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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
— October – November 2013
POLITICS nOrThern ireland
I
n an interview with award-winning
Belfast-based online media outlet
The Detail, US diplomat Barbara J
Stephenson PhD describes the Northern
Ireland peace process as a “beacon”, a wor-
thy example for those dealing with violent,
divisive conflict in other parts
of the world. This view has
received much publicity over
some fifteen years, especially
since the re-establishment of
Northern Ireland’s power-shar-
ing Executive in May .
The province’s peace process
proved to be a tremendous
career boost to a number of
British, Irish and indeed US
policymakers, civil servants
and diplomats. This phenom-
enon is somewhat reminiscent
of the enthusiasm of Nordic
governments to play facilita-
tive roles in conflict situations
in the global South in a spirit
of Nordic norm entrepreneur-
ship, which, in the sphere of
domestic politics, helps bolster
the profiles of individual politi-
cians and their political parties.
Several politicians, North and
South, have gained consider-
able international exposure
as peacemaking resource
persons.
Whereas the view that
Northern Ireland holds les-
sons for the rest of the world has been
considerably challenged in academia, the
resonances of such academic debates, as Dr
Stephenson’s August claim denotes,
appear to have been felt at a low scale in pol-
icymaking and diplomacy. Dr Stephenson
was the US Consul General in Belfast from
to , and is armed with personal
insights into the challenges of that period,
with the collapse of the Trimble-Mallon
Executive and the re-establishment of Direct
Rule.
Advocates of the ‘beacon thesis’ perceive
Northern Ireland as an exemplary case of
conflict resolution, in terms of the paper
trail leading to the
Agreement, the implementa-
tion of confidence-building
measures, power-sharing
mechanisms and reconcilia-
tion and healing mechanisms.
Especially in US government
circles, the Northern Ireland
peace process is perceived
as a marketable example of
peacemaking. This interpre-
tation is also strengthened
by Northern Ireland’s being
part of the UK, which may
resonate with observers in
Commonwealth countries.
The fundamental problem
with the ‘beacon thesis’ is that
its advocates tend to omit a
much-needed critical per-
spective. Northern Ireland is
viewed as an example of suc-
cessful conflict resolution
in the global North, and is
deployed to justify Western-
led liberal internationalist
peacebuilding ventures in
the global South. This is all
the more important for advo-
cates of liberal peacebuilding,
given the rarity of success stories of Western
engagement in conflict situations in the glo-
bal South. But this view is a construct of the
highly prejudiced ways in which issues of
conflict, intergroup violence, under-de-
velopment and conflict management are
conceptualised from the global North to
the global South.
The most deplorable downside of
interpreting the Northern Ireland peace
process as exceptional is that it is extremely
unhelpful in shedding light on problems
encountered in conflict-management that
could indeed provide useful insights to oth-
ers. For example Northern Ireland is by far
one of Western Europe’s foremost (if not
the foremost) state-subsidised economies.
This alone is reason enough to question
Northern Ireland’s relevance to peace proc-
esses in the global South, which often pursue
liberal peacebuilding approaches, with a
heavy emphasis on cuts in the public sector,
austerity and promoting the private sector.
Excesses of such ‘peace as market economic
regeneration’ approaches have been at the
heart of the collapse of some peace processes,
such as that of Sri Lanka. The economics of
the Northern Ireland peace process leaves
little space for comparative inspiration to
others involved in conflict management
elsewhere.
The concept of bi-national consent,
within Northern Ireland as well as in the
Irish Republic, and the resulting emphasis
on a concurrent majority as the key deter-
minant of Northern Ireland’s constitutional
Northern Ireland,
no beacon
On the necessity of a critical perspective
for conflict resolution. By Chaminda
Weerawardhana
Pic
caption
here
The downside
of interpreting
the NI peace
process as
exceptional
is that it is
unhelpful in
shedding light
on problems
in conict-
management
that could
provide useful
insights to
others
“
future were crucial to the Agreement.
Of equal importance was the central focus
on politically accommodating the compet-
ing plural-nationalist aspirations of the two
political ideologies as well as other political
persuasions in-between. Northern Ireland’s
conflict management trajectory is best
appraised when it is examined diachronically.
The peace process that developed through
the s, first under the John Major gov-
ernment and subsequently under the Blair
government, was the culmination of a proc-
ess that had been brewing over a long period.
