War is Over! If You Want It

Peace and Symmetry in Northern Ireland

Submitted to the

School of Interdisciplinary Studies

(Western College Program)

in partial fulfillment of

the requirements for the degree of

Bachelor of Philosophy

Interdisciplinary Studies

by

Garret Koehler

Miami University

Oxford, Ohio

2009

APPROVED

Advisor ___________________________ Nancy Nicholson

i

ABSTRACT

This project provides a comprehensive and interdisciplinary analysis of Northern Ireland’s social and politic environment ten years after the signing of the Belfast Agreement so as to establish the success of the peace process. This analysis presents two qualitatively disparate yet equally legitimate depictions of the environment, and then dialectically critiques them in reference to Johan Galtung’s tripartite theory of violence. It concludes that, barring unforeseen political negligence, Northern Ireland will see the emergence of a more integrated, peaceful society. After analyzing the post-Agreement environment in Northern Ireland and confirming this trajectory, the peace process is more persuasively used as one that exemplifies a successful transition from violence to peace. As opposed to simply explaining the medley of factors that contributed to this transition in Northern Ireland, this paper interprets these factors as they relate to the actualization of symmetry. As a concept, symmetry is neither new nor foreign to peace and conflict studies. However, this project’s application of symmetry suggests that its conventional use is limited and misguided, as it overemphasizes the relationship between conflict parties constituted by material, or objective conditions. Both the conflict and the peace process in Northern Ireland suggest that in violent conflicts this relationship is also heavily constituted by immaterial, symbolic conditions. If symmetry is to be a useful concept for understanding the relationship between conflict parties, it must be able to meaningfully incorporate this symbolic relationship. In the end, this involves giving primacy to each party’s perception of asymmetry, or symmetry, as it may be. This perception is constituted by material, objective conditions and immaterial, symbolic conditions. The Northern Ireland peace process shows how these symbolic conditions reinforced perceptions of asymmetry and/or were used to cultivate the perceptions of symmetry that ultimately enabled settlement and peace. Theoretically, the result of this analysis is a nuanced, comprehensive, and ultimately more intimate conception of symmetry that allows conflict theorists to see a more complex conflict dynamic, and in turn, a more complex peace dynamic. It is a conception of symmetry that could very fruitfully be applied to other violent conflicts. Acknowledgements: This project is dedicated to Andy Jack, who was the first person to teach me that an unexamined life is not worth living. And of course, to Kevin and Jeri-Lynn, without who I wouldn’t have a life to examine!

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction 1

Chapter 1: An Ambiguous Peace Introduction 8

A Celebrated Peace 10

A Challenged Peace 16

A Defended Peace 21

Conclusion 40

Chapter 2: Peace and Symmetry Introduction 44

Defining our Concept 46

Asymmetry in Northern Ireland 50

Cultivating Symmetry in Northern Ireland 58

Conclusion 84

Bibliography 86

1 Introduction

Speaking from a bed in Amsterdam, with Yoko Ono by his side, John Lennon told

a cluster of reporters how peace could be realized in a world with a proclivity for

destructive violence: “I believe sincerely that as soon as people want peace and they’re

aware that they can have it, they will have it.” His idealism and simplicity were

antithetical to the realpolitik of his time, and forty years later, there is little reason to

suppose that today’s political realists would find his message any more relevant.

However, those looking to resolve and transform violent conflicts would be remiss if they

failed to recognize the simple veracity of Lennon’s claim: direct violence is neither an

inevitable nor an intrinsic quality of political conflict; it is a method of resistance or

domination chosen freely by human agents. While muddled by ideological commitments

and geopolitical circumstances, the choice to turn to violence is always antedated by a

simple calculation in which the cost of peace is deemed greater than the cost of violence.

Violence will cease when this calculus is inverted and those who employ it decide they

do not want to do so any longer. The question then for those interested in resolving

violent conflict is: what can be done to encourage this inversion? In this project I look to

“answer”1 this question by examining a peace process that has successfully impelled

antagonists away from violence and towards inclusive political accommodation.

The precondition for this examination of course, is finding a successful peace

process. This turns out to be a much more tedious endeavor than one might think. At

first glance, Northern Ireland is a perfect candidate. The peace process that began in the

early 1990s and culminated in the Belfast Agreement in 1998 gave birth to a power-

2 sharing government between unionists and nationalists, and officially brought the

Provisional IRA’s military struggle to a halt. That same year, its two main signatories,

David Trimble and John Hume, were each awarded the Noble Peace Prize for their

remarkable accomplishment. Although the implementation of the Agreement faltered,

demilitarization of the country continued and by 2007 its political institutions were

reinstated with little or no opposition left to undermine them. Despite these

accomplishments, Chapter 1 of this project, suggestively titled “An Ambiguous Peace,”

reveals that the success of Northern Ireland’s peace process does not go unchallenged. In

fact, many media pundits, peace “practitioners” and academics downright condemn the

Agreement for preserving, or even exacerbating the intercommunal antagonism that has

historically underpinned the violence. The disagreement over the present state of

Northern Ireland evokes more fundamental questions about the nature of “peace,” the

constitution of “successful” peace, the relationship between conflict and peace, etc. After

attempting to objectively present the two contrasting interpretations of Northern Ireland’s

“peace” in the first two sections of this chapter, in the third and final section I offer my

own critical analysis, in which I present a theoretical framework for understanding peace

and violence that helps structure these interpretations and ultimately resolve them.

After examining Northern Ireland’s “ambiguous peace” and offering the criteria

by which we can affirm its success, Chapter 2 of this project, titled “Symmetry and

Peace,” returns to the question posed in the first paragraph of this introduction. As

opposed to simply explaining all of the different factors that contributed to the move

away from violence in Northern Ireland, “Symmetry and Peace” tries to interpret these

factors as they relate to the actualization of symmetry. As a concept, symmetry is neither

3 new nor foreign to peace and conflict studies. However, my application of symmetry in

the Northern Ireland context suggests that its conventional use is limited and misguided

as it overemphasizes the relationship between conflict parties constituted by material, or

objective conditions. This relationship is also constituted by immaterial, symbolic

conditions, and if symmetry is to be a useful concept for understanding the relationship

between conflict parties, it must be able to meaningfully incorporate this symbolic

relationship. In the end, this involves giving primacy to each party’s perception of

symmetry. The result is a nuanced, more comprehensive concept that allows us see a

more complex conflict dynamic, and in turn, a more complex peace dynamic. In the first

section of “Symmetry and Peace” I generally outline a concept of symmetry in relation its

conventional usage in conflict resolution. In the next section I highlight the different

elements of asymmetry underpinning the conflict in Northern Ireland. And in the final

section I outline the way symmetry was cultivated, and how it displaced much of this

asymmetry.

There are two more things I think are important by way of introduction. The first

is a premature apology and explanation for my parsimonious use of language in this

project. At the risk of misconstruing the words of a Noble Laureate, I believe it was in

reference to the centrality of language in Northern Ireland’s conflict that Seamus Heaney

once said, “Whatever you say, say nothing.” Most people think that only pictures are

worth a thousand words, but when it comes to talking about Northern Ireland, the

problem is that words are worth a thousand words. Between people who have

appropriated, or begun to appropriate the Northern Irish lexicon, there is a constant

feeling that every term you use must be clarified and clarified and clarified, and in the

4 end you are not even sure if it mattered in the first place. To talk about Northern Ireland

is to talk about the North of Ireland, which is to talk about Ulster, which is to talk about

Ireland. To talk about the “Troubles” is to talk about the conflict in Northern Ireland,

which is to talk about the conflict in and about Northern Ireland. To talk about Catholics

is to talk Irishness, which is to about nationalism, which is to talk about republicanism,

which is to talk about violence. Etc. In no place is the arbitrary nature of language so

plainly obvious, yet in no place is the meaning of language so important. While

apologizing for my use of language may seem utterly unnecessary, I am forced to by my

awareness of its power over people. Emancipation from the fatalistic cycle of violent

conflict involves a re-description of the past and a re-description of the present, because

ultimately in changing the way we talk we are thereby “changing what we want to do and

what we think we are” (Rorty, 1989, p.20). I am disappointed that I have not taken this

opportunity to try and change the way we talk about Northern Ireland.

I have tried to use language in the most economical way possible, with a reader in

mind who has some knowledge about the different categorizations in Northern Ireland.

For example, “Catholic” and “nationalist” are used interchangeably for much of the

paper, but there tends to be a distinction between both of these and “republican,” which

usually refers to someone who is Catholic, identifies as Irish, and supports the use of

violence to procure Irish re-unification. Similarly, the terms “Protestant” and “unionist”

are used relatively interchangeably, although I tried to avoid the term “loyalist” all

together, which usually ambiguously refers to a Protestant, who is also a unionist, but to

some degree supports or employs violence. I was not as flexible with my use of the term

“Belfast” Agreement instead of “Good Friday” Agreement. A reader who has

5 appropriated the lexicon I mentioned above would assume this meant I sympathized with

the Protestant (or unionist) community, which is why all of this explaining is necessary. I

simply use “Belfast” as opposed to “Good Friday” because it is shorter. Any other word

choice that might suggest preferential treatment is equally innocuous. My use of the term

“peace process” refers to the period between about 1990 and 1998, although some times I

extend it in reference to the post-Agreement negotiations leading up to the St. Andrews

Agreement. For those with a more substantial understanding of the demographics of

Northern Ireland, my tendency to ignore intra-group differences may be alarming, but

where I felt these differences inhibited my interpretation or my argument I did not ignore

them. Conversely, where I did not think these differences substantially affected the

argument, interpretation or observation being made, I did not mention them. I feel that

my inability to explore in writing all of the overlap and diversity in Northern Ireland

(simply due to a lack of time and space) is one of the weaknesses of this project.

However, for what it is worth, these differences did not go unacknowledged in the

thinking that preceded everything written. I am sure language issues will surface

throughout your reading that I have not mentioned here, and again, I apologize ahead of

time. When writing at length about the conflict in Northern Ireland, the temptation to

employ the most efficient terms proved itself too strong. While doing it often made me

cringe, I do not believe it affects the overall integrity of this work or the coherence of the

arguments therein.

And in closing the introduction, a short genealogy of this project seems

appropriate. Had I picked up a copy of this project two years ago and looked at the

cover, I would have had absolutely no comprehension of its meaning (in this hypothetical

6 we are assuming someone else has written it). Two faces superimposed on a famous

John Lennon Yoko Ono picture, and ugly faces at that. Northern Ireland meant nothing

to me. Then, in the fall of 2007 I went to Northern Ireland for a peace and conflict

studies program with the School for International Training. During the program I spent

two months in Belfast, one of which was spent doing independent field research on the

various responses among different constituencies to the political transformation of Ian

Paisley and the DUP. While doing this fieldwork I talked with Ian Paisley and spent a

significant amount of time with his extended family and at his church. Even where it is

not obvious, much of this fieldwork is probably implicit in this project. Last summer I

went back to Belfast for three weeks on an Undergraduate Summer Scholar grant, where

I attended the Mitchell Conference and another smaller conference at Queen’s University.

This conference allowed me to meet many of the people I have written about in this

project, from David Trimble and John Hume, to Martin McGuinness and George

Mitchell. In retrospect, the idea for this project began to form while I sat in the Great

Hall at Queen’s listening to Harvard Professor Herbert Kelman lecture on the two-state

solution to Israel-Palestine. While I had neither the time nor the space in this project to

apply the concept of symmetry outlined in the second chapter to Israel-Palestine, it was

initially the context of that conflict that inspired the idea. Furthermore, as is mentioned

in the first chapter, it was in the atmosphere of the Mitchell Conference that I first saw

the seriousness of the disagreement over the efficacy of the peace process in Northern

Ireland.

I should be forward about my biases. It did not take me long to fall in love with

Northern Ireland: the people, the place, the conflict, the peace, the churches, the flags, the

7 murals, the Bogside, the Shankhill, Belfast, Derry, etc. I find myself deeply, perhaps

strangely invested in Northern Ireland; it is a place I feel strongly connected to. Whether

I want it to or not, this paper probably congeals those feelings.

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Chapter 1

An Ambiguous Peace

9 Introduction

Marking the 10th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, in May 2008

academics, politicians and “peace practitioners” from around the world gathered at

Queen’s University in Belfast for a conference on the lessons we can learn about moving

on from violent conflict from the Northern Ireland experience. While the conference

served as a forum for a critical examination illuminating the strengths and weaknesses of

Northern Ireland’s peace process, at times the two-day event evolved into an ostentatious

display of what Shakespeare could only have deemed “the pride, pomp and circumstance

of glorious peace.” While the celebratory nature of the conference was perhaps a bit

histrionic and markedly uncritical, many of those whose lives were defined by the

violence of Northern Ireland’s Troubles would undoubtedly suggest that to dismiss such

celebration as uncritical and misguided is to under-appreciate the momentous progress

that the last ten years have brought to Northern Ireland.

The discord between those who saw the conference as a celebration of the peace

process and those who saw it as an opportunity to express their discontent is symptomatic

of an underlying disagreement over the adequacy of the Belfast Agreement and the post-

Agreement implementation process. My aim here is to elucidate the present state of

Northern Ireland in a manner that acknowledges and gives credence to both sides of this

disagreement. In doing so it is not my intention to insinuate that both sides are right.

“Right” and “wrong,” in the epistemic sense, are irrelevant and unhelpful adjectives to

ascribe to judgments about peace agreements. These judgments, which take both visceral

and analytical forms, are conditioned by subjective values and interests, and whether or

not we accept or discard them depends on whether or not we share these values and

10 interests. Hence, in presenting divergent judgments of Northern Ireland’s social and

political environment ten years after the signing of the Belfast Agreement, my aim is not

only to paint the most encompassing picture of the post-Agreement environment, but to

do so in a way that exposes the multifarious and at times conflicting values that underlie

post-Agreement peacebuilding in conflict resolution. To do so, I first present a general

description of Northern Ireland that might be offered by those who wish to emphasize the

ways in which the country indeed enjoys an unprecedented peace. I then present a

description of Northern Ireland that suggests that this “peace” is not as meritorious as

those who laud it indicate. In the final section, I offer my own evaluation of Northern

Ireland’s peace in consideration of these two descriptions.

A Celebrated Peace

There is wide disagreement over the current state of Northern Ireland’s society,

yet few would be audacious enough to repudiate the claim that Northern Ireland is indeed

a different place than it was during the Troubles. The peace process—which began as

early as 1988 and culminated in the restoration of the Northern Ireland Assembly and

Executive in May 2007— has changed Northern Ireland in demonstrable ways,

particularly in the areas of security, governance, and economic development. After

decades of persistent sectarian violence, the peace process helped create and then

monopolized a political environment in which the cost of compromise was no longer

perceived as being greater than the cost of violence. That violence has become more

costly than compromise, that the ballot box has completely replaced the Armalite, is in-

itself change for Northern Ireland. When 71% of Northern Ireland’s population voted

11 “yes” in the Belfast Agreement referendum, a political culture that delegitimized the

politics of force replaced one that saw violence as a necessary component of political

action. Much can and will be said about what has caused this delegitimization and the

cessation of political violence in Northern Ireland, but for the purposes of this chapter it

should suffice to simply recognize that politically motivated sectarian violence in

Northern Ireland is now only rarely carried out by dissident groups with almost no public

support.2 While acknowledging the possibility that violence could reemerge on its

previous scale, Britain’s military withdrawal from Northern Ireland, the complete

decommissioning of the Provisional IRA (determined by the International Monitoring

Commission [IMC] in 2005) and the formal renouncement of violence by the major

loyalist paramilitaries minimize this possibility.

