Since 1998, Northern Ireland has been the subject of a unique experiment in governance and democracy. The experiment includes the establishment of a participatory Civic Forum in which the voluntary and community sector has an important stake. Beginning with a discussion of the merits of a participatory aspect to democracy in the contemporary age, this paper identifies factors that might help establish the Civic Forum as a successful participatory institution in Northern Ireland. Key factors include the attitude towards the Forum of political representatives and their willingness to foster a participatory dimension to the new democracy. Other important factors are inclusiveness and the balance of sectoral representation in the Forum.Essentially, democracy-government that is necessarily responsive-takes effect when people agree not to use violence to overthrow the government and when the government leaves them free to criticize, to pressure, to try to replace it by any other means (Mueller, 985).[Democracy] . . . , if it is to survive the shrinking of the world and the assaults of a hostile modernity, will have to rediscover its multiple voices and give to citizens once again the power to speak, to decide, and to act; for in the end human freedom will be found not in the caverns of private solitude but in the noisy assemblies where women and men meet daily and discover in each other's talk the consolation of a common humanity (Barber, 311).

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The relevance of European Union (EU) cross-border cooperation for European border conflict amelioration may be questioned in the contemporary global climate of threat and insecurity posed by forces of 'dark globalisation'. In any case, empirical evidence exposes the limitations of cross-border cooperation in advancing conflict amelioration in some border regions. Nevertheless, in an enlarged EU which encompasses Central and East European member states and reaches out to neighbouring states through cross-border cooperation initiatives, the number of real and potential border conflicts with which it is concerned has risen exponentially. Fortunately, there are cases of EU 'borderscapes' that have adopted a cross-border 'peace-building from below' approach leading to border conflict amelioration. Unfortunately, countervailing pressures on EU cross-border cooperation from border security regimes (principally Schengen), the Eurozone crisis, EU budgetary constraints, the conceptualisation of 'Europe as Empire', and the possible reconfiguration of the EU itself compromises this approach. Therefore, the path of European integration may well shift from one of inter-state peace-building and regional crossborder cooperation after the Second World War, to border conflict and coercion in constituting and reconstituting state borders after the reconfiguration of the EU.Their memory of old freedoms lingers and won't let them rest. In these cases, your only options are to reduce the place to rubble or go and live there yourself (Machiavelli, 2011, p. 20).

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