Abstract
The Northern Ireland conflict is often described in terms of the presence of two rival ethnic communities, two competing ideas about identity and belonging, and two antagonistic visions of political aspiration. As such, it is portrayed as a quintessential example of what can happen when two ethnic groups live close together in a territory.1 This fundamental lesson underpins many others — in particular, the need to keep ethnic groups apart and the importance of viewing all aspects of the conflict through the prism of group rights and group demands. Since the signing of the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement in April 1998 and the gradual and uneasy movement away from violence an entire peace process industry has emerged, in which academics and political commentators, together with community sector leaders, ex-politicians and former paramilitaries, share these lessons with other troubled spots across the globe.2
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Notes
Among others, see Steve Bruce, God Save Ulster: The Religion and Politics of Paisleyism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986);
John Darby, Scorpions in a Bottle: Conflicting Cultures in Northern Ireland (London: Minority Rights Publications, 1997);
Michael Hughes, Ireland Divided: The Roots of the Modern Irish Problem (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1994);
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Among others, Bew, Politics; Aaron Edwards, A History of the Northern Ireland Labour Party: Democratic Socialism and Sectarianism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009);
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Graham Walker, A History of the Ulster Unionist Party: Protest, Pragmatism, and Pessimism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004).
Fidelma Ashe, ‘Gendering ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland’, in Colin Coulter and Michael Murray (eds.) Northern Ireland After the Troubles: A Society in Transition (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008);
Lorenzon Cañás Bottos and Nathalie Rougier, ‘Generations on the border: changes in ethno-national identity in the border area’, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 12 (2006): 617–42;
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Cillian McGrattan, National Identities (forthcoming, 2010);
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Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (London: University of California Press, 2000 [1985]), p. xv.
Arend Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration (London: Yale University Press, 1977), p. 238.
Anthony D. Smith, ‘The ethnic sources of nationalism’, in Michael E. Brown (eds.) Ethnic Conflict and International Security (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 40.
Among others, see Ian O’Flynn and David Russell, ‘Democratic values and power sharing’, in O’Flynn and Russell (eds.) Power Sharing: New Challenges for Divided Societies (London: Pluto Press, 2005); Wolff, ‘From Sunningdale’.
Among others, see Walker Connor, Ethno-Nationalism: The Quest for Understanding (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 73;
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Ibid., p. 10; see also V. P. Gagnon, The Myth of Ethnic War: Serbia and Croatia in the 1990s (London: Cornell University Press, 2004), pp. xv–xxi.
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Ibid., p. 420; see also Rawi Abdelal, Yoshiko M. Herrera, Alastair Iain Johnston and Rose McDermott, ‘Identity as a variable’, Perspectives on Politics, 4 (4) (2006): 695–711.
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See Peter Hart, The IRA at War, 1916–1923 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 3–29.
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Christopher Farrington, Ulster Unionism and the Peace Process in Northern Ireland (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006);
Gladys Ganiel, ‘“Preaching to the choir?” an analysis of DUP discourses about the Northern Ireland peace process’, Irish Political Studies, 22 (3) (2007): 303–20;
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Peter Shirlow and Kieran McEvoy, Beyond the Wire: Former Prisoners and Conflict Transformation in Northern Ireland (London: Pluto Press, 2008), p. 4.
Fidelma Ashe, ‘From paramilitaries to peacemakers: the gender dynamics of community-based restorative justice in Northern Ireland’, The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 11 (2) (2009): 298–314.
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Paul Dixon, Northern Ireland: The Politics of War and Peace (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008 [2001]); Ganiel ‘“Preaching”’.
For example, Dixon, Northern Ireland; Cathy Gormley-Heenan, Political Leadership and the Northern Ireland Peace Process: Role, Capacity and Effect (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).
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Fergal Cochrane, Unionist Politics and the Politics of Unionism since the Anglo-Irish Agreement (Cork: Cork University Press, 2001);
Farrington, Ulster Unionism; Hayward, ‘Politics of nuance’; Gareth Ivory, ‘Revisions in nationalist discourse among Irish political parties’, Irish Political Studies, 14 (1999): 84–103;
M. L. R. Smith, Fighting for Ireland? The Military Strategy of the Irish Republican Movement (London: Routledge, 1995);
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Paloma Aguilar, Memory and Amnesia: The Role of the Spanish Civil War in the Transition to Democracy (Oxford: Berghahn, 2002).
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The two most recent studies are Steve Bruce, Paisley: Religion and Politics in Northern Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); and Mitchell, Religion.
Paul Pierson, ‘Public policies as institutions’, in Ian Shapiro, Stephen Skowronek and Daniel Galvin (eds.) Rethinking Political Institutions: The Art of the State (London: New York University Press, 2006).
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Liam Clarke, ‘Did Adams “sign” their death warrants?’, Sunday Times, 5 April 2009;
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Paul Dixon, ‘Why the GFA in Northern Ireland is not consociational’, The Political Quarterly, 76 (3) (2006): 357–67;
Rupert Taylor, ‘The Belfast agreement and the politics of consociationalism: a critique’, The Political Quarterly, 77 (2) (2006): 217–26;
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Gerard Murray and Jonathan Tonge, Sinn Féin and the SDLP: From Alienation to Participation (London: Hurst, 2005).
Katherine Side, ‘Women’s civil and political citizenship in the post-Good Friday agreement period in Northern Ireland’, Irish Political Studies, 24 (1) (2009): 67–87.
Ashe, ‘Gendering’; see also Marysia Zalewski, ‘Gender ghosts in McGarry and O’Leary and representations of the conflict in Northern Ireland’, Political Studies, 53 (3) (2005), 201–21.
Thomas Hennessey, The Evolution of the Troubles, 1970–72 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2007);
Catherine O’Donnell, Fianna Fáil, Irish Republicanism, and the Northern Ireland Troubles, 1968–2005 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2006); Patterson and Kaufmann, Unionism; Prince, Northern Ireland’s’68.
Cillian McGrattan, ‘Learning from the past or laundering history? Consociational narratives and state intervention in Northern Ireland’, British Politics (forthcoming, 2010).
Tannam, ‘Explaining’; Eamonn O’Kane, Britain, Ireland, and Northern Ireland since 1980: The Totality ofRelationships (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007), p. 193.
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Doug McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930–1970 (London: University of Chicago Press, 1999).
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Michael Kerr, Imposing Power-Sharing: Conflict and Co-existence in Northern Ireland and Lebanon (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2006).
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© 2010 Cillian McGrattan
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McGrattan, C. (2010). The Northern Ireland Conflict. In: Northern Ireland 1968–2008. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230277045_2
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