Political violence has moved to the far peripheries of Northern Irish society. It is

seen as criminal activity by both Republican and Loyalist constituencies, and is being

countered by a reformed police force [PSNI] in which both communities are

proportionally represented. Whether or not the PSNI has been accepted by some of the

more isolated Loyalist and Republican communities, it has officially been accepted and

politically legitimated by the political representatives of these communities, and is fully

functioning as the sole security force. With security normalized, the agreement between

Sinn Fein and the DUP in December of 2008 over final policing and justice

responsibilities will ultimately result in the transferring of policing and justice powers to

Northern Ireland’s Executive from Britain. This transfer and the creation of a Northern

Ireland Department of Justice, which barring an unforeseen crisis will occur in 2009,3

will be the last step in the complete devolution of legislative and executive powers from

12 Westminster to Stormont. The devolved power-sharing government represents the

collective cognitive legitimization of the peace process and a collective denunciation of

the use of violence for political gain. The initial electoral endorsement of the Belfast

Agreement and high levels of democratic participation within these institutions by the

Northern Irish populace, indicate that the palpable cessation of direct violence in the post-

Agreement context coincides with the electorate’s conscious affirmation of the more

symmetric and representative power relations formed during the peace process and

institutionalized in the structures of Northern Ireland’s devolved government.

It seems appropriate to at least crudely delineate the nature of these structures of

governance, as prescribed by the Belfast Agreement, that have been actualized in

Northern Ireland’s Assembly and Executive. In congruence with my aim to first present

the more optimistic interpretation of peace in Northern Ireland, I draw here on Brendan

O’Leary’s description of the 1998 Agreement. O’Leary has written extensively in

defense of the Agreement, arguing that it “was an exemplary constitutional design for an

ethno-nationally divided territory over which there were rival claims to its sovereignty,

ethnically polarized party and paramilitary blocs, and no reasonable prospects of peaceful

integration within one civic nationalist identity” (2001a, p.53). The model of devolution

enacted in accordance with the Agreement meets the criteria of Arend Lijphart’s

consociationalism: “cross-community executive power-sharing; proportionality rules

throughout the governmental and public sectors; community self-government or

autonomy and equality in cultural life; and veto rights for minorities” (O’Leary, 2001b,

p.49). Simply stated, consociationalism has provided a system that facilitates cooperation

13 between nationalist and unionist political parties while simultaneously allotting to each

side the juridical power to protect their community’s interests.

O’Leary suggests that perhaps more important than the consociational nature of

the government is the manner in which the Agreement departs from Lijphart’s

prescriptions by including external, or international, elements involving the relationships

between Northern Ireland and Ireland, and Ireland and Britain. O’Leary (2001a) has

much to say about the confederal and federalizing institutions established by the

Agreement (i.e. the North-South Ministerial and the British-Irish Councils), but here it is

not necessary to explicate these political and legal intricacies, as important as they may

be. More pertinent to this description is the simple fact that in calling for North-South

and East-West bodies, the Agreement recognizes the presence of two national identities

in Northern Ireland. It couples this recognition with a legal reformation that allows the

citizens of Northern Ireland, who are British by birth, to also become citizens of the

Republic of Ireland if they so choose. The Agreement’s new model of citizenship is not

the only means by which it recognizes the competing national identities in Northern

Ireland though. The Agreement also indicates that while Northern Ireland is part of the

United Kingdom, a vote by the majority of its people could change this constitutional

status to something resembling a “united Ireland.” Much criticism is aimed at the open-

ended nature of this aspect of the Agreement, and more is aimed at the non-negotiable

system of consociational power-sharing in place. Regardless of this criticism, which will

be incorporated later in this chapter, Northern Ireland presently has a government

designed to accommodate former adversaries and force them to cooperate in writing and

passing legislation that benefits Protestants and Catholics, and unionists and nationalists

14 alike. The model of reconciliation that exists in Stormont has allowed the people of

Northern Ireland to realistically imagine their future as something other than their past.

The transformation of Northern Ireland’s conflict on the political or governmental

level implies, first and foremost, that the conflict is mediated not by guns and

paramilitaries, but by symmetric discourse within democratic political institutions. The

sustained cessation of paramilitary violence, the decommissioning of these paramilitaries,

a depoliticized and legitimized police force and judiciary, and a consociational

government with functioning legislative and executive branches are all symptoms of this

transformation in Northern Ireland. Accompanying and reinforcing this normalization of

governance has been an unprecedented level of economic development, with dividends

benefitting both the public and private sectors. While any country’s economic

circumstances are always determined by a multiplicity of interpenetrating factors,

violence in Northern Ireland has always deterred the scale of foreign investment needed

to bolster the region’s deindustrialized economy. During their tenure in office as First

Minister and Deputy First Minister, former adversaries Ian Paisley and Martin

McGuinness displayed themselves before potential foreign investors as a sensational

representation of the stable peace that now makes Northern Ireland conducive to lucrative

investment. Even after announcing his resignation in March of 2008, Paisley waited until

after participating in the US-Northern Ireland Investment Conference two months later to

step down, suggesting that economic development has consciously been recognized by

the country’s elites as an integral part of the peacebuilding process. Undoubtedly, the

poignant symbol of reconciliation and hope congealed in the image of “the Chuckle

Brothers” has been fully exploited to the benefit of the country’s economy.

15 Continuous economic growth and an overall reduction of unemployment have

persisted since nascent signs of peace emerged in the early 1990s, complementing the

slow but calculable amelioration of the economic disparity between Protestant and

Catholics since the 1970s. Economic growth has been both a cause and an effect in its

relationship with peace in Northern Ireland. A minimized disparity between Protestants

and Catholics still exists in 2009,4 yet is largely inconsequential because there are more

pronounced intragroup disparities and because structural anti-discrimination policies are

working and have palpable results. Protestants and Catholics, and Unionists and

Nationalists alike have experienced the economic prosperity that has accompanied the

end of violence. The mutually beneficial nature of this prosperity, at least across ethnic

boundaries, is particularly evident in the more symbolically neutral urban centers.

Belfast’s city center, for example: Once the main stage for the carnage of gruesome and

dramatic acts of political violence, it has been transformed into a tourist-friendly

emulation of any other consumer-oriented European capital. While much criticism could

be aimed at the convoluted and tenuous relationship between “peace dividends” and

conflict transformation in Northern Ireland, one cannot speak of the country’s present

state without mentioning the unprecedented economic expansion that has accompanied

the sustained cessation of violence and the successful political implementation of the

Belfast Agreement. In this way, “peace” in Northern Ireland is defined by the end of

direct political violence, the demilitarization of its streets, the acceptance of the state

police by all political parties, a fully functioning devolved government conducive to

protecting and meeting the interests of both communities, and an economy invigorated

with unprecedented amounts of foreign capital.

16 A Challenged Peace

Those who struggle to see a laudable “peace” in Northern Ireland vocalize their

struggle more and less virulently. Exemplary of the former is British author John

O’Farrell’s assessment of post-Agreement Northern Ireland. Hardly embellishing, he

writes: “While the conflict that some called the Long War raged, well-meaning people

dreamed of peace, normality, justice and reconciliation. Now that it is over, what they

have got instead is a very expensive, heavily policed and officially blessed apartheid.”5

With its connotations considered, it is understandably difficult to make O’Farrell’s

contention congruous with my vivid memory of Desmond Tutu calling the Mitchell

Conference to a standing ovation in recognition of Northern Ireland’s achievements

towards peace. I can hardly imagine the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate from South Africa

offering accolades to a “very expensive, heavily policed and officially blessed apartheid.”

Yet anyone who has spent any significant amount of time in post-Agreement Northern

Ireland can appreciate the sentiment underlying O’Farrell’s claim. It is a sentiment

expressed with less virulence and more political value by Mark Durkan, the current

leader of the SDLP and former Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland. In response to

a question about the ongoing construction of “Peace Lines” in Belfast, Durkan said:

Politicians sharing the corridors of power is great, but it’s how we get to the point where we’re truly sharing the streets where we live, where people are sharing sports fields, where children are sharing playgrounds, that’s what we need to get to. […] There’s a big emphasis on reducing the public sector and growing the private sector; that’s great and that’s all proper. There’s a total neglect in the current program for government of the vital role of the third sector, particularly in transforming the society in ways that we all want to see.6

17 Although dissimilar in their rhetorical approaches, both Durkan and O’Farrell intimate

that the celebrated political Agreement that has supposedly brought “peace” to Northern

Ireland has done little, if anything, to mitigate the tangible and intangible division that

has historically defined Northern Irish society. Durkan’s allusion to the cross-community

relationships being built within the “corridors of power” is especially illuminating of the

separation that must be recognized between political and social peace. Here, I must

indirectly challenge Northern Ireland’s “peace” by using this separation to describe the

way Northern Ireland remains deeply divided despite the “sharing of corridors” in

Stormont.

More than ten years into the implementation of the Belfast Agreement, physical

manifestations of intercommunal conflict remain strikingly visible. Undoubtedly, the

most salient of these are the peace lines that continue to separate Protestant and Catholic

neighborhoods in parts of Belfast, Derry, and some other more densely populated areas of

Northern Ireland. “Peace lines” is the euphemistic title given to what are in reality

concrete, brick, and steel walls, sometimes topped with metal fencing, and extended to

heights of between twenty and thirty feet. The British Army initially constructed the

walls in the 1970s as a peacekeeping mechanism. In line with definitions of such

mechanisms, the walls were built to “contain violence and prevent it from escalating to

war; limit the intensity, geographical spread and duration of war once it has broken out;

and to consolidate a ceasefire and create space for reconstruction after the end of a war”

(Ramsbotham, Woodhouse, Miall, 2005, p. 133). While it may be claimed, although not

without contention, that the walls effectively limited the level of violence between

Loyalists and Republicans during the Troubles, it would be difficult to argue that they

18 have a central role in creating novel and less antagonistic forms of “imagined

communities” in Northern Ireland. With this in mind, it is difficult to imagine that the

implementation of an Agreement whose goals include reconciliation, integration, and the

promotion of a “culture of tolerance at every level of society,”7 would not involve the

gradual removal of peace walls from Northern Ireland’s urban landscapes. However

difficult to imagine, not only has the removal of these physical representations of division

and conflict not began, the walls have actually multiplied in number since the signing of

the Agreement, and a significant allocation of public funds supports new and on-going

construction. The Agreement’s words may evoke images of reconciliation, but its

implementation has given rise to something more along the lines of Robert Frost’s “good

fences make good neighbors.” While the anti-discrimination policies in place in both the

public and private housing sectors would seemingly curb segregation along ethno-

national lines, the reality is that segregated living tends to be the “style-of-choice” for

many of Northern Ireland’s residents. The revived political process has in no way

deterred people’s proclivity for secure, homogenous communities; it has only satiated it

with more peace walls and very little integrated public housing.

Within the circumscriptions of Belfast’s most ominous peace walls we tend to

find homogenous, working-class neighborhoods where Northern Ireland’s sectarianism

has become deeply embedded. These segregated communities tend to be the poorest, and

evidence shows that violence has disproportionately impacted deprived groups in

Northern Ireland (Hillyard, Rolston, Tomlinson, 2005). Upon entering these enclaves, a

process that can be quite laborious because many have very few entrances, it often takes

little more than color-recognition to know if its churches will have confessionals or its

19 inhabitants Celtic soccer jerseys. The paint color of curbs, lampposts, and mailboxes, the

types of flags flown, and politically charged paramilitary murals “adorning” the outside

walls of terraced houses all speak to the national and religious disposition of the vast

majority of a neighborhood’s inhabitants. In some of the neighborhoods historically

perceived as bastions of belligerent sectarianism, the only sign of changed attitudes or an

emerging “culture of tolerance,” besides the burying of guns, is faded paintjobs. While

the manifestations of sectarianism between communities are less bellicose than they once

were, interfaces8 still see intercommunal tensions turn into physical altercation.

Interestingly, these altercations very often involve kids younger than the paramilitary

ceasefires; the generation exposed only to the “peaceful” Northern Ireland. These

altercations are oftentimes arranged beforehand on popular social networking websites

like Bebo and Facebook.9 No matter how physically isolated children from different

communities are, the internet has provided them with a new environment of interaction

and has allowed them to reproduce the conflict that peace walls are supposed to keep

them from experiencing. That some cohorts within the “post-conflict generation”

reproduce Northern Ireland’s sectarian divide in cyberspace and at interfaces suggests

that the physical segregation of communities might be making conflict less violent, but it

is doing nothing to combat the xenophobia that sustains conflict after political agreements

are signed.

The lack of integrated housing and schools in Northern Ireland is both a symptom

and a cause of the underlying indication that peace is far from realized: the continued

reproduction of the exclusive and antagonistic cultural identities that have historically

constituted Northern Ireland’s intercommunal conflict. To be sure, this is not to suggest

20 that the socio-cultural and ideological difference constructed by the people of Northern

Ireland gave rise to oppositional communities or caused violent conflict by itself. On the

contrary, I tend to align myself with Ruane and Todd, who posit that socio-cultural and

ideological difference “became conflictual and lasting because it was the basis of access

to resources and power” (1996, p.12). Many of those suspicious of the peace

Agreement’s efficacy are suggesting that while in itself the Agreement both actualizes

and symbolizes the final overcoming of unequal access, it ultimately has failed to bring

about the end of the “conflictual and lasting” socio-cultural difference imagined by both

communities in Northern Ireland. This failure has manifested itself in material realities,

like persistent social segregation in areas like housing, education, and sports leagues. It

also manifests itself in social-psychological realities, like communal fear and distrust of

“the Other.” Thus, while Northern Ireland experiences unprecedented conciliation on the

political level, this conciliation has not trickled down to the communities most affected

by the sectarian violence of the Troubles. Northern Irish society remains deeply divided

by conventional notions of self/Other, and physical segregation and endogamous social

relations punctuate this division. The political process continues to unfold in a manner

that challenges these conventional associations, but much of Northern Ireland does not

seem to be following.

Interestingly, many of those who have written about “the failure of the Northern

Ireland peace process”10 seem to suggest that “peace” has failed to bring about the end of

conflictual socio-cultural difference, or oppositional communal identities, because it is

predicated on a structure for government, consociationalism, that makes the “conflictual

and lasting” socio-cultural and ideological difference the “basis of access to resources

21 and power.” It does so while offering both identities “parity of esteem,” but this does not

negate the fact that it institutionalizes the intercommunal relationship that defined the

Troubles and then re-imposes this relationship on the electorate. The effect has been

obvious: The erosion of middle-ground politics made evident by the electorate’s shift to

unionist and republican political extremism (the DUP and Sinn Fein) in post-Agreement

elections. It is because of this erosion that Rupert Taylor argues that the political

Agreement “rests on and promotes an ethno-national group-based understanding of

politics that is inherently illiberal--with the result that, in spite of recent seemingly

positive developments, the space for a more deliberative form of democracy around a

common citizenship agenda is foreclosed” (2008, p.183). In the long-term, a

constitutional arrangement based on exclusive ethnic blocs will perpetuate inter-

communal conflict by precluding the progression towards non-ethnic civic identities and

political participation in Northern Ireland. For the more pessimistic critics of Northern

Ireland’s peace process, this perpetuation hardly merits celebration.

A Defended Peace

One should not think that the two descriptions of Northern Ireland provided above

are mutually exclusive. The first portrays a Northern Ireland experiencing unprecedented

levels of stability. Stability is defined here by the cessation of intercommunal

paramilitary violence, the restoration of a devolved government that now accommodates

all political parties, demilitarization, and the normalization of policing. The second

portrays a Northern Ireland whose deep ethno-national division remains a prominent

feature of its political, social and cultural milieu. These descriptions are not mutually

22 exclusive because in the sense that they both correspond to empirically verifiable

realities, both are true. If the glass is half full, it is also half empty; ultimately only time

will determine whether it is getting emptier or more full. However, while this is the case,

it is my contention that the optimistic interpretation of Northern Ireland’s peace process

is the more plausible of the two; while illuminating criticism can, should, and will be

leveled at potentially negative developments in Post-Agreement politics, ultimately

Northern Ireland is headed towards sustained peace. This optimism underlies this

project– We are only justified in extracting prescriptions from the Northern Ireland peace

process if its success can be defended. What follows is an evaluation of Northern

Ireland’s peace that makes this defense by interpreting the descriptions offered above

using broader discourses from peace and conflict studies.

