CSP Presentation Script

Northern Ireland has had an active civil society that supported the peace process through demonstrations, lobbying, and media coverage. However, the peace process was controlled by political and security elites, not the general public, and prioritized pragmatism over reconciliation between communities. While civil society organizations grew with peace agreement funding, most folded without donor support, and the peace process failed to adequately address victims or the past. Twenty years later, the peace remains fragile with mistrust between politicians and a lack of coherent reconciliation strategy.

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CSP Presentation Script

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Alex Lazar

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CSP.

Presentation Script

 Northern Ireland has a large and active civil society which could be seen at
many points in the peace process. It mobilised during the 1998 referendum,
held marches and vigils for peace – particularly in response to violent incidents
– was prominent in lobbying political parties and the governments, and was
adept at gaining media coverage. Moreover, peace groups and peace projects
sprang up throughout Northern Ireland and the border counties of the Republic
of Ireland and worked on issues connected with peacebuilding and
reconciliation.
 for the governments, the survival of the peace process was to be prioritised over
keeping the idea of civil society as a virtuous space. There are good arguments
for the prioritisation of pragmatism over principle, though the governments
rarely explicated this.
 Civil society, in the form of civil society organisations (CSOs), flourished in
tandem with the peace process. Generous funding from the European Union
fuelled a growth in the number of CSOs. This was supply rather than demand
led. Without donor support, the vast majority of pro-peace and reconciliation
CSOs, programmes and projects would not have existed.
 Many CSOs folded when funding streams dried up. The most effective of the
CSOs, in terms of gaining media and, to a certain extent, political attention,
focused on victims’ issues.
 There was no truth and reconciliation process nor any agreement on
compensation packages.
 while there has been popular input into the peace process, this has often been
in formalised and constrained ways. It cannot be argued that it was a people’s
peace process. It was an elite peace process with public aspects, but the origin,
direction and institutional outcomes of the peace process have been restricted
to a select group of political and security stakeholders.

 ask the question: where did power lie?

 the answer to this question points to a peace oligarchy or the
concentration of power (political, economic, discursive, symbolic)
in the hands of internal and external elite actors. At the same
time, other forms of power – often linked with the everyday, the
social and the cultural – were not so easily accessed by elite
actors.
 power-sharing dispensation amounted to a centrifugal process that drew in
those on the margins, leaving very little space for alternatives and dissent. This
process continued through the 1990s and 2000s drawing an ever-widening
circle of actors into the peace process mainstream.
 according to Mac Ginty (2016), evidence is mounting that the peace process
contains a number of structural defects which mean that it is destined to deliver
a stalemate and is unable to address the core issues underlying the conflict.
 Twenty years down the line, we may be tempted to see the peace process –
especially in its early days – in terms of discreet actors making rational choices
in pursuit of strategy. In reality, and as many of the now emerging diaries and
memoirs reveal, all of the actors in the peace process were ‘making it up as they
went along’.
 There was a good deal of trial and error and misunderstanding, as well as
miscommunication. No actor was able to make and maintain a strategy in
isolation from other actors.
 British and Irish governments, that established themselves as ‘custodians’ of
the peace process, was that the peace process was to be an inclusive space in
which parties could explore possible constitutional and political outcomes and
benefit from any opportunities that might accrue.
 All these negotiations were based on the idea that only moderate
political parties could be included: that is; parties that eschewed
violence by non-state actors. All these attempts failed because the
veto holders were left outside and were able to stymie any political
agreement.
 The Northern Ireland peace process offered very many opportunities for public
engagement, or at least the appearance of public engagement. Yet, as will be
argued, much of this public engagement was constrained. It operated within
boundaries largely set by the formal political process.
 the notion that violence could end, and that the human costs of the conflict
could be reduced, captured the imagination of many in the media and civil
society.
 A referendum offers a simple binary choice. This seemed overly
simplistic for a conflict which involved multiple nuances.
Depending on political stance, many people would have favoured
certain aspects of the agreement but would have been wary of
other aspects. Yet, the referendum offers a blunt yes/ no choice in
which the agreement was to be accepted or rejected in its totality.
There is no doubting that the referendum was a useful procedural
device at a particular stage of the peace process but it cannot be
seen in the same light as ongoing public scrutiny and
involvement.
 Mac Ginty contends that the Northern Ireland peace process, and the
subsequent set of power-sharing political institutions, took the form of an
oligarchy between political parties and the British and Irish governments.
Popular input was corralled and stage-managed. When deemed useful it was
encouraged but it was ignored at other periods. This analysis must be careful
not to be too churlish.
 The peace process and attendant processes did bring significant change to
Northern Ireland, not least in terms of quality of life (with the lifting of much
of the aggressive security policies) and in stopping violent campaigns that cost
about a hundred lives a year.
 The fundamental problem with the Northern Ireland peace process was that it
did not bring about reconciliation. Indeed, it did not even attempt to encourage
reconciliation between the two blocs.
 Sociological aspects of the peace process, such as dealing with the past or
dealing with victims, have been side-lined, farmed out to toothless commissions
of inquiry or so highly politicised that they have become toxic.
 Rather than routes to reconciliation and some form of ‘healing’, in the sense
that individuals and communities feel able to move on, many potential
reconciliation issues have become factories of grievance, deliberately stoked by
political parties to antagonise their out-group rivals and to keep the intragroup
flame burning. Any number of prefixes could be used to describe Northern
Ireland’s ‘peace’: reluctant, fragile, slow, cold, frozen, bitter.
 Chronic mistrust between Nationalist and Unionist politicians has been
maintained despite them serving alongside one another in the power-sharing
assembly.
 The Northern Ireland peace process was a multidimensional affair with a range
of political, constitutional, security, economic and identity issues falling under
its mantle. Yet, there was no coherent strategy for intercommunal
reconciliation. One cynical response would be to note that ethnonational
political parties have no interest in lessening interethnic division. Given that
their principal mobilising tools are ethnic identification, then a process which
would dilute identity would be counterproductive for their electoral aims.
 A less cynical view, however, might recognise that these political parties had
reached a peace accord (albeit contested and imperfect) and that it was in their
interests to at least smooth the running of the grand consociational bargain that
constituted the Belfast Agreement and the political institutions it established.

Political Implications: Failure of Power-Sharing Agreement & Brexit

 Established according to the terms of the NI Act 1998, following GFA 1998.
 Collapsed in January 2017, the deputy First Minister resigned as a result of
the Renewable Heat Incentive scandal and the Northern Ireland Executive
subsequently collapsed. As of February 2019, the Executive is still vacant.
 The rift widened to take in other more tradition disputes and the parties remain
at loggerheads, with no prospect of an imminent breakthrough on the horizon.
 While there has been speculation over a new round of negotiations, no date has
publicly been announced.
 Brexit impact on the peace agreement and soft border: see notes.

Social Implications