The complex and multi-layered nature of the
Agreement was the result of an effort
to bring together past lessons and experi-
ments in a cohesive whole. The British-Irish
inter-governmental dimension, which came
into fruition under prime ministers Blair and
Ahern, was the culmination of a process of
British-Irish interaction that was particu-
larly strengthened under Mrs Thatcher and
her Irish counterparts Taoisigh Haughey,
Fitzgerald and Reynolds, not to mention
Washington DC’s benign endorsement.
The antecedents of the North-South
dimension and the challenges for North-
South co-operation can indeed be traced
back to historical precedents including, most
notably, the Terence O’Neill-Sean Lemass
encounters of the s. The Strand One
power-sharing institutions of the
Agreement bear the influence of debates
dating back to the s, when the SDLP
first proposed the idea of power-sharing
in a policy paper included in the Whitelaw
Green Paper of October . Strand One
institutions are also heavily influenced by
‘consociation’ theory, originally developed
by political scientist Arend Lijphart and
further enhanced by advocates of power-
sharing such as Professors Brendan O’Leary
and John McGarry. Particularities of this
nature are crucial to an objective appraisal
of Northern Ireland’s conflict management
experience, and may have no parallels in
other countries.
Insights from Northern Ireland’s conflict
management experience are best gleaned
by subjecting it to critical scrutiny. In the
post-Agreement years, the British and Irish
governments’ emphasis on the peace proc-
ess also resulted in a tendency to downplay
atrocities by armed dissident groups on
both sides of the sectarian divide, prompt-
ing questions over the political correctness
of the peace process.
The Agreement did create a
mechanism for inclusive political repre-
sentation. Yet, post-Agreement politics
have been marked by the electoral setbacks
of the Ulster Unionist Party and the Social
Democratic and Labour Party, which made
a mammoth contribution to bring forth the
Agreement. The resulting electoral
fortunes of hardliners, the Democratic
Unionist Party (DUP) and Sinn Féin (SF)
itself gives sufficient ground to moderates in
other conflict contexts to be vary of pursuing
a Northern Ireland-like approach. The cor-
ollary to this is that in strengthening their
positions in mainstream electoral politics,
DUP and SF have gradually rendered their
politics less confrontational and hard-line.
Nevertheless, this development is marred
by the persistence of violence-prone and
divisive sectarian politics. The extreme fra-
gility of the Northern Ireland settlement is
clearly glimpsed in the Union Flag protests of
and continuing contentions related to
parades, the Union Jack and disagreements
on a proposal to build a peace centre on the
site of the infamous Maze prison.
On September , SF voiced
the view that power-sharing was in crisis,
First Minister Peter Robinson was quick to
deny the claim, describing the present sit-
uation as a challenging one, but not a case
of acute political crisis. The challenges at
hand have been grave enough for David
Cameron to reaffirm the First Minister’s
claim. These debates hint at the reality that
the power-sharing govern-
ment’s strength is constantly
tested when it is brought to
address highly divisive issues.
Here again, the picture that
emerges is a far cry from a
beacon, but one of real-life
challenges to governance in
a deeply-divided polity.
In Northern Ireland, US
facilitators provided good
offices and never sought to
exert influence on the talks.
Their engagement did not
involve coercive or pre-
scriptive undertones, all too
familiar trends in cases of
Western engagement in con-
flict management efforts in
the global South. Neither
the USA nor the EU is likely
to act identically in a conflict
management context in the
developing world, and the
impact of their combined
roles represents yet another
Northern Ireland specificity.
The newest US-led initiative
to assist the parties to reach
consensus on three key areas
– flags, parades and most cru-
cially, dealing with the past
– also takes place under such
benign circumstances. As
First Minister Robinson
quipped, these talks are indeed likely to be
long-winded. Except for a suggestion made
by an SDLP delegation that the US facilita-
tors (Dr Richard Haass and Prof. Meagan
O’Sullivan) should put forward their own
proposals if the parties cannot find agree-
ment by Christmas , the facilitators’
emphasis continues to be on assisting the
parties address contentious issues upfront
and exploring avenues for compromise.
Where does all this leave the beacon the-
sis? It is all but a utopian and propagandist
construct, prone to mislead those genuinely
interested in the political developments in
Northern Ireland. It is far more productive
to perceive Northern Ireland as yet another
complex conflict-management experience,
which has achieved some successes amidst
failures and looming challenges, with con-
siderable costs and inconsistencies. There is
no such thing as a model peace process.
Dr Chaminda Weerawardhana is a researcher in
comparative politics at Queen’s University Belfast
Advocates of
the ‘beacon
thesis’ perceive
it as an
exemplary
case of conict
resolution, in
terms of the
implementation
of condence-
building
measures,
power-sharing
mechanisms
and
reconciliation
and healing
mechanisms
“