Disagreement about Northern Ireland’s “peace” is symptomatic of the more

fundamental disagreement over the meaning of the word “peace” and exactly what is

entailed in the “resolving” of violent conflict. As a point of departure, Johan Galtung

provides two compatible definitions of peace, claiming that peace is both “the

absence/reduction of violence of all kinds” and “nonviolent and creative conflict

transformation” (1996, p.9). The first definition positions peace as the negation of

“violence,” which is obviously in need of definition itself. The second suggests that

peace “is the context for conflicts to unfold nonviolently and creatively,” and implies that

“to know about peace we have to know about conflict and how conflicts can be

transformed, both nonviolently and creatively” (ibid). Peace is not the absence of

conflict; it is the negation of violence and it is the context that facilitates, enables or

foments this negation. The centrality of violence in Galtung’s definitions suggests that it

23 is less helpful to talk about peace in Northern Ireland than it is to talk about the absence

of violence. Thus, more pertinent than establishing a definition of peace is establishing a

definition of violence. Not surprisingly, this has been the project of much of Galtung’s

work, which has become foundational to peace and conflict studies and conflict

resolution. Most people working in related fields are familiar with his tripartite definition

of violence, as it provides an accessible and useful discourse for interpreting violent

conflicts and evaluating the efficacy of peace processes.

Galtung posits that we must broaden our definition beyond the limited notion that

violence is only a physical act of injury perpetrated intentionally by an individual or

group against another. This act– Galtung prefers “event,” which more clearly connotes

its spatiotemporal finitude– is only one form of violence that exists between people, a

form he labels direct violence. Direct violence is distinguished from other forms of

violence because it is an act of human agency entailing both intentionality and direct

confrontation (i.e. murder, rape, beatings, etc). There is however, an indirect form of

violence, which Galtung calls structural violence. Lacking a specific actor, this type of

violence is “built into the structure and shows up as unequal power and consequently as

unequal life chances” (1969, p.171). Structural violence is a process as opposed to an

event, and it is “enacted” through social, political and economic relationships

characterized by repression and exploitation. Underlying the distinction between direct

and structural violence is the idea that violence is needs-deprivation, but needs-

deprivation includes well-being needs, identity needs, and freedom needs, and not just the

basic need to survive (1996, p.197). Thus, direct and structural violence is “avoidable

insults to basic human needs, and more generally to life, lowering the real level of needs

24 satisfaction below what is potentially possible” (ibid). Where direct and structural

violence is present, the deprivation of human potential will be justified and legitimized by

aspects of culture, the symbolic sphere of our existence exemplified in language, art,

religion, ideology, media, and education (1996, p.196). Where aspects of culture justify

and legitimize direct and/or structural violence by evoking notions of superiority,

chosenness, etc, Galtung sees cultural violence. Cultural violence is the final side of his

violence triangle.

While Galtung trisects violence for analytical purposes, in practice all three forms

of violence are interdependently related with causal chains going in every direction. The

triangle is self-reinforcing: cultural violence can foment structural violence, and direct

violence can be employed to preserve or undermine these structures; in turn, the physical

and psychological damage that accompanies direct violence perpetuates the attitudes

underpinning existing forms of cultural violence. This is not the only possible genealogy

though. Instead, “violence can start at any corner in the direct-structural-cultural violence

triangle and is easily transmitted to the other corners” (ibid, p.208). While oftentimes

conflicts do not receive attention from external (and sometimes internal) parties until they

have erupted into direct violence, usually by the time this happens both structural and

cultural violence are rooted in the conflict structure. Resultantly, transforming

intercommunal (or international) conflicts infused with substantial levels of direct

violence entails mitigating recognized and unrecognized structural and cultural violence.

While the de-escalation of violent behavior is one aspect of this transformation,

ultimately eliminating all forms of violence from the conflict structure will entail

changing the attitudes (emotive, cognitive and conative - or feelings, beliefs and volition)

25 that may revive direct/structural violence and reinforce cultural violence. A more

succinct variation of this point reads like this: “We end direct violence by changing

conflict behaviour, structural violence by removing structural contradictions and

injustices, and cultural violence by changing attitudes” (Ramsbotham, Woodhouse and

Miall, 2005, p.11). But, these changes occur interdependently on different levels

(vertical) of society’s elite-grassroots spectrum throughout the conflict transformation

process. Failure to recognize the interdependency of behaviors and attitudes, and the

interdependency of direct, structural and cultural violence, is a definitive characteristic of

the pessimistic interpretation of Northern Ireland’s peace process.

For the purpose of clarity, it seems appropriate to briefly recapitulate this

interpretation before challenging its merit. Pointing to the ethno-national basis of

Northern Ireland’s consociational arrangement, Rupert Taylor writes: “The problem is

that there is no good reason to suppose that the promotion of ethno-national pluralism

will lead to the deflation of ethno-nationalism and create a non-sectarian democracy”

(2001, p.48). Likewise, Stephen Howe suggests that “an approach based on ‘cultural

traditions’ and ‘parity of esteem’ […] freezes – potentially in perpetuity – the perception

of their being two fixed, opposed blocs in Northern Ireland. […] It may perpetuate or

even deepen the sectarianism it is intended to overcome. It is probably incompatible with

moves in such directions as towards a more integrated system of education in Northern

Ireland, which many commentators have viewed as crucial to long-term peace” (2000, p.

238). Instead of a non-sectarian democracy or more integrated society, Robin Wilson sees

the society that has “blinkingly emerged” from the peace process as marked by “chronic

political polarization” and “deep-seated sectarian (and racial) intolerance” (2008, p.199).

26 To punctuate the disconnect between “‘high politics’ and the facts on the ground,”

Wilson argues that the “state of ethnic ‘groupness’ that characterizes divided societies is

by no means natural or inevitable: it is sustained and reproduced by ethno-political

entrepreneurs and may otherwise decay under the pressures of quotidian life upon the

mass of the population not recruited by the protagonists” (2008, p. 210). Avoiding such

speculative macro-theorizing, Taylor more specifically claims: “More and more people in

Northern Ireland are […] looking forward to a time when they do not have to be either

Orange or Green, Protestant or Catholic, unionist or nationalist. The commitment to

consociationalism postpones this eventuality” (2001, p.41). Ultimately, Taylor, Wilson

and Howe each argue that the peace process has not contributed to the elimination of

exclusive constructions of difference in Northern Ireland, and a functioning

consociational government does not make this elimination more likely. These are the

same cultural constructions, or “imagined communities,”11 that have fueled and

legitimated years of structural and direct violence, and any political arrangement

predicated on their continued existence will eventually be undermined by the

sectarianism it seeks to mitigate.

It should have been clear earlier that it is not my intention to repudiate the claim

that many parts of Northern Ireland’s society remain deeply divided and stained with

sectarianism. I have talked with residents of the enclosed cantons in West Belfast,

walked past the “Free Derry” mural in [London]Derry’s Bogside community, sat through

inciting sermons at Dr. Ian Paisley’s Free Presbyterian church, and watched the Orange

Order march ominously through Belfast’s city centre on Remembrance Day. Norman

27 Porter’s portrayal of Northern Ireland’s post-Agreement environment speaks to these

experiences and my reflections on them:

The legacy of a generation of violence has left scars of bitterness and fear among citizens of all religious and political persuasions; cultural differences between unionists and nationalists are as pronounced as they have ever been and continue to create tense situations, especially during the marching season; housing and educational segregation between Protestants and Catholics in working-class areas of Belfast, for example is virtually complete and shows little sign of changing; and, in general, a climate of mistrust exists between large numbers of unionists and nationalists and stretches reconciliation’s spirit to the limit. (2003, p.3)

To ignore this potent sectarian division within parts of Northern Ireland’s political and

social space would be nothing less than ignorant. However, to exaggerate its

pervasiveness and its vitriol misrepresents reality, and to assign it inevitability, a place in

posterity, is seemingly misguided. While I am not wholly optimistic about the trajectory

of Northern Ireland’s peace (an acceptable pessimism promotes necessary criticism), here

I will argue that it is more than plausible to foresee “positive peace” in Northern Ireland’s

future despite the division that remains.12 This peace will include the absence of cultural,

as well as direct and structural, violence between Northern Ireland’s ethno-national

communities.

The criticism aimed at the socio-cultural ramifications (or lack there of) of Northern

Ireland’s political agreements13 is grounded in the fact that the intercommunal conflict

has always had an underlying cultural dimension. The nature of this cultural dimension

has changed overtime. For example, not until well after the partition of Ireland was

cultural difference imbued with politico-ideological significance (unionism and

nationalism) and did the ethno-national identities now commonly associated with

Northern Ireland emerge.14 Cultural communities do not evolve in political or structural

vacuums. Ruane and Todd clarify this point:

28 Communal division depends on pre-existing constructs of self and other, whether ‘Protestant/Catholic’, ‘Irish/British’, or ‘settler-native’. But the origins and dynamics of such symbolic distinctions are interwoven with actual experiences rooted in social and structural relationships – position in the economy, demographic strength, access to the means of coercion – and over time such structurally based experiences have become constitutive components of communal culture and identity. (Ruane and Todd, 1996, p.6)

As noted earlier, also with reference to Ruane and Todd, in Northern Ireland’s case these

cultural identities developed within a socio-political structure where they were the basis

of access to power (e.g. voting rights, political representation, etc) and resources (e.g.

jobs, property, etc). This structure made cultural difference antagonistic, which is not an

a priori quality of cultural difference per se. What is more important however is that

these communities developed within a socio-political structure where they were the basis

of unequal access to power and resources. Consequently, the two “communal cultures

and identities” in Northern Ireland15 are historically constituted by experiences

internalized within a violent socio-political structure and, more recently, by experiences

internalized during a prolonged period of direct violence. It is hardly surprising that

within this environment, the two communities’ cultural identities became constituted by

attitudes of fear, mistrust, bitterness, and entitlement. While the remnants of structural

violence between Protestants and Catholics are dissolving and the most egregious acts of

direct violence have largely subsided, these negative attitudes continue to underpin the

cultural identities of many of those most affected by the violence. This has allowed

cultural violence to persist beyond the cessation of other forms of violence.

Without changing these attitudes, the political stability Northern Ireland now

enjoys is undoubtedly precarious. However, contrary to the claims of the most

pessimistic critics, the current political arrangement does not preclude the possibility of

long-term social transformation and reconciliation. The key phrase here is “long-term.”

29 Cultural violence “is an invariant, a ‘permanent,’ remaining essentially the same for long

periods, given the slow transformations of basic culture” (Galtung, 1996, p.199). Those

who expected political settlement to bring expedited reconciliation to a land whose four-

hundred-year division has been exacerbated by almost forty years of devastating armed

conflict do not understand the function of political agreements in the larger process of

conflict transformation. An agreement must not be seen as a panacea. Instead, “a peace

agreement is merely one element of a larger peace process, an element that may create

some new opportunities but hardly alters all aspects of the conflict. One thing that is

imperative is to establish realistic expectations about how much and how quickly a […]

peace agreement can alter the basic nature of a long and profoundly bitter conflict”

(Arthur, 2001, p. 147). That a stable and accommodating political settlement will have

an immediate and palpable affect on the attitudinal dispositions of deeply entrenched

cultures of violence is not a realistic expectation. However, to think that a political

settlement that facilitates mutuality and collaboration between the most virulent of

Northern Ireland’s adversaries will have no affect (in the direction of reconciliation) on

the constituencies these adversaries represent is equally unrealistic.

Those who fail to share this opinion justify their pessimism with a theoretical

argument about the relationship between political structure and socio-cultural change. As

previously discussed, this argument contends that consociational governance based on

exclusive ethno-national blocs perpetuates sectarianism and inhibits progress towards

non-ethnic civic/political participation and the overall deconstruction of ethno-national

identities. Ultimately, this means that peace will not be achieved by political

accommodation for opposing ethno-nationalisms. Instead, they argue, it will be

30 actualized through a “bottom-up” process of social transformation; one which

undermines traditional self/other conceptions, and gives birth to an inclusive (i.e. “non-

ethnic”) civic nationalism and more integrated society. This means that “instead of

taking ethno-national group identity as the social base for political development, attention

should focus on the formation and actions of wider and all-embracing pro-democracy (i.e.

pro-people) movements in society–those movements that cross-cut social divisions, and

challenge and erode the clash of opposing ethno-nationalisms and create new

relationships of mutuality though networking and debate” (Taylor, 2001, p. 47).

The normative social and political standards that underpin the social

transformation approach should not uncritically be accepted as immediately useful or

desirable in the Northern Ireland context. Social transformation prioritizes standards for

political belonging and participation rooted in a particular version of Western “liberal”

democracy, one with a tendency to surreptitiously deny its cultural nature by exclaiming

its “universality.” This version promotes political arrangements that envision integrated

nation-states founded on principles of equal citizenship between individuals whose ethnic

affiliations lack political significance. It conventionally sees a multi-ethnic political

community as a “community of individuals” as opposed to a “community of

communities,” and hopes to imbue this community with a common multi-national civic

identity that transcends ethnic belonging and forms the basis of the state’s constitutional

structure. This sort of civic nationalism has different variations, ranging from

multiculturalist to assimilationist ideal types, but the “de-nationalization” of ethnic

identity is the common feature of each. It is easy to see why this conceptualization of

political belonging is attractive to some people working towards the resolution of violent

31 ethno-national conflict. Surely diminishing the influence and potency of ethno-national

solidarities would eliminate the ethno-national basis for violence. For this reason it is

understandable that McGarry, an ardent advocate of Northern Ireland’s consociational

arrangement, acknowledges; “it is difficult to criticize social transformation as a long-

term objective” (2001, p.117). While recognizing the long-term attractiveness of social

transformation however, McGarry understands its proper place within the larger

peacebuilding process. In Northern Ireland, he writes, “there is no evidence that it [social

transformation] can be achieved any time soon, and especially not outside the context of

a political settlement acceptable to both sides” (ibid). Here, McGarry makes two claims

that must be explained separately to be properly understood together.

In the first clause, he rather vehemently rejects the claim that statistically

uncommon cases of social integration or non-ethno-nationally motivated political

participation suggest the preeminence of widespread social transformation in Northern

Ireland. The reality, he argues, is that “communal tensions, territorial segregation, and

endogamous social and sexual relations will remain dominant features of social and

political life in Northern Ireland, with or without a definitive constitutional settlement.

Ethno-national cleavages and politics can be managed; and they can be managed

equitably; but they cannot be wished away” (McGarry and O’Leary, 1995, p.406).

Acknowledging the reality and the potency of existing expressions of ethnic and political

solidarity in Northern Ireland is a necessary starting point for any attempt to reconcile

them; although, this acknowledgement must not be construed as equivalent to the claim

that Northern Ireland’s ethno-national “cleavage” is natural or intransigent. Practically

speaking, “it is hard to know what plausible alternative there is to working with existing

32 political self-definitions. For to imagine another agreement that bypassed the realities of

how most Northern citizens currently define themselves politically is to imagine a society

with different concerns and problems, and with different citizens” (Porter, 2003, p.217).

More theoretically, integrationists criticize consociationalists for reifying difference in a

manner that “does not fully confront the question of human freedom and action” and

overlooks “the significance of people’s ability to change their world, to transform the

conditions of human existence” (Taylor, 2001, p.47). Yet, the social transformation

approach is equally guilty of denying human freedom and action in its refusal to accept as

legitimate the expressions of ethnic solidarity freely chosen by the people of Northern

Ireland. Harsher criticisms of integrationist theory might, in this way, conceive of social

transformation as a sort of utopian engineering, or radical change inspired by a

commitment to non-endogenous political and social standards. This accusation is hardly

helpful for our purposes here, but it does highlight the fact that acknowledging existing

ethno-national solidarities may be morally significant as well as politically necessary for

any peacebuilding process.

In the second clause, McGarry claims that even if social transformation is the key

to sustainable peace in Northern Ireland, there is almost no possibility that this could

occur without a political settlement. This was briefly discussed above in the context of

transforming the attitudes that underlie cultural violence. A transformation of socially

consequential and culturally constituted communal identities involves changing the

attitudes (fear, distrust, ignorance, etc) that underpin them. Antagonistic attitudes

constituted be feelings of fear, distrust, or hate rarely dissolve when there is direct or

structural violence to reinforce the potency and justify the legitimacy of those feelings.

