measures in Swat hardly achieved its purpose. The lack of institutional coordination and gaps in peacebuilding measures are important hurdles, which needs to be minimized for sustainable development processes in Swat.

Northern Ireland

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monica McWilliams ◽  
Avila Kilmurray
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Women's Movement ◽  
Women's Activism ◽  
Peace Agreement ◽  
Institutional Dynamics ◽  
Good Friday ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Alternative Means ◽  
History Of

Women’s activism played an important role in conflict transformation in Northern Ireland, from the early civil rights activists to the development of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition political party. This chapter follows the history of activism in Northern Ireland, using the trajectory to illustrate how the exclusion of women from formal institutions resulted in a women’s movement that became an alternative means for creating change. It identifies important characteristics of women’s activism, including a willingness to build broad alliances in civil society and framing tactics that brought gender-specific interests to the peace process and the Good Friday peace agreement. As the chapter examines the successes and challenges of the post-conflict women’s movement in Northern Ireland, it reflects on the power of creativity and innovation in altering institutional dynamics during times of transition.

scholarly journals A Charter of Rights for the Island of Ireland: An Unknown Quantity in the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement

2007 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 797-835 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suzanne Egan ◽  
Rachel Murray
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
The Political ◽  
Unknown Quantity ◽  
Good Friday ◽  
Belfast Agreement ◽  
Legal Document ◽  
Legal Difficulties ◽  
Final Agreement ◽  
Political Settlement

AbstractThe basic aim of the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement was to try to achieve a political settlement to the conflict in Northern Ireland. While the channels for the settlement were to be primarily institutional, the importance of safeguarding the rights of both communities in Northern Ireland by addressing equality and justice issues was recognized, to varying degrees, by all parties to the process that led to the drafting of the Agreement. As the negotiations progressed, the human rights section of the Agreement grew exponentially, moving ‘from the margins to the mainstream’ so that the final Agreement contains a whole section on human rights protections. Not only have these particular elements of the Agreement come to fruition, but they also have received a considerable amount of public and political interest as well as academic comment and analysis. Buried within the human rights chapter, however, is a concept that has so far received minimal interest or enthusiasm from any quarter. That is the reference in paragraph 10 of the ‘Rights, Safeguards and Equality of Opportunity’ chapter to the possibility of establishing an all-island Charter of Rights.The purpose of this article is threefold. First, it traces the genesis of the Charter of Rights concept through to its inclusion in the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement; secondly, it examines the approach thus far taken by the Joint Committee of the two human rights commissions to the task entrusted to them in relation to the Charter by the Agreement; and finally, it explores some of the issues that need to be considered and the challenges faced by that Committee in future efforts to assist in the construction of any such Charter. In so doing, it describes the political and legal difficulties faced in attempts not only to formulate agreement on human rights but also to create a legal document which may be applicable to two jurisdictions. It concludes by suggesting ways in which the project may be progressed.

scholarly journals Seeing/Being Orange: Perceptions and the Politics of Religion in County Armagh, Northern Ireland

2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 33-44
Author(s):  
Laura LeVon
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Early Experiences ◽  
Politics And Religion ◽  
Politics Of Religion ◽  
County Armagh ◽  
Orange Order

We each of us focus on our own perceptions (anthropologists included) and often remain ignorant of the affect inherent in others’ perceptions. In Northern Ireland, perceptions are often shaped by shared memories and histories of violence, as well as by shared concepts of ancestry and homeland—but these perceptions are shaped on either side of the bicommunal divide between the two majority communities, Catholic-Irish-Nationalists and Protestant-British-Unionists. In this article, I draw on my early experiences collecting data in County Armagh at the Orange Order’s July Twelfth parades to analyze the interplay between such perceptions of politics and religion. Framing my preliminary data through Veena Das’s (2007) study of how violence influences daily life and Anthony Smith’s (2009) arguments on the role of ethno-symbolism in nationalism, I reveal how the continued every-day divide between Northern Ireland’s two largest communities shapes not only how members of the Protestant community who support the Orange Order “be” in everyday life and during the rituals of the Twelfth, but also how others “see” them. For while being is ordinary-- whether cultural and/or religious-- seeing is risky, controversial, and threatening. Through this distinction, we understand that the political possibilities of violence are still a part of everyday religious life in Northern Ireland.

scholarly journals Northern Ireland: From Imperial Asset to International Encumbrance

2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 108-132
Author(s):  
Tommy McKearney
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
The Political ◽  
Limited Ability ◽  
Economic Issues ◽  
Good Friday ◽  
The Social ◽  
Good Friday Agreement ◽  
British State

The Northern Ireland story is more complex than the trite tale of orange versus green or two warring tribes. Current inhabitants are not settling ancient scores. Northern Ireland is the product of colonialism, the plantation of Ulster, machinations of a British state determined to retain a strategic outpost, 50 years of one party discriminatory government and the recent conflict. The Good Friday Agreement facilitated an end to armed conflict but is inherently flawed. Compounding the Stormont Assembly’s very limited ability to steer the economy is reluctance by the political parties to accept the rationale of the Agreement. Republicans are unhappy that Northern Ireland will remain British while unionists dislike the fact that republicans are partners in administration. Northern Ireland’s two leading parties, The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and Sinn Féin (SF,) do not have the power (even if they wanted to use it) to address the social and economic issues affecting constituents’ lives. Northern Ireland is changing demographically while also facing economic challenges at a time when both England and Scotland are reassessing the nature of the Union.

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