33 In other words, changing attitudes is not possible without a cessation of the violent

behavior that has shaped and continues to shape these attitudes.16 The “state of ethnic

‘groupness’” may decay under the “pressures of quotidian life,” as Wilson argues, but life

in Northern Ireland before the ceasefires and latest political agreements could hardly have

been characterized as “quotidian.” There is no evidence that there was a persuasive

incentive for the relevant actors to discontinue their military struggle outside the prospect

of a political settlement. Ceasefires have always been precarious, contingent on positive

development towards this settlement. More importantly, the history of failed settlements

in Northern Ireland made it clear that a successful settlement would have to be one that

acknowledged, accommodated, and politically empowered the two national communities,

securing their interests while circumventing the constitutional impasse of their political

ideologies (unionism and nationalism). Ultimately, this means not only does the absence

of political settlement obviate widespread social transformation, in the Northern Irish

context the nature of this political settlement had to have been consociational as opposed

to integrationist. Thus, if some kind of social transformation were necessary for

sustainable peace in Northern Ireland, it would indeed be unfortunate if social

transformation and consociationalism were incompatible by nature. However, there is

little evidence that speculating this incompatibility is more reasonable than presuming the

two can occur simultaneously.

Norman Porter, who argues for deep reconciliation in Northern Ireland, sees the

Belfast Agreement and its consociational aspects as necessary steps towards integration.

“In recognizing that Northern Ireland’s citizens mostly define themselves as unionists,

nationalists and republicans, the Agreement simply reflects prevailing realities and tries

34 to find a way of shaping them in a reconciling direction. In doing so, it holds out the

prospect that these definitions may be capable of reformulations that take us beyond the

intransigent images they frequently suggest” (Porter, 2003, p.217). Consociationalism’s

“way of shaping them in a reconciling direction” is delineated clearly by McGarry and

O’Leary:

Power-sharing, properly understood, aims to achieve equality and proportionality between divided communities, i.e. to erode discrimination and untrammeled majority control, and to permit cultural autonomy. These principles are meant to inhibit ethnic or sectarian domination, or forced integration. They are not meant to, and need not, institutionalize hatred for other communities, or indeed hierarchical relations between them. They are intended to foster tolerance, mutual recognition, and respect for differences. (McGarry and O’Leary, 1995, p.135)

Admittedly, “tolerance, mutual recognition, and respect for differences” is not the

objective of social transformation, or at least not the more radical conception of social

transformation. However, an environment in which differences are recognized,

tolerated, and respected is likely to be an environment where ethnic communities feel

secure, particularly when this recognition is institutionalized within the structures of

political power. McGarry and O’Leary suggest that when ethnic security is realized,

“the pressure to sustain ethnic solidarity is reduced, and the greater the likelihood that

a more pluralist politics can emerge within them” (ibid, p. 406). This “more pluralist

politics” may entail the (eventual) erosion of traditional communal identifications

(ibid, p.135), as a common citizen identity may appear with the emergence of a

common political life. Political cooperation through consensual patterns of power-

sharing within consociationalism’s institutional arrangements may create the feeling

of common political life in Northern Ireland (Porter, 2003, p.218). In this way, when

the long-term trajectory of Northern Ireland’s peace is imagined, there is little reason

to think that consociationalism and the dissolution of ethnic-nationalisms need to be

construed as mutually exclusive phenomena.

35 However, there is also little reason to think that the dissolution of ethno-

national formations of belonging should be considered a prerequisite for the

realization of sustainable peace in Northern Ireland. In fact, there is little evidence

that strategies intended to break down ethnic solidarities can be effective except over

very long periods of time (Esman, 1997, p. 10), and it seems to me there is even less

evidence that breaking down these solidarities is necessary. Inclusive citizen

belonging does not entail ethnic homogeneity, even in places where structural and

direct violence have been perpetrated along the boundaries created by ethnic

heterogeneity. Instead, political recognition and empowerment will bring out the

benign characteristics of ethnic identity. While by no means completely analogous,

the development of race-relations in the United States since the 1960s provides an

interesting comparison. It suggests that structural inclusion precipitates a very

gradual process of social and cultural transformation, which is to say that social

integration becomes increasingly prevalent and cultural identities slowly disconnect

from their connotations with notions of superiority/inferiority, sacred/profane, etc. It

would not be farfetched to imagine that this transformation might be expedited in

Northern Ireland, where the ethnic violence does not have a racial dimension. On the

other hand, the lack of racial difference between “Irish” and “British” citizens in

Northern Ireland may punctuate the importance of establishing identity through active

cultural signifiers of difference; meaning that cultural assimilation is less likely in the

immediate aftermath of political inclusion than it would be if cultural identities were

overtly signified by race.17 Either way, diminished levels of intercommunal violence

will make these cultural signifiers less incendiary than they once were; although the

36 amount of time this process of “desensitization” takes will vary in relation to the

amount of violence experienced. In the areas most affected by direct violence, the

ones now enclosed by peace walls, it could be generations before “parity of esteem”

is engendered and signifiers of cultural difference are not met with distrust and

hostility.

Engendering “parity of esteem” in communities where difference has

translated into sectarianism for decades, if not centuries, is the social transformation

needed in Northern Ireland if peace is to be sustainable. The ultimate goal of this sort

of social transformation is the re-humanization of the “Other” within the conventional

self/Other distinction, as opposed to the dissolution of this distinction all together.

Consociational governance does not inhibit this sort of transformation. In fact, it

provides a template for the type of interpersonal transformation that could take place

on a larger scale. The political peace process and consociational arrangement it

produced reveal the way dialogue and interaction between those in conflict with one-

another facilitates a transformation of the attitudes underpinning cultural violence.

Dialogue and interaction in secure environments has allowed the most virulent of

enemies in Northern Ireland (Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness, for example) to

overcome distrust and fear and see each other as fellow human beings and political

colleagues. Despite the many peacebuilding initiatives working at the grassroots

level to emulate this intra and interpersonal transformation, this sort of dialogue and

interaction cannot occur in an effective, meaningful way between the citizens of

Northern Ireland while residential segregation and segregated education remain

central features of society.

37 The establishment of state-funded secular schooling is a major political

priority in Northern Ireland, but even schools without religious affiliation will not be

integrated if they are built in highly segregated residential areas. If integrated

schooling is the key to curtailing the reproduction of cultural violence in the next

generation, which most people believe is the case, residential desegregation must be

made a priority. However, as I discussed in the second section of this chapter,

residential segregation is not politically imposed; it is the “style-of-choice” for many

residents. As such, it would be difficult, and perhaps inappropriate, to suggest that

Northern Irish politicians should immediately seek the demolition of peace walls

before more is done to deflate the feelings of fear, distrust, and bitterness marinating

inside of them. Defusing these feelings through cross-community initiatives and

intra-community enrichment projects has ostensibly become the responsibility of non-

governmental organizations. These civil society actors are indispensible to

peacebuilding in Northern Ireland, yet their work would be more successful if it was

complemented by structural economic adjustments that tackle the poverty within

Northern Ireland’s walled communities.

Residential segregation is most pronounced in areas of economic

marginalization, which in turn is significantly related to experiences with extreme

levels of direct violence. The relationships between segregation, poverty, and

violence are complex and need not be explored in detail here, but it is not difficult to

see how the three might reinforce each other. In the republican and loyalist

communities most affected by decades of armed conflict, sectarianism (cultural

violence) cannot be reduced without reducing the poverty (structural violence) and

38 violence (direct violence) that underpins it. The decommissioning of the Provisional

IRA and the normalization of policing have largely eliminated the most extreme

manifestations of the latter. Regarding the former, structural changes have largely

alleviated economic inequalities between Catholics and Protestants in Northern

Ireland, but the neoliberal, free-market approach to economic transformation has

provided scarce and insufficient benefits for the lower class. In the poorest nationalist

communities, the lack of an economic peace-dividend may be offset by substantial

political gains, but this is not the case in the loyalist communities most affected by the

conflict, who have found neither an economic peace dividend nor any substantial

political dividend (Hillyard, Rolston, Tomlinson, 2005, p.209). Economic

marginalization within a society that is economically growing will certainly

exacerbate feelings of bitterness, mistrust, entitlement, and insecurity. Rather than

aim these feelings at culpable economic policies or political elites, it is easy to see

how communities already steeped in sectarianism would unknowingly avoid class-

consciousness and blame their plight on ethno-national adversaries. While without

broader peacebuilding mechanisms anti-poverty strategies will not alleviate cultural

violence, there is no doubt that without anti-poverty strategies broader peacebuilding

initiatives will prove similarly impotent in the communities most affected by

Northern Ireland’s violence. The new government plays a much bigger role in

formulating and implementing these strategies than it seems to realize.

Thus, a less jeremiad criticism of Northern Ireland’s peace takes aim at the

under-commitment to residential desegregation: the process which will ultimately

precipitate a much-needed system of integrated education; more integrated and

39 successful local economies; and a slowing in the reproduction of cultural violence.

Currently, any move towards desegregation is stifled by some peoples’ desire to live

in ethnically homogenous communities, which they perceive to be more secure than

heterogeneous living space (regardless of whether or not this is actually the case).

Overcoming the attitudes of fear and mistrust that underlie segregation has become

the responsibility of peacebuilding initiatives working to promote social inclusion at

the grassroots level within civil society. Rather than pouring more public dollars into

these initiatives (either from the EU, Northern Ireland or elsewhere), peacebuilding at

the grassroots level must be complemented by changes in the economic policies that

perpetuate the marginalization of Northern Ireland’s most sectarian communities.

Economic development is not a panacea, but without it any sort of social

transformation within marginalized communities is unlikely to yield significant and

sustainable results. Politicians are certainly aware of the role economic development

has played in moving away from violence in Northern Ireland on the whole, but they

must be willing to make the political decisions necessary to ensure that this

development substantially reaches the lower class communities most affected by the

violence. In a world where politics and wealth tend to move in synergy, this may

become increasingly unfashionable for Northern Irish politicians as the political

environment normalizes. However difficult or unfashionable, the realization of

economic justice within, as well as across, Northern Ireland’s ethno-national

communities will make desegregation more realistic and sustainable peace more

likely.

40 Conclusion

The content of this chapter has insinuated that interpretations of post-

Agreement Northern Ireland can be both critical and affirmative of Northern Ireland’s

peace depending on the type of peace one envisions. This becomes clear when the

divergence between these interpretations is situated within Galtung’s theoretical

framework for understanding peace, which imagines three spheres in which violence

manifests itself, and subsequently, three spheres in which peace must emerge. When

the interdependent relationships between direct, structural, and cultural violence are

comprehended correctly, apocalyptically pessimistic criticisms of Northern Ireland’s

post-Agreement environment are exposed as dubious and the more optimistic, yet still

critical, interpretation I have defended is validated.

The most egregious forms of direct intercommunal violence, those perpetrated

by organized paramilitaries, have largely ceased with the decommissioning of the

Provisional IRA and the renouncement of violence by the major loyalist

paramilitaries. Structural violence that economically repressed the Catholic

nationalist community has been curbed by economic policies that promote equal

opportunity and have eliminated substantial inequalities between the two

communities. Structural violence that politically repressed the Catholic nationalist

community has been curbed by a consociational political structure that champions

mutual recognition, accommodation, and intercommunal collaboration. The

successful implementation of this political structure has included, perhaps inevitably,

the empowerment of Northern Ireland’s most ethno-nationally oriented political

parties, Sinn Fein and the DUP. While historically these parties have exacerbated

41 intercommunal tension and then exploited it for political gain, their role as majority

parties within the power-sharing government has significantly moderated them. A

calculated vacillation between their ethno-national obstinacy and political

compromise allows these parties to govern with a moderate pragmatism while

simultaneously keeping the electorate’s support for the post-Agreement government

high. This public support has allowed political society to flourish, which, most

importantly, has meant the emergence of a fully functioning state police force that is

endorsed by all political parties. The combination of normalized policing and high

public support for the political process has ostensibly disempowered those who

remain opposed to both. Most significantly, this means that while the threat of

violence by “dissident republican groups” (e.g. Continuity IRA, Real IRA, etc.) is as

strong as it has been since 1998, it is unlikely that their violence will destabilize the

power-sharing arrangement unless it is met with unforeseen political inaction. A

condemnation of the violence by Sinn Fein and the continuation of substantial efforts

by the PSNI to eliminate these groups would insure the safety of the unionist

community, deter loyalist retaliation, and ultimately keep direct violence from

undermining structural peace in Northern Ireland.

Structural peace will also not be undermined by the attitudes of superiority,

chosenness, and entitlement that have become associated with cultural belonging in

Northern Ireland. With no structural or direct violence to justify, cultural violence will

eventually lose its relevance; although as I have suggested, the emergence of cultural

peace will take generations in the areas of Northern Ireland most affected by years of

direct violence. It is not likely that the rituals and symbols through which the people of

42 Northern Ireland establish cultural belonging and cultural difference will disappear, but

increased social interaction in an environment with no direct or structural violence will

make these rituals and symbols less and less abrasive, and less and less politically salient.

While non-governmental cross-community initiatives attempt to create this interaction,

oftentimes taking people to neutral space to do so, if this type of social interaction is to

occur in a meaningful way for those who feel most threatened by “the Other,” segregated

schooling and residential isolation must become social anomalies.

The government has neglected its role in helping this occur, which includes

reforming the model for economic growth that has done little to nothing to tackle the

plight of the most marginalized and sectarian neighborhoods in Northern Ireland. Over-

reliance on this neo-liberal model, which is more prone to under-regulation and unequal

and unsustainable growth, is the most immediate threat to stability in Northern Ireland,

especially considering the prospect of a global recession. The new middle class will be

the first casualty when the inevitable downturn comes, and the erosion of this class would

mean increased levels of unemployment in areas where jobs have disempowered

sectarianism. Avoiding a dangerous combination of unemployment and sectarianism will

involve devising effective anti-poverty strategies in the short-term, reforming the

economic growth model in the long-term, and using both to bolster the work done by

NGOs to tackle intracommunal social exclusion and intercommunal antagonism.

Together, these can and will create conditions more conducive to social integration. In

turn, social integration will help foment the cultural recognition and accommodation that

antedates the end of cultural violence in Northern Ireland.

43 Many questions concerning the future of Northern Ireland remain unanswered by

the peace process and the settlement it produced, including whether or not its place

within the United Kingdom will be undermined, in accordance with the Belfast

Agreement, by the forecasted alteration in Northern Ireland’s demography.18 It seems to

me however, that a questionable future is better than one fatalistically condemned to

violent intercommunal conflict, which seemed to be the case in Northern Ireland

throughout the Troubles. It is hardly overdramatic to suggest that the political solution in

Northern Ireland was “a solution as likely to occur as finding a snowball in hell.”19

While the initial excitement evoked by political settlement was frustrated by years of

failed implementation and more negotiations, the power-sharing agreement actualized by

Sinn Fein and the DUP on “devolution day” in May 2007 seemingly suggests we are a

good ways down that long road to peace. Undoubtedly, many of Northern Ireland’s

citizens continue to live with the fear and distrust instilled in them by years of brutal

violence, but a prolonged period of negative peace, which includes a cessation of direct

and structural violence, may allow a new generation to emerge that does not carry the

burden of their parents’ hate. More change is needed for this to occur, but in the post-

Agreement context I have described above, it is clear that the opportunity for such change

is at hand in Northern Ireland.

44

Chapter 2

Symmetry and Peace

45 Introduction

At the beginning of this project I suggested that there was a fundamental question

confronting those interested in resolving violent conflicts: what can be done so that those

engaged in violent conflict see the cost of violence as greater than the cost of peace? In

route to answering this question, I have argued that Northern Ireland does indeed provide

peace and conflict theorists with a case study for analyzing how protracted ethno-national

conflicts move from violence to peace. Various factors have enabled and/or facilitated

this transformation in different and convoluted ways, and there is a plethora of

scholarship aimed at elucidating them.

More historical accounts, like those of Powell (2008) and McKittrick and McVea

(2005), place their emphasis on the doggedly inexorable political process that continued

throughout the oscillations of the Troubles. When talking about this process, there is a

distinction made between form and content. Some analytical accounts give primacy to

the inclusive nature of the process itself (form), whereas others emphasize the

meticulously tailored political settlement the process produced as the sine qua non of

Northern Ireland’s peace (content). Disagreement over which was more central to the

success of the process, its form or its content, is overshadowed by the acknowledgement

that neither would have brought about peace without the other. Other analyses,

exemplified by Rowthorn and Wayne (1988) and Guy Ben-Porat (2006), insinuate that

changing socio-economic conditions within Northern Ireland brought about an

environment in which settlement was possible. Others, like Farrington (2008), emphasize

the role international, or external, developments and actors played in bringing about

conditions conducive to crafting and implementing the Belfast Agreement. While these

46 factors are oftentimes portrayed as autonomously significant because of discipline-

specific scholarship, there is little doubt that their impact on Northern Ireland’s transition

away from violence should be attributed to the cross-pollinating dynamic between them.

The point of this chapter is not to recapitulate these diverse explanations of

Northern Ireland’s successful peace process. This would be both tedious and redundant.

Instead, here I would like to pull from them what I perceive to be their common thread,

which is found in the most basic affect each has had on Northern Ireland’s political and

social climate. At the risk of being labeled “reductionist,” in this chapter I argue that the

efficacy of the peace process must be understood as the result of a medley of factors

whose ultimate effect was the actualization of symmetry in Northern Ireland. As a

concept that can be used to interpret Northern Ireland’s transformation, symmetry is far

from reductionist; it is both comprehensive and integrative. The purpose of its

application in this chapter is twofold. First, it illuminates the reasons peace became

realizable after decades of violence and political stagnation. Second, and more

importantly, by examining the more and less obvious ways symmetry has been made

manifest in Northern Ireland, we can simultaneously develop our understanding of

symmetry as a broader theoretical concept that could be applied fruitfully and

persuasively outside the context of Northern Ireland.

Defining our Concept

Symmetry is not a new concept in the field of conflict resolution. This chapter

will apply it beyond its conventional connotations within conflict analysis, but these

connotations serve as a good starting point for establishing a basic understanding. In

47 conflict resolution, symmetric conflicts are those that occur between “relatively similar

parties,” whereas asymmetric conflicts are those that arise between dissimilar parties

(Ramsbotham, Woodhouse, and Miall, 2005, p.21). In this way, symmetry and

asymmetry describe a relationship between two parties, or as Andrew Mack writes, “it is

the relationship between the belligerents [which is the] key factor in terms of symmetry

or asymmetry” (1974, p.81). Obviously, similar and dissimilar are always comparative

adjectives. Within the conventional understanding of symmetric and asymmetric

conflicts, these adjectives compare each party’s level of access to economic resources,

political decision-making processes and legal structures, and instruments of direct

violence. The allocation of control in these areas is most easily recognized in intrastate

conflict, but it can also be seen in interstate conflict when one considers the distribution

of wealth, technology, and political clout in the global context. In either case, when

access is commensurate, the conflict is symmetrical. When it is not, the conflict is

asymmetrical. Here, focusing on asymmetric conflict will be a means by which we can

begin to address the inadequacy of the conventional understanding of symmetry.

Most of today’s violent conflicts are not fought between states; they are fought

between competing groups within a state, or between non-state actors and existing states.

These conflicts are almost always asymmetric because “the stronger party, frequently a

state authority, is able to draw upon a number of power resources that widens its range of

strategies in conflict. Non-state actors are much more restrained and limited in the

options they have” (Aggestam, 2002, p.69). This imbalance is particularly consequential

in conflicts between state and non-state actors for two reasons: states tend to control the

means of coercion, which includes both the instruments of violence and the men who

48 wield them; more importantly, in the international system states have a juridical

monopoly on sovereignty, and therefore also on the legitimization of violence.20 This

“legitimacy” oftentimes veils the moral ambiguity of violence employed by the “top dog”

to maintain the asymmetric relationship that grants them privilege and underpins the

conflict.

This last point suggests the qualitative difference between symmetric and

asymmetric conflicts. Symmetric conflicts can be reduced to competing interests

between equal parties. These conflicts could conceivably end in mutual destruction, but

in today’s world it is more likely that 1) they will reach a state of “mutually hurting

stalemate,”21 or 2) one party will seek and gain a decisive advantage over the other,

making the conflict qualitatively asymmetric. In asymmetric conflicts on the other hand,

the “root of the conflict lies not in particular issues or interests that may divide the

parties, but in the very structure of who they are and the relationship between them”

(Ramsbotham, Woodhouse, and Miall, 2005, p.21). While agreeing with this claim, it is

worth noting that the inferred distinction between “the very structure of who they are”

and “the relationship between them,” a distinction that was probably accidental, is not

one that I endorse; the two cannot be separated. With reference to either party, there is

no “structure of who they are” external to the relationship between them. This is why

soon after making this statement, Ramsbotham (et al.) are able to argue that the only way

to resolve asymmetric conflict is to change the structure of the relationship between the

protagonists (ibid.). Obviously, this change is rarely in the interest of the “top dog.”

However, without changing the structure of the relationship, any sort of conflict

49 resolution process is likely to reproduce the structure characterized by inequality and

domination, making a continuation or return to direct violence likely.

Much can and will be said about the implications this has for resolving violent

asymmetric conflict. Here however, I invoke this discussion only to make a more

immediately relevant point concerning the conventional understanding of symmetry and

asymmetry. This understanding is fixated on the structural relationship between conflict

parties; that is, the relationship they have in reference to quantifiable resources within an

overarching political and economic structure (e.g. political positions, wealth, military

instruments, etc). Designations of symmetry and asymmetry, in this way, appear as

objective descriptions of empirically verifiable conditions (e.g. who controls the political

decision-making process? Who controls private and public economic resources? Who

controls security and justice mechanisms?).

This understanding of [a]symmetry22 is useful in its clarity, but its focus on

material factors makes it an insufficient lens for encapsulating the conditions of

multifaceted conflicts. Many of these conditions are “objective” in the sense that they are

empirically calculable to external parties. But conflicts also have underlying conditions

that cannot be calculated or quantified. While incalculable, these conditions contribute to

the perception of [a]symmetry for those involved in conflict, the perception that will

ultimately encourage whether a party continues to embrace violence or moves toward

settlement and peace. Both symmetry and asymmetry are constituted by experiences

within a conflict, experiences mediated by material, or structural relationships, as well as

immaterial, symbolic ones. If resolving violent conflicts involves overcoming

asymmetry and cultivating its opposite, as is insisted by most theorists, then our

50 conceptions of asymmetry and symmetry would be well served if they considered the

material and symbolic relationship between conflict parties. While seemingly esoteric

when discussed in the theoretical, my hope is that by imposing this discussion onto

Northern Ireland’s conflict and peace process I can illuminate the deeper conception of

symmetry (and asymmetry) envisioned here.

Asymmetry in Northern Ireland

While re-writing a deep history of Northern Ireland’s conflict is not a project I

wish to take on here, it would hardly be contentious to suggest that this history has been

defined by asymmetric conflict. This claim is not unprecedented. Take James McAuley,

Catherine McGlynn and Jon Tonge for instance; they avoid all ambiguity when they

write: “It is possible to conceptualize the entire history of the Northern Ireland state as

one of asymmetric conflict” (2008, p.92). It could be said that this statement is limited in

its historical scope, as the roots of asymmetry in Northern Ireland go much deeper into

the soil of history than the partition of Ireland and the de jure formation of the “Northern”

state in 1921. While uncovering these roots is necessary for understanding the dynamics

of Northern Ireland’s Troubles, I am thankful that others have taken the time to do so,

and done it with more proficiency and sophistication than I probably could.23 I have seen

the way mythmakers in Northern Ireland (e.g. politicians, paramilitaries, church leaders,

etc) peddle different versions of this history to justify their own contributions to the

violence and hostility, and witnessing this has left me with no desire to try and construct

my own “objective” version of their “settler/native” story. Instead, in this section I try

51 and present the asymmetry as perceived by those in Northern Ireland through the

troubles; an asymmetry constituted by both material and imagined conditions, both of

which are equally “real” for those affected by violent conflict.

The asymmetry experienced and articulated by the Catholic nationalist

community is most in line with conventional understandings of structural asymmetry in

that it corresponds to a quantifiably unequal relationship. First, the initial geographic

demarcation of Northern Ireland divided the province of Ulster in a manner that ensured a

Protestant majority and a Catholic minority in the new state. Of course, population

inequality is not tantamount to asymmetry, but being the minority can exacerbate the

psychological affects of structural asymmetry (e.g. fear, resentment, etc). This was

particularly likely for the Catholic community in Northern Ireland considering the history

of Anglo-Irish relations and the fact that partition symbolically created a “Free State” for

Catholics in Ireland, and a “Protestant state for a Protestant people”24 in Northern Ireland.

With the act of partition, Northern Irish Catholics immediately became a minority in a

state predicated on self-determination for the Protestant community who wished to retain

their British connection. Structural inequalities between the two communities in Ulster

had always been overshadowed by the wider colonial struggle between Ireland and

Britain, but after the creation of Northern Ireland and its devolved government, Ulster’s

inequalities took on a new political significance.

As the minority community in a state whose legitimacy they saw as questionable

at most, Catholics complained that the new set-up was marked by “discrimination in

employment, partial distribution of resources such as housing, and a number of

inequalities in relation to electoral practice and the organization of the security forces”

52 (McAuley et al., 2008, p.92). Discrimination came in overt and less overt forms, but

between partition and the beginning of the Catholic civil rights movement in the 1960s, it

created widespread disadvantage for the Catholic community throughout the private and

public sectors. Ruane and Todd are hardly ambiguous about this: “Protestants were in

firm control of Northern Ireland’s economic resources from partition until the 1960s.

They were dominant at all levels of the private sector including the crucial areas of

industry and finance. They controlled the apparatus of state and – within the limits of

Northern Ireland’s delegated powers – public policy at regional and local levels” (1996,

p.153). Unionists blocked nationalist access to political power through gerrymandering,

conditioned voting rights, and other more systematic forms of electoral manipulation.

With a monopoly on political power at the state and local levels, they were able to reduce

an already small proportion of Catholic employment in higher civil service positions

(ibid, p.154). Northern Ireland’s police force, the Royal Ulster Constabulary formed in

1922, was predominantly and disproportionately Protestant, as were supplementary

security forces erected to combat post-partition IRA violence.25 To different degrees,

members of each of these organizations tended to be “defenders of the Protestant

community first, defenders of the Protestant state second, and normal policeman third”

(ibid, p.127). Between these organizations and the British army, Catholics were

subjected to harsher security policies than were Protestants (ibid, p.130). This fact is

most explicitly corroborated by statistics from later in the Troubles that expose the

disproportionate use of internment against Catholics. To summarize, a structural

asymmetry qualified by gross disproportions and disadvantages in the spheres of

53 political, economic, and state power (structural power) underpinned the Catholic

nationalist struggle that emerged with vigor, and then violence, in the 1960s.

The perception of asymmetry within the Catholic nationalist community was not

only constituted by structural disadvantage, or disproportionate access to the sources of

structural power. This community also perceived itself subjugated by Protestant “cultural

power,” which could be defined as the ability to control the cultural character of the

public sphere by infusing it with particular values, ethos, symbols, rituals and historical

understanding (ibid, p.179). Protestant cultural power meant that the public sphere was

pervaded by signifiers of that which most definitively distinguished the Protestant

unionist community from their Irish Catholic counterparts: Protestantism and Britishness.

In regard to the first: “Protestantism was all-pervasive in the public culture: in the street

preachers, the missions, the Protestant Sundays, the public prominence of the Orange

Order. Unionist governments systematically identified the state with this culture and the

Protestant churches reciprocated” (ibid, p.180). In regard to the second: “British symbols

and rituals were also pervasive. Symbols of the Crown and the British connection – the

flag, the royal family, the national anthem, national commemoration days, royal birthdays

and weddings, the whole inherited paraphernalia of titles, trappings and awards – were

part of the public culture” (ibid, p.181). In contrast to the promulgation of these cultural

signifiers, expressions of Irish Catholic culture were only “willingly ignored” as long as

they did not “impinge on Protestant expression” or “threaten the cultural construction of

the state” (ibid, p.183). The limit of unionists’ “willingness” is revealed by the most

salient application of these exceptions: the Irish Tricolour was legally banned from public

54 display until 1987 on the grounds that it could cause a “breach of the peace.” Not

surprisingly, unionists failed to think the Union Jack could have the same affect.

Of course, asymmetrical cultural power-relations go hand-in-hand with

asymmetrical structural power-relations. Generally speaking, the hierarchy of one tends

to reflect the hierarchy of the other, and the two mutually re-enforce and reproduce one

another. The affect of this synergy on Northern Ireland’s cultural environment was toxic.

Protestant structural advantage enhanced their communal self-esteem, and their cultural

values and British identity became associated with, and seen by many as a precondition

for, material success and political authority (ibid, p.196). In this way, Protestant culture

became imbued with notions of superiority, civility, rationality and piety, while Catholic

culture was portrayed as inferior, barbaric, irrational, profane, and ultimately, foreign.

This imagined asymmetry was deeply consequential. While cultural self-aggrandizement

became more problematic for the Protestant community as the Troubles evolved, as will

be discussed below, for the Catholic community the struggle to overcome structural

asymmetry became inextricably tied to a struggle to gain the cultural esteem they saw

denied to them by the state and those who controlled it. For some, this esteem meant,

first and foremast, self-determination through equal representation in Northern Ireland’s

state institutions and equal access to private resources. For others, this cultural esteem

could not be separated from the national aspect of Irish Catholic identity, an aspect that to

them had a clear and unavoidable territorial corollary. Yet even where the more radical

outcome was envisioned and more extreme methods utilized, underlying nationalist

resistance was the desire to combat and undermine structural and cultural asymmetry.

55 However, so too was Protestant unionist resistance motivated by asymmetry. The

experience of the Protestant community in Northern Ireland exemplifies “the importance

of perception in understanding what constitutes asymmetry” (McAuley et al., 2008, p.90).

The political, economic, and cultural dominance of the Protestant community in the north

of Ireland has always coexisted with an overwhelming fear that not just their dominance,

but their physical and cultural survival is threatened by the Irish Catholic community that

surrounds them. This “siege mentality,” perhaps more than any other attribute, still

permeates the ethos of Northern Ireland’s Protestant community, a community whose

denominational and national heterogeneity might otherwise inhibit ethno-national

coherence. It is a fear inculcated through a historical narrative that venerates figures like

Oliver Cromwell and the Apprentice Boys of Derry, a narrative invoked to justify direct

and structural violence throughout the Troubles by unionist pastors, paramilitaries and

politicians alike. Folklore and geography have allowed the unionist community to

imagine itself the weaker party vis-à-vis the Catholic community, despite a structural and

cultural asymmetry that put Catholics in a position of clear disadvantage in Northern

Ireland.

Northern unionists “have been governed in many actions by the perception that

they were in a zero-sum game where defeat would signal annihilation for the group”

(ibid, p.91). In accordance with the dynamics of zero-sum games, political developments

that strengthened the Catholic nationalist position were seen as undermining the physical

security of the Protestant people, the security of their state, and their place in posterity as

a cultural community. Understanding this fear involves recognizing the symbolic

significance of Northern Ireland for Ulster Protestant identity: “It is their place in the

56 world, where they belong. It is an expression of their will and power, created in

deference to their wishes, developed to fit their needs and defended with their blood. […]

To dismantle it or to remove their stamp from it is to rob them of their birthright, or their

past as well as their present” (Ruane and Todd, 1996, p.147). In this way, concessions

that seemingly jeopardized Northern Ireland’s autonomy from the Irish republic were

perceived as existential threats as opposed to merely political ones. This did not just

include concessions to violent republicans. “To most loyalists, the minority nationalist

population was seen as the IRA’s sleeping partner as it shared the same aim of achieving

a united Ireland. Nationalists were regarded as the enemy within, a Trojan horse for the

IRA and the Dublin Government” (Taylor, 1999, p.26). As Taylor insinuates, Protestant

politics were not inclusive, but the scope of their antipathy was.

The Protestant “perception of survivability,” a key variable in asymmetry

(McAuley et al., 2008, p.93), was dependent on conditions within the wider context of

Northern Ireland’s conflict, conditions that changed unfavorably as the conflict evolved.

Their fears were always allayed by a strong alliance with the British government, but in

the early 1970s Britain realized that this alliance had become unsustainable. They

became increasingly unsympathetic to the Protestant community in Northern Ireland.

There were many different reasons for this, but generally speaking, the alliance had

become a burden on Britain’s economy, their international reputation, and their growing

relationship with a modernizing Irish republic. While taking a staunch, at times nefarious

approach to combating the violent republicanism of the Provisional IRA (PIRA), the

British government actively pushed unionist politicians to make concessions to moderate

nationalists so a political settlement might be reachable. This settlement came relatively

57 quickly, in 1973, in the form of the Sunningdale Agreement, signed by the moderate

nationalist Social Democratic Labor Party (SDLP), the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), the

Alliance Party and both the British and Irish governments. While republicans opposed

the Agreement, it was opposition from within the Protestant constituency that finally

derailed it a year later. To this latter group, the power-sharing executive (a de facto end

to majoritarianism) and the cross-border Council of Ireland prescribed by the

Sunningdale Agreement represented the British government’s perfidious abandonment of

Northern Ireland’s Protestant community. The Anglo-Irish Agreement signed in 1985

amplified this feeling of betrayal, a feeling that culminated in 1990 when British

Secretary of State Peter Brooke announced that Britain had no “selfish strategic or

economic interest” in Northern Ireland. By becoming a neutral facilitator in the search

for peace, Britain severed the political and symbolic connection between the British

government and Northern Ireland’s Protestant unionist community and greatly

exacerbated the “siege mentality” the alliance had once assuaged.

While asymmetry structurally and culturally marginalized the Catholic

community, the perception that the wider context of the conflict benefitted nationalists

and threatened the very existence of their ethno-national community and its right to self-

determination gave Northern Ireland’s Protestants a reason to see themselves as the

weaker party in the conflict. This “imagined” condition, as well as the material and

symbolic conditions examined above, all constitute the asymmetry that had to be

mitigated for peace to become a real possibility in Northern Ireland. I will outline how

this happened below.

58

Cultivating Symmetry in Northern Ireland

It must be accepted that each conflict party’s perception of the relationship

between them is always more important to the dynamics of conflict than the actual

relationship as it appears to a neutral observer. Of course, the latter may contribute to the

former, but the two must not be construed as equivalent. If this is accepted, then the

Northern Ireland case suggests that violent asymmetric conflict, which includes most

international conflicts26 in today’s world, can be pushed toward resolution through a

peace process that replaces perceptions of asymmetry with perceptions of symmetry.

Substitute the word “transformation” for “manipulation” and “processes” for

“negotiations” and McAuley (et al.) make a similar claim in their conclusion; “the key

point that emerges for those who wish to draw lessons from Northern Ireland and to

apply them to other asymmetric conflicts is the potential for manipulation of perceptions

during peace negotiations” (2008, p.99). The transformation of perceptions during peace

processes is not just a potential; it is a necessity. The Northern Ireland experience

elucidates the ways this transformation can be brought about.

More symmetric economic conditions have undoubtedly played a role in Northern

Ireland’s move away from violence. However, explicating how economic symmetry

relates to peace per se is incredibly difficult because economic inequality was produced

and reproduced by complex and interpenetrating forces throughout the Troubles. The

easiest explanation assumes that economic inequality between Protestants and Catholics

was due to direct and indirect discrimination in both the public and private labor markets,

and creating economic symmetry has involved implementing and enforcing anti-

59 discriminatory measures in both sectors. Of course, this explanation completely ignores

the other types of forces that have combined in an “over-determining way to produce and

reproduce inequality”: structural (differences in geographical and class location), cultural

(differences in levels of education and skills), and political (relationship to the state)

(Ruane and Todd, 1996, p.171). Even with anti-discrimination policies in place to curb

disparities in unemployment, these structural, cultural and political forces slowed the

process of equalizing opportunity in the private and public sectors.

Nevertheless, overtime anti-discrimination policies and less deliberate shifts

within the local and regional economies did begin to strip Protestants of their economic

dominance. By 1996 Ruane and Todd were able to conclude, “Protestant economic

power has declined significantly over the past twenty-five years. Economic dependence

and direct rule have relocated the higher levels of economic decision-making outside

Northern Ireland; anti-discrimination measures have weakened the Protestant position at

the middle levels. Catholics have gained ground and the signs are that this will continue”

(ibid, p.177). Indeed it has continued, yet recent statistics still point to “marked

differences in the living standards of the two communities with proportionately more

Catholics than Protestants experiencing a lower standard of living while the reverse is the

case for the higher standard of living” (Hillyard et al., 2008, p.48).27 However, this small

(albeit statistically verified) economic asymmetry that persists between Catholics and

Protestants is mollified by a lower overall unemployment rate across communities, and

the emergence of a transnational business class that recognizes that economic integration

within the European and world markets depends on the resolution of the conflict.

60 While there were economic uncertainties along with political uncertainties that

destabilized and delayed the implementation of the Belfast Agreement (Ben-Porat, 2006,

p.255), there is a consensus among pundits and scholars alike that increased living

standards and economic opportunity for both communities bolstered the peace process

during the 1990s and has made the implementation of its settlement more realistic than it

otherwise might have been. The most extreme interpretations suggest that wealth and

consumerism are serving as a temporary “opiate of the masses,” and that the present

“peace” is completely dependent on the economic growth cycle Northern Ireland has

enjoyed since the 1990s. While I do not think these evaluations are fully accurate, in the

first chapter I did suggest some very real problems associated with the vertical

distribution of economic “peace dividends,” and recognized that creating a

“sectarianized” underclass will make Northern Ireland’s stability precarious. Regardless

of whether or not these interpretations or my criticism of them are true, they do

underscore the fact that the increase in economic opportunity across both communities

veils the minimal asymmetry that remains, and in doing so renders it inconsequential.

In this way, symmetric opportunity in a growing economy has greatly reduced

both the actual and perceived asymmetry in wealth distribution, and has played a central,

albeit muddled, role in creating conditions ripe for settlement and peace in Northern

Ireland. However, overemphasizing the role of economic development is a tendency of

those trying to explain why the Belfast Agreement, famously deemed the “Sunningdale

for slow learners,”28 has been successfully implemented when its prototype arrangement,

the 1973 Sunningdale initiative, failed so miserably. Surely economic growth is one

factor within this explanation, but without the political developments that complemented

61 it, this growth would have been both stunted and politically irrelevant. Some of these

developments contributed to the efficacy of the peace process more than others. Some

were intentional, some fortuitous; but each was instrumental to cultivating more

symmetric relations between the two communities in Northern Ireland.

Political developments outside of Northern Ireland between the outbreak of the

Troubles in the late 1960s and the beginning of the peace process in the early 1990s

impacted the dynamics of the conflict in Northern Ireland, in most cases to the benefit of

the nationalist community. None of these have been more important than the

transformation of the relationship between Britain and the Republic of Ireland, who in the

last thirty years have experienced the amelioration of longstanding colonial antipathies.

Many factors have facilitated this transformation, but the two most consequential seem to

have been the collaborative framework provided by the European Union, which they both

joined in 1973, and the emergence of Ireland as a powerful economic and political force.

The latter factor has been particularly significant, as the empowerment of Ireland both

literally and symbolically strengthened the position of Northern nationalists in relation to

unionists. As a congenial and mutually beneficial relationship formed between Britain

and Ireland, the Anglo-Irish hostility in the North became more and more anachronistic

from the perspective of the two governments and the EU community. By the 1980s, both

governments reached the conclusion that the spillover effect of the conflict was a threat

that outweighed their interests in the region, and they were ready to cooperate in finding a

resolution (Ben-Porat, 2006, p.219).

This realization resulted in the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement between Britain and

Ireland, which reiterated the right of the Protestant majority in Northern Ireland to decide

62 its constitutional status, but also offered recognition to the island-wide identity of the

nationalist community and gave the Irish government a direct and permanent role in

Northern Ireland policy-making (Ruane and Todd, 1996, p.134). While republicans

rejected the agreement because it recognized the partition of Ireland, its intimations that

Britain wished to be a neutral mediator alongside the Irish government challenged the

necessity of their armed campaign and pushed them towards exploring alternative

political strategies. Because the Agreement gave the Republic of Ireland a say in

Northern Irish affairs, unionists perceived it as fatal blow to their territorial sovereignty

and relationship with the rest of the United Kingdom. Despite their reaffirmations of the

“principle of consent,” which gives unionists the democratic right to self-determination as

the majority group, the Anglo-Irish Agreement and the 1993 Downing Street Declaration

solidified the political isolation of the unionists in Northern Ireland. This isolation made

power-sharing with nationalists a palpable inevitability.

The point here is not to delineate a detailed account of the way agreements

between Ireland and the British government affected the political relationship between

the two communities in Northern Ireland. Ultimately, more important than these political

minutiae is the general impact that the evolution of British-Irish relations had on the

communal perceptions of symmetry. Protestant unionists increasingly saw their position

of dominance being compromised by a perfidious British government, while conciliation

between Britain and Ireland literally and symbolically enhanced the political capacity of

the weaker nationalist minority. This enhancement was amplified by another external

factor that contributed to the political clout of the nationalist community.

63 Irish-Americans, an unsurprisingly large population, have always felt a sense of

solidarity with the Catholic nationalist community and the republican cause in Northern

Ireland. While this constituency has played a direct role in supporting the cause through

financial networks since partition, in the 1980s the US government entered the political

equation, vocally advocating a peace settlement that offered equal rights and opportunity

to the Catholic community in Northern Ireland. Many contribute this support to strong

American empathy with both the colonial struggle (which apparently resembles our own)

and the values underling the Catholic community’s fight: equal opportunity, civil rights,

freedom of expression, etc (Ruane and Todd, 1996, p.278). This empathy might explain

the support of many Irish-American citizens, but my intuition tells me that Ruane and

Todd offer a more plausible explanation of the US government’s decision to actively

involve itself with tiny little Northern Ireland:

The growth of a bi-partisan concern with Northern Ireland owes much to changes in the form and relative importance of the Irish-American vote. Long-term changes in the social profile of Irish-Americans, who have been moving out of the urban working class, have combined with more recent changes in voting patterns and Irish-Americans are now as likely to vote Republican as Democrat. Its floating vote now makes the Irish constituency important not just in local politics but increasingly in presidential elections. (Ruane and Todd, 1996, p.277)

It should hardly come as a surprise that US involvement in Northern Ireland was an effect

of the increasingly significant role the Irish-American vote played in national elections.

Politicians appeased this constituency with vocal gestures during the 1980s, but the US

government’s advocacy was heavily constrained by its need to maintain a special

relationship with their closest ally, Britain.

Balancing support for this relationship while simultaneously satisfying the Irish-

American lobby was a strenuous exercise until the Cold War ended and Britain

denounced its strategic and economic interest in Northern Ireland. This allowed Bill

64 Clinton to make considerable promises to the Irish lobby during his Presidential

campaign, which he would later fulfill even when they affronted the British government.

Most notably, in 1994, against the wishes of the British government, his Cabinet, the FBI

and most of Washington, Clinton offered the Sinn Fein and Provisional IRA leader Gerry

Adams a visa to come to the United States despite the fact that Adams led an illegal

“terrorist” organization and was banned from having his voice broadcast publically in

Britain. The move was initially condemned, but in the long run was acknowledged as a

crucial step in pushing the peace process forward. While the US was perceived as a more

neutral actor after Clinton sent George Mitchell as a special envoy, the Gerry Adams

incident exemplifies how the relationship between the US and Ireland generally

strengthened the nationalist position in Northern Ireland (ibid, p.278).

In this way, perceptions of symmetry in Northern Ireland changed in relation to

the role the United States took as an external actor as the Troubles progressed. The US

factor and the British-Irish factor ultimately allowed the Catholic nationalist community

to perceive itself as being in a more symmetric relationship with a Protestant unionist

community. On the other hand, unionists felt increasingly abandoned by the British

government who had always bolstered their dominance, and they felt more and more

threatened by a nationalist community that was backed by a strong Irish Republic and

American sympathy. However, despite gains by the nationalist community, in the early

1990s unionists were still acutely aware of their control in Northern Ireland, which in the

end was not dependent on external factors. External factors contribute to perceptions of

symmetry, but internal factors will ultimately determine the nature of these perceptions.

Internally, Protestant unionist power was still constituted by their upper hand within the

65 economy, their position as the democratic majority, overrepresentation in the security

forces, and the continued exclusion of the republican movement from the political peace

process. The last of these four factors proved to be the element of asymmetry that needed

to be overcome for the perception of symmetry to actualize within a large enough portion

of the Catholic community for peace to be acceptable and achievable. While the content,

or what was discussed, of the peace process was important, its form, or who participated,

seems to have been more central to its success.

While the term “peace process” has been used in this paper in reference to the

negotiation process that began in the early 1990s and culminated in the Belfast

Agreement and its implementation, finding a political solution to Northern Ireland’s

conflict was a goal pursued by the British government since they prorogued Stormont and

were forced to administer direct rule in 1972. Only two years after direct rule was

initiated, Westminster attempted to devolve power back to Northern Ireland through the

Sunningdale arrangement, which included a power-sharing coalition government between

unionists and nationalists and the institutionalization of all-island co-operation through

the Council of Ireland. Devolution was short lived, as internal opposition forced the

power-sharing Executive to collapse just months after its erection. Despite its failure, the

Sunningdale experiment made power-sharing between Catholics and Protestants a central

element of every subsequent British initiative to reach a political and constitutional

settlement. Between 1974 and the ceasefires of 1994 there were seven of these initiatives

(Mac Ginty and Darby, 2002, p.19), none of which stopped the violence in Northern

Ireland. It would be incorrect to call these three decades a period of political stagnation,

but all of the political maneuvering only seemed to reveal and reinforce the intractability

66 of the conflict. That the efforts of the 1990s were able to penetrate and undermine this

obstinacy was the result of an array of factors, the most essential of which was the

willingness of the British government to experiment with a more inclusive politics of

legitimization. Within this inclusive politics, political violence was disempowered by

politically empowering those who used it.

In juxtaposition with the history of failed initiatives, the negotiations that

culminated in the signing of the Belfast Agreement in April of 1998 are most

distinguished by the inclusion of republican representation as signatories via Sinn Fein,

the political wing of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA). When the British

government first legalized Sinn Fein in 1974, it was little more than a propaganda and

fundraising machine for the PIRA. In 1981, spokesman Danny Morrison suggested that

the republican movement needed to complement the “Armalite” with a ballot box, and it

was from then on that Sinn Fein embraced a dual-track strategy for achieving Irish re-

unification. While the dual-track strategy placed a new emphasis on political

mobilization outside of military activities, the intimate connection and overlap in

leadership between Sinn Fein and the PIRA made the two inseparable in the eyes of

unionists and the British government. For this reason, besides a backchannel that had

been sporadically used for low-level contact since 1973 (Powell, 2008, p.66), there was

essentially no direct relationship between the British government and Sinn Fein/PIRA

outside of military confrontations. Despite the blatant political character of the

republican movement, their support for the use of violence to achieve their political goals

rendered them unsuitable for anything but military engagement in the eyes of the British

government.

67 The government’s refusal to recognize the political nature of the republican

movement is encapsulated by the Hunger Strikes of 1981, when republican prisoners

refused to eat until they were granted political prisoner status by the British government.

After refusing to capitulate to their demands, Margaret Thatcher publically offered an

unequivocal explanation for withholding political prisoner status: “There is no such thing

as political murder, political bombing or political violence. There is only criminal

murder, criminal bombing and criminal violence. We will not compromise on this. There

will be no political status.”29 Disregarding the obvious problems with Thatcher’s

statement, this policy of non-recognition and non-negotiation, meant to delegitimize

republican violence, remained in place until after the signing of the Anglo-Irish

Agreement in 1985. Soon thereafter, Sinn Fein and the SDLP started exploratory talks

with the hope of building a more united nationalist front, and indirect dialogue between

the British government and Sinn Fein was initiated. This dialogue turned into secret

meetings between Sinn Fein/PIRA leaders and British officials in the early 1990s, which

ultimately led to the Downing Street Declaration issued by the Prime Minister of Britain

and Taoiseach of Ireland in 1993. This declaration encouraged the first official PIRA

ceasefire in 1994, Sinn Fein’s entrance into formal negotiations in 1997, and their

approval of the Belfast Agreement a year later.

To be sure, Sinn Fein’s inclusion was predicated on certain “preconditions” from

both sides, some of which were more obstructive than others. Republicans demanded a

start and end date for the negotiations, a commitment that the talks would be substantive

and address issues other than decommissioning, and the implementation of “confidence-

building measures” (Mac Ginty and Darby, 2002, p.36). These preconditions were hardly

68 obstructive, and came at a time when republican entrance into the all-party talks seemed

necessary and inevitable. Those facilitating the negotiations had already presumed the

first two, and the third was met by symbolic gestures like the transferring of long-term

republican prisoners from England to the Republic of Ireland (ibid). In contrast, the

British government, along with the US envoy, the Irish government and the unionist

parties, put forth a more formidable obstacle by adhering to the earlier stipulation that

required Sinn Fein’s inclusion in the formal negotiations be preceded by a permanent

PIRA cease-fire.30 Interestingly, these preconditions themselves were worked out

through informal talks between the British government and Sinn Fein/PIRA, and when a

misinterpretation of “permanent cease-fire” inhibited the peace process from moving

forward, it was more talking that brought about the needed modifications.

Initially, the British government assumed “permanent cease-fire” entailed the

complete decommissioning of weapons. This assumption came as a surprise to Sinn

Fein, who was still declared unsuitable to participate in the forthcoming all-party talks

after working exhaustively to procure the 1994 PIRA cease-fire. The fight over

decommissioning as a precondition led to a suspension of the cease-fire in 1996, and a

short period of renewed republican violence that kept Sinn Fein from participating in the

formal all-party talks initiated that year under the chairmanship of George Mitchell.

These talks were suspended after nine months of minimal progress. Mitchell knew that

Sinn Fein’s involvement was imperative, and recommended that the “requirement for

prior decommissioning be dropped in favor of parallel decommissioning and political

talks” (Powell, 2008, p.83). While the British government initially refused, informal

meetings with Sinn Fein’s leadership revealed that decommissioning was not something

69 they could realistically deliver even if they had wanted to. It was apparent that making

decommissioning a precondition had been a mistake (ibid), and had never been a

precondition accepted by republican leadership. Consequently, when the Labour Party

leader Tony Blair took office in May 1997, decommissioning was replaced with a more

realistic precondition. Sinn Fein would be brought rapidly into formal negotiations six

weeks after the PIRA publically declared a cease-fire (ibid, p.88). This declaration came

a month later, and by September, Sinn Fein was sitting at the negotiating table.

Generally speaking, this convoluted and politically charged process revealed that

even “preconditions” for negotiations must be determined by negotiations if they are to

be realistic and mutually acceptable. Of course, the logical extension of this position is

that negotiations need not have preconditions at all. This is the conclusion Tony Blair’s

Chief of Staff and chief negotiator, Jonathan Powell, makes at the end of his account of

Northern Ireland’s peace process. He writes, “It is always an error to set a precondition

to a negotiation. A public precondition forces the other side to reject it and dig in. […]

There is no need for a precondition as long as everyone’s position is protected by the rule

that in the negotiation nothing is agreed until everything is agreed” (ibid, p.317). The

abdication of preconditions was problematic for the British government, who were trying

to have dialogues with Sinn Fein while Sinn Fein supported an ongoing and illegal

military struggle against the British state that was causing civilian casualties. Powell

portrays this dilemma as the confrontation between democracy and terrorism, and while I

would prefer less loaded language, his appeal to unconditioned dialogue is unequivocal

and worth quoting verbatim. He writes, “It is very hard for democratic governments to

admit to talking to terrorist groups while those groups are still killing innocent people.

70 But on the basis of my experience I think it is always right to talk to your enemy however

badly they are behaving” (ibid, p.66). Interestingly, Powell makes a principled defense

of unconditioned dialogue by using the word “right.” While there may indeed be a moral

case for engaging without preconditions, the relationship between Sinn Fein and the

British government leading up to the Belfast Agreement more persuasively exposed the

pragmatic case for giving primacy to inclusive and unconditioned dialogue in peace

processes.

While the inclusion of the republican movement via Sinn Fein is most relevant to

the larger discussion of symmetry in this section, noting that inclusivity extended beyond

republican participation gives way to a digression that is worth taking. The PIRA was

not the only paramilitary that had political representation inside the 1997 multi-party

negotiations; the Ulster Defense Association (UDA) and the Ulster Volunteer Force

(UVF), the two major loyalist paramilitaries, were represented by the Ulster Democratic

Party (UDP) and the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP). The close relationship between

these paramilitaries and sophisticated political parties was one of four main sources of

power they had as actors in Northern Ireland. Mac Ginty and Darby delineate the other

three sources of power shared by the PIRA, UDA and UVF: first, they had tradition on

their side as long-standing military and semi-political forces; second, they had active

support among small minorities within their respective communities, and at times their

causes, if not methods, evoked broader support; third, they had a significant capacity for

violence that allowed them to produce high levels of civil disturbance and a

“depressingly consistent death toll” (Mac Ginty and Darby, 2002, p.63). Because their

actions were considered legitimate and necessary by significant communities in Northern

71 Ireland, any process that did not at least indirectly include these paramilitaries ran the risk

of alienating these communities and ignoring the substantial needs, interests and concerns

that pushed them to support and legitimize violence. Conversely, including them allowed

these communities to see their place within the process, and collectively support and

legitimize peace instead of violence.

Examining the inclusion of paramilitary representation in Northern Ireland’s all-

party negotiations contributes to a larger discussion within conflict research about how to

deal with potential “spoilers” to peace processes. Stedman’s seminal article on spoilers

broadly defines them as “leaders and parties who believe that peace emerging from

negotiations threatens their power, worldview, and interests, and use violence to

undermine attempts to achieve it” (1997, p.5, emphasis added). Implicit in this definition

is the idea that spoilers exist only when there is a peace process or settlement to

undermine (ibid, p.7). There is a presumption that there will always be spoilers, because

rarely, if ever, are processes able to deliver a peace acceptable to all parties involved in

the conflict. For Stedman, strategies must be devised so that these spoilers can be

“marginalized, rendered illegitimate or undermined” (Ramsbotham et al, 2005, p.174),

each of which entails some brand of isolation. In short, spoilers must be “managed” into

obsolescence.

Stedman’s emphasis on management is complemented by an emphasis on

managers, or “custodians.” These custodians are given the responsibility of creating a

coalitional consensus about the legitimacy of any spoiler’s demands and behavior

(Stedman, 1997, p.7). They then must devise a strategy for dealing with that spoiler in

accordance with their appraisal. This management model is deeply problematic for

72 conflicts constituted by asymmetric power-relations, as the group with the most power

will influence, if not completely determine the content of the coalitional consensus. This

consensus is not likely to reallocate legitimacy with any sort of novel generosity, a

generosity that might offer legitimacy to grievances, behavior or aspirations (or people)

previously seen to be lacking it. Stedman’s attempt to elude this problem seems to be his

observation (and maybe prescription) that the role of custodian is only played by

international actors, which include “international organizations, individual states, or

formal or ad hoc groups of concerned third parties” (ibid, p.12). Presumably, their

international character or “third party role” makes them neutral and objective, or

concerned without (self) interests. This presumption of course, is less dubious than it is

just plain false. Spoiler management is problematic in principle and in practice because

those who control the management process, the custodians, are likely to operate with

biases that may inhibit them from acknowledging real and legitimate grievances behind

the rhetoric and violence of “spoilers.” These biases may predispose them to securing or

preserving a particular agreement that excludes necessary partners or makes for an unjust

peace.

The Northern Ireland case suggests that the difficult and ambiguous task of

spoiler management can largely be avoided through spoiler prevention, which entails

transforming spoilers into stakeholders in the peace by including them in the process

leading up to settlement. This undoubtedly makes the peace process longer and more

difficult, but by politically empowering potential spoilers, the underlying causes of

political violence can be dealt with in negotiations so that there are fewer reasons for this

violence to resurface during implementation. Moreover, if potential spoilers can be

73 identified beforehand and permanently incorporated into the peace process, any violence

aimed at “spoiling” the process or settlement implementation will almost certainly fail to

do so. Not all groups who perpetrate politically motivated violence should be identified

as potential spoilers, and because the direct or indirect participation of these groups

makes the negotiation process more arduous, from a practical standpoint it is best to only

include those whose violence could potentially derail settlement implementation.

Finding a way to identify these groups brings us back to the four sources of power

that bolstered the paramilitary activity of the PIRA, UDA and UVF, as put forth by Mac

Ginty and Darby (2002): strong political affiliation, tradition, active communal support,

and capacity for violence. These sources of power serve as clear criteria for deciding

which organizations have the capability to derail a peace process as a violent spoiler. If

excluded, those groups with a power basis derived from all four sources have a much

greater ability to do so, and are more likely to try if the process fails to meet their “needs”

and the needs of those whose support they hold. On the other hand, it is unlikely that an

organization whose only source of power is their capacity for violence could successfully

spoil an inclusive process.31 In this way, while spoiler prevention entails the inclusion of

paramilitary organizations either directly or through political affiliates, they are not

included just because they violently contribute to the conflict as combatants. Instead, by

making the main criterion for participation communal support, the fundamental basis of

their inclusion in negotiations is actually democratic legitimacy.

Groups who attempt to violently spoil the implementation of a peace agreement

but have no communal support (the source of democratic legitimacy) are only likely to

alienate themselves, and solidify the imminence of peace and the delegitimization of

74 violence as a political force. There may be no better example of this than the Omagh

bombing in Northern Ireland. Just months after the signing of the Belfast Agreement, the

Real IRA, a small group that had splintered off from the PIRA, detonated the deadliest

bomb in the history of the conflict, killing 29 innocent civilians and injuring hundreds.

While more brutal in size, the attack resembled many ruthless murders that had come

before it. However, the political inclusion of Sinn Fein had galvanized republican

support for the peace process and stripped republican paramilitary groups of any

communal support they had once shared with Sinn Fein and the PIRA. In the aftermath

of the bombing, the Real IRA was fatally discredited and publically berated by citizens

and politicians alike, including Sinn Fein and PIRA leaders. Three days after the attack

they suspended their operations, and less than a month later they announced a complete

cessation of violent activities. The mass killing had little or no affect on the integrity or

the implementation of the peace agreement, and only affirmed the efficacy of the

inclusive peace process.

In this way, the inclusion of the republican movement via Sinn Fein was the

essential element to reaching a sustainable agreement that would not be derailed by

dissident republican violence. Their inclusion bestowed legitimacy on the right to self-

determination they demanded as representatives of a political community. The

significance of legitimizing Sinn Fein was thus practical and symbolic; it led to a wide

delegitimization of violence within the republican constituency, and gave unconditioned

recognition to the political and cultural aspirations of the entire Irish Catholic national

community in Northern Ireland. For this community any remaining asymmetry

constituted by calculable material conditions was heavily overshadowed by a perception

75 of symmetry constituted by a deep and incalculable sense of recognition, and in a small

way, perhaps even a nascent and unprecedented sense of belonging. While for many, a

devolved power-sharing government with a cross-border Council was short of their

political goal, ultimately there was a common sentiment that if Sinn Fein and the PIRA

could support something less than Irish re-unification, everyone else could too.

Yet, as might be expected, the inclusion of republicans greatly exacerbated the

asymmetry perceived by the Protestant community in Northern Ireland. As was

described in the previous section, the Protestant perception of asymmetry has always

been constituted by the overwhelming fear that their physical and cultural survival is

threatened by the Irish Catholic community that surrounds them. This fear has always

been mitigated by Northern Ireland’s union with the United Kingdom. As they saw it,

the Agreement that would determine their country’s future codified the influence and

affirmed the political legitimacy of an organization that had explicitly endorsed decades

of violence aimed at undoing this union. Not only did the Agreement and the process

leading up to it legitimize this organization, it gave them political positions within the

government of a state they still openly hoped to dissolve. Furthermore, the Agreement

called for the release of all the PIRA prisoners, many of who had been arrested for

horrific crimes against innocent Protestant civilians. And to top it all off, all of this was

to happen before any republican weapons had officially been put beyond use.

Considering the siege mentality that permeates and defines the Northern

Protestant ethos, it is not surprising that when 71% of Northern Ireland voted in favor of

the Belfast Agreement during the 1998 referendum, a large Protestant minority voted

against it (Ben-Porat, 2006, p.251). This had much to do with the Democratic Unionist

76 Party (DUP), who recognized the opportunity to exacerbate and exploit the unionist

electorate’s longstanding fear of republicanism for political gain. The DUP decided to sit

out of the negotiations leading up to the Agreement in protest of Sinn Fein’s

participation, who they never failed to point out was just the PIRA in “sheep’s clothing.”

Opposition of this sort was not new for the DUP or their leader, Dr. Ian Paisley, a

demagogue who has built a longstanding political career around opposition to every

policy that resembled compromise and every person who tried to push those policies

through. The DUP boisterously opposed the Agreement’s ratification with an

acrimonious anti-Agreement campaign that invoked the potent fear of republicanism

within the Protestant community. After the Agreement passed with only a small majority

of Protestants voting in support, the DUP used the stalls in the PIRA’s decommissioning

process to “confirm” Sinn Fein’s commitment to “terrorism” and duplicity, and castigate

the already precarious Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) for their credulous capitulations. As

Paisley and the DUP successfully roused opposition, grassroots support for the peace

process within the Protestant community dwindled. Between Paisley’s dissension and

Sinn Fein’s inability to quickly persuade the PIRA to decommission, David Trimble

could not keep his party (UUP) from splitting in response to their shifting electorate. All

of this forced the suspension of the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2002, only four years

after its historic reinstatement. A year later, the DUP won the majority of the unionist

vote in the Assembly election, and for the first time in the history of Northern unionism

the UUP was dethroned from their position as the majority party, and the more extremist

DUP took their place. Uncoincidently, that same day Sinn Fein outdid the SDLP and

took over the reins of nationalism. Most of the analyses written in the wake of the

77 election were persuaded that the results had confirmed the “slow death” (Farrington,

2006, p.9) of yet another peace initiative in Northern Ireland. Yet, three years of indirect,

and then direct negotiations between the DUP and Sinn Fein led to the signing of the St.

Andrews Agreement in 2006. Seven months later the institutions called for in the Belfast

Agreement were reinstated with Sinn Fein and the DUP at the helm, an unlikely duo, to

say the least. Almost ten years after its ratification, the Belfast Agreement had finally

come to fruition.

Much could be said about the DUP’s transition from protest to politics. The short

description offered above suggests that this transition can simply by seen as an exercise

in political opportunism. Generally, peace processes are particularly vulnerable to

political opportunists because they demand difficult compromises on highly sensitive

issues, and depend on mutual trust between adversaries with a long history of distrust.

Building that trust and making those compromises is a slow and fragile process, a process

made even more difficult by the need for the leaders involved to keep their parties unified

and their grassroots support strong. They must be able to retain the semblance of

ideological intransigence while making the compromises necessary for progress in

negotiations, and they must do both without using any triumphalism that might inhibit the

ability of their adversary to do the same. This tripartite balancing act is the sine qua non

of successful peace processes, and at times it can become heavily dependent on

calculated political choreography. Setbacks during a process this involved are inevitable.

Each setback provides political opportunists the chance to incite the fears and skepticism

of the electorate and offer themselves as a trustworthy alternative. The DUP’s cost-

benefit analysis recognized that if they opposed the process from the outset, their historic

78 role as the wielder of uncompromising unionism would put them in a highly

advantageous position when the peace process faltered. This opposition would simply

entail abstaining from talks that involved Sinn Fein, and exacerbating the deep-seated

fear and skepticism of the Protestant community with emotive rhetoric. It was a qualified

opposition that could be presented to the electorate as total opposition (Farrington, 2006,

p.13). Opposition of this sort carries few costs, but can potentially yield huge political

gains. And it did. However, it has also yielded much criticism from those who see the

DUP’s actions as callous opportunism, tantamount to compromising peace for the sake of

political gain.

Ultimately, the tone of the description above is not meant to corroborate this

criticism, although it admittedly seems to do so. While I do think the DUP’s actions can

be best explained by the political opportunity structure the peace process created, there is

undoubtedly a complexity to the political psychology behind their transition that deserves

a more sophisticated analysis than there is room for here. The shallow analysis I have

offered is not meant to conclusively or comprehensively explicate the DUP’s transition

from protest to politics, it simply provides an account of this transition that strongly

elucidates the factors I see as more immediately relevant to this project.

First, it reveals the potential for “non-violent spoilers” to jeopardize the stability

of a peace process and the implementation of peace agreements by inciting intra-

communal fragmentation. Farrington (2006) suggests that the self-imposed exclusion of

political parties puts them in a position of necessary opposition, a position that makes

them as dangerous to peace processes as any violent spoiler. Rather than cajoling these

parties into negotiations, there is a tendency to see their exclusion as increasing the

79 feasibility of agreement. This tendency is exemplified by George Mitchell’s comments

about including the DUP in the negotiations leading up to the Belfast Agreement:

“Reaching agreement without their presence was extremely difficult; it would have been

impossible with them in the room” (Mitchell, 1999, p110). However, the immediate

practicality of exclusion may be outweighed by the long-term impracticality. This is

essentially what Farrington argues: “It means that those outside the negotiating process

have no interest in maintaining the durability or credibility of the peace agreement. They

also need to compete for public legitimacy and cannot therefore realistically support the

agreement and have to mobilize against it. This brings difficulties for the agreement

which need not necessarily occur” (2006, p.14). These difficulties can be fatal for a

peace agreement if the majority of electoral support shifts to the opposition party and the

party continues to reject the agreement by refusing to participate in its implementation.

This is essentially what happened to the Sunningdale arrangement. However, this is not

what happened to the Belfast Agreement, although at the time of writing, Farrington

could not have known this.

After the DUP undermined the Protestant electoral support of the UUP they

slowly moderated their stance and basically just replaced them in government. This

happened for two reasons. First, there was no party left to outflank them, so the

compromises they made had no significant opposition. Second, and more importantly,

because republicans had committed themselves to the peace process and the PIRA

violence had largely subsided, the DUP could not ignore the agreement and risk a return

to violence that would disastrously affect their electorate’s security and ultimately erode

their support. What this suggests is that non-violent spoilers cannot actually spoil an

80 agreement, or nullify it, unless there is still an adversary acting as a significantly

supported violent spoiler. Or simply stated, non-violent spoilers depend on violent

spoilers for their success. Thus, the ultimate solution to non-violent “spoiling” is actually

the inclusion of potential violent spoilers in the peace process, as has already been

outlined and advocated for in this section. This inclusivity will not eliminate the

possibility that intra-communal political fragmentation will occur, but it suggests that

when it does occur, the purpose of this shift in support is not to destroy the agreement.

There is no doubt that the fragmentation within unionist support quickly turned

into a consolidation of support behind the anti-Agreement DUP. While they only outbid

the UUP by 3% of the unionist vote in the 2003 election, in the 2007 election they

received 30% percent of the popular vote in Northern Ireland, twice the percentage

received by the UUP. The 30% they claimed in the 2007 election, which took place after

they had signed the St. Andrews Agreement with Sinn Fein, was ten percentage points

higher than the UUP had received in 1998 after signing the Belfast Agreement. This

difference in unionist electoral support for the DUP in 2007 and the UUP in 1998 is

particularly significant because in each case the elections followed negotiated settlements

reached with Sinn Fein that would actualize power-sharing in Northern Ireland. The

most substantial political differences between 1998 and 2007 were that Sinn Fein had

accepted the reformed Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), and the International

Monitoring Commission (IMC) had reported that the PIRA had put their weapons beyond

use. However, any comfort this may have provided unionists voters was still aggravated

by the third difference between 1998 and 2007: the trajectory of nationalist electoral

support had been the same as that of unionist support between 1998 and 2007; Sinn Fein

81 had become the majority nationalist party and would share power with unionists in the

Northern Ireland Assembly. Despite the fact that the St. Andrews Agreement made it

clear that, if elected, the DUP would be going into power with a party who is led by

former PIRA leaders and is still committed to a United Ireland, unionists overwhelmingly

supported the DUP in the 2007 election. Some might argue that voters were left with no

alternative, but the history of Northern unionism shows that there is always an alternative

to political compromise.

The resurrection of unionist support for the Belfast Agreement, after it had fallen

as low as 33% in 1999 (ibid, p.16), coincided with the political ascension of the DUP.

This simultaneity can be partially explained by the DUP’s exploitation of the political

opportunity structure the peace process provided them, but this explanation does not

seem to fully account for the fact that the DUP was able to sustain and increase their

support after they had negotiated and agreed to sit in government with Sinn Fein. The

DUP tries to explain their success by appealing to the two things they see themselves as

responsible for, Sinn Fein’s acceptance of the PSNI and the decommissioning of the

PIRA. Yet even these changes cannot fully account for the DUP’s support. Protestants

had always enjoyed control over policing and had been heavily overrepresented in the

security forces; the instatement of the reformed PSNI, complete with quotas to ensure

proportionality, was actually a loss for them. Moreover, while republican

decommissioning probably helped make the DUP’s reneging more tolerable for the

unionist electorate, there is no way a verbal statement by an independent monitoring

committee immediately dispelled the potent feelings of fear and distrust that have been

embedded and exacerbated by decades of violent conflict.

82 Ultimately, these political factors fail to fully account for the electoral support

that the DUP usurped and sustained because their ascension in the post-Agreement period

has also been predicated on their symbolic significance within Protestant unionism.32

Over the course of the last forty years, the DUP has come to represent the

uncompromising dominance of political unionism and the Protestant faith. This

undoubtedly has everything to do with Ian Paisley, whose boisterous and recalcitrant

vitriol has fanned the flames of Ulster’s conflict since the Catholic civil rights movement

emerged in the 1960s. Using an amalgamation of religious and political rhetoric that is

both deeply symbolic and overtly inciting, he has exposed unionist apostasy, British

perfidy and Catholic iniquity whenever and wherever they have surfaced in Northern

Ireland. His sectarian demagoguery has always put him at the center of the political

struggle, and his role as the founder and leader of the Free Presbyterian Church has given

him a unique connection to grassroots support. Yet, throughout the Troubles these

characteristics have also kept him at the fringe of the less extremist unionist majority.

This quickly and dramatically changed in the post-Agreement period, when the majority

of unionists realized that their security and political power over Northern Ireland had

been jeopardized by the legitimization and empowerment of the republican movement.

The transition of the DUP from the fringe to the center of unionist politics

during this period symbolically counteracted the Protestant perception of asymmetry that

had been invoked by the inclusion of republicans in the peace process and the

concessions offered to them therein. Because of their symbolic significance, putting the

DUP in power created the semblance of “retaking” power for Northern unionists, even

though in reality their political capacity, or their power, did not change between 1998 and

83 2007. Yes, unionists needed to retake power that they had never actually lost in the first

place, and the DUP was the symbol they used to do it. Many political and academic

critics, and a large segment of Northern Irish society, saw this nine-year period of relative

political stagnation as exhausting and unnecessary. Yet, because of the perception of

asymmetry that has underpinned the conflict for the Protestant community, ultimately the

empowerment of the DUP may have been the unavoidable and necessary way to counter

the perception of loss precipitated by the Belfast Agreement.

In the end, this only affirms what has been argued since the beginning of this

chapter; the actual, or the “real,” power-relations between two groups is always

superseded by the perceived power-relations between those groups, so much so that

perception, in fact, is reality. Perceived power-relations are constituted by symbolic

conditions as much as they are constituted by material conditions. Even when material

conditions suggest symmetric power-relations, there may be symbolic conditions that

create, or in this case invoke, a perception of asymmetry. The legitimized and

empowered republican movement was a symbolic condition that did just that for

Northern Protestants. Putting the DUP in government was a means by which they could

counteract this symbolic condition and overcome their perception of asymmetry. The

irony of course is that while this asymmetry is satiated and Protestants feel more secure

about politically empowered republicans, the DUP still makes the same compromises

their predecessor made. Thus, contrary to the apprehension of those orchestrating the

peace process, the inclusion and empowerment of the most extreme unionist political

party, the DUP, allowed the necessary compromises to be made without jeopardizing

Protestant electoral support for the process. Sinn Fein’s inclusion had the same affect on

84 Catholic electoral support. Of course, this is not to suggest that the inclusion of Sinn Fein

or the DUP made the process any easier. However, it does suggest that in both cases

their inclusion was ultimately as politically enabling in the long term as it was

destabilizing in the short term. The former makes the latter seem worth it to me.

Conclusion

This chapter has attempted to provide an account of the Northern Ireland peace

process that emphasizes the evolution of perceptions of asymmetry. Creating conditions

propitious for successful negotiations and settlement implementation in Northern Ireland

involved transforming these perceptions. While constituted by material conditions, the

perceptions are equally, if not more heavily, constituted by symbolic conditions, or even

the symbolic significance of material conditions. For the Catholic nationalist community,

I have pointed to three particular factors that contributed to the cultivation of symmetry.

First, for an array of reasons the economic asymmetry between Catholics and Protestants

slowly eroded between the early 1970s and the 1990s. While Protestants were still

clearly in a position of advantage when the peace process gained momentum, significant

gains had been made within the Catholic community. These gains were important, but

those who emphasize them almost inevitably overemphasize them, perhaps because of a

prevalent neo-liberal view that economic empowerment will undermine any kind of

ethnic, national or tribal obsession. The second factor that contributed to the cultivation

of symmetry was key external alliances. Specifically, this included a deeply symbolic

improvement in relations between Britain and the Republic of Ireland, but it also included

an alliance with the US. The third factor, which I have suggested was the most important

85 for practical as well as symbolic reasons, was the inclusion of republicans in the peace

process. This consolidated the support of the Catholic community behind the peace

process and the Belfast Agreement, and when Sinn Fein and the PIRA moved in synergy

the negotiations and implementation were most effective. However, republican

involvement also exacerbated the perception of asymmetry that has historically defined

the Protestant community. Yet, putting the DUP in government was a symbolic means

by which they could counteract the “threat” of Sinn Fein’s empowerment and overcome

their perception of asymmetry. In each of these factors we see the potency of symbolic

conditions, and the role these conditions can play in cultivating perceptions of symmetry.

Appreciating this potency, and imagining creative ways to utilize symbolic transactions

to overcome perceptions of asymmetry, could prove to be an incredibly valuable strategy

for resolving other violent international conflicts.

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1 The “answer” I provide, not to spoil any endings, is hardly coherent or concise enough to be categorized as such.

89 2 The most recent report on paramilitary activity was published by the Independent Monitoring Commission [IMC] in November of 2008. This report, the Commission’s twentieth, can be found along with its nineteen previous reports on the IMC website: http://www.independentmonitoringcommission.org/ 3 http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/politics/last-part-of-northern-ireland-devolution-deal-is-in-place-woodward-14119594.html 4 For a recent analysis see: Hillyard, P. (with Demi Patsios and Fiona. Scullion) (2008) Northern Ireland Living Standard Index (NILSI): Development and Analysis Report, School of Sociology, Social Policy and Social Work, Queen’s University Belfast, June 2008. 5 http://www.newstatesman.com/200511280006 6 From roundtable discussion on “Implementing Peace: Problems and Solution” at the Mitchell Conference at Queen’s University in Belfast on 22 May 2008. 7 See Section 6 of the Belfast Agreement. 8 An “interface” is a place where a Republican community directly borders a Loyalist community at a peace line. 9 I first heard about this phenomenon from conflict mediators who patrol interfaces in Belfast at a meeting organized by Mediation Northern Ireland. 10 This is actually the title of G.K. Peatling’s book, which is one of the many places this argument has surfaced. 11 Benedict Anderson’s seminal term connoting the socially constructed nature of national groups. 12 As opposed to “negative peace,” which only entails the cessation of direct violence, Galtung’s more holistic “positive peace” includes the transformation of structural and cultural violence. 13 I use the plural here to include both the Belfast Agreement (1998) and the St. Andrew’s Agreements (2006). Much of the published criticism was written between 1998 and 2006 and pointed to the suspension of the devolved government as evidence of a failed peace process. It seems new evidence is needed. 14 The formations of cultural difference in the north of Ireland have changed throughout the history of Irish-British relations. The various structures of difference are neither the same nor contradictory. For a good historical and theoretical analysis, see Ruane and Todd (1996).

90 15 Admittedly there are many more than two communal cultures and identities in Northern Ireland, but as some sardonically suggest, there are only two communities in Northern Ireland that matter. Intracommunal fragmentation will be important for later discussions, but here reductionism will not lead us astray. 16 This is essentially what happens during negotiations between political actors with a history of violent opposition. These actors are asked to cease violent behavior so that space is opened up for the slow deconstruction of violent attitudes. Much more will be said about this later in this project. 17 More specifically, this would mean that ethnically exclusive organizations like the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) and Protestant marching bands would be as important as ever. 18 Higher birthrates within the Catholic community, a slow growth in non-ethno-national political participation, and more immigration make the prospect of a United Ireland more plausible than it has ever been. 19 This was the description offered by Desmond Tutu at the gala dinner for the Mitchell conference on May 22, 2008 at Queen’s University. 20 When there is interstate conflict, some states have more of a monopoly on this than others; which of course, is a symptom of the asymmetrical composition of the international system. 21 Zartman’s idea of “mutually hurting stalemate” refers to the moment “when parties find themselves locked in a conflict from which they cannot escalate to victory and this deadlock is painful to both of them” (Zartman, 2003, p.19). 22 I use the term “[a]symmetry” as shorthand for denoting “symmetry and asymmetry” as concepts which define each other in opposition. 23 Ruane and Todd (1996) does this more comprehensively than any other work I have encountered on Northern Ireland. 24 The first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, James Craig, famously expressed this sentiment, although with slightly different wording. It remained a common sentiment within the Protestant community throughout the early part of the Troubles. 25 Although, it should be noted that the RUC was disproportionately Protestant because Catholics were reluctant to join, mostly for political reasons.

91 26 International conflict includes all conflicts fought between national groups with claims to self-determination, regardless of whether or not these nations are sovereign states. Some international conflicts are intra-state conflicts. 27 Standard of living is not necessarily synonymous with economic opportunity, but there is little doubt that the two continue to overlap in relation to communal difference in Northern Ireland. 28 Former SDLP Deputy First Minister Seamus Mallon famously described the Belfast Agreement in this way, a reference to the power-sharing deal of 1973. 29 Margaret Thatcher, comments as quoted in "Mrs Thatcher pledges no sellout on Ulster," Times (London) 6 March 1981, 1. 30 It is worth noting that this precondition reveals the fact that the British government, and all parties, acknowledged the Sinn Fein/PIRA relationship. While they publically refused to talk with the latter group, which they considered a militant “terrorist” organization, they knew that they were doing so when they negotiated with Sinn Fein. While the two organizations are not interchangeable, they were dealt with in a manner that assumed them to be “two sides of the same coin.” 31 An exception to this rule seems to occur when non-violent spoilers are able to use the violence perpetrated by these groups to exploit the fear and distrust of their electorate for political gain. This is only likely to happen when this violence can be sustained. 32 Perhaps no better fact illustrates this than the one offered to me by DUP Belfast City Councilor Christopher Stalford during an interview in the fall of 2007: The DUP did not even have a policy unit until 2000, two years after the signing of the Belfast Agreement. Their entire political agenda was predicated on opposition; their only policy was “Never, Never, Never!”