Building Trust and Goodwill in Northern Ireland and the Border Counties: The Impact of Economic Aid on the Peace Process

Byrne, Seán; Skarlato, Olga; Fissuh, Eyob; Irvin, Cynthia

doi:10.1080/07907180903075801

Cited by 10 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…For example, scholars criticize the EU's identity‐based conception of the conflict operationalized through “the use of crude categories (such as the number of Catholics and Protestants attending events) to measure outcomes of its projects, which some contend serves to reinforce rather than transcend divisions” (Hayward, 2006, p. 276). An evaluation of PEACE II funding also raised some doubts about the efficacy of EU support because competition for funding “led to disparity and distrust in some communities” (Byrne et al, 2009, p. 360). However, the evaluators appealed for more time to build trust and good will—peacebuilding is not a quick fix and EU support should be seen as a long‐term commitment.…”

Section: The Eu Peace Program In Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

EU PEACE funding: The policy implementation deficit

Knox

O’Connor

Ketola

et al. 2023

European Policy Analysis

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This article explores the intersection of policy implementation, conflict/peacebuilding, and the role of the EU PEACE program in Northern Ireland (NI). Conflict societies see a great investment of external funds, attempting to promote conflict resolution. Specifically, this article analyses the fourth wave of such funding in NI to examine why the EU PEACE program has not fully brought about its intended policy outcomes. Using Matland's conflict‐ambiguity model of policy implementation, we identify how EU funds can be skewed to support local political interests. Simultaneously, the EU PEACE program continues to adhere to strict implementation criteria that makes little sense given the local context. Therefore, contrary to its objectives, the implementation of EU funding can compound rather than ameliorate divisions in postconflict NI. Instead of prescribing strict implementation criteria, EU policy could focus on improving the administrative capacity and discretion of local administration in devising locally relevant implementation strategies.

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Section: The Eu Peace Program In Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

EU PEACE funding: The policy implementation deficit

Knox

O’Connor

Ketola

et al. 2023

European Policy Analysis

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show abstract

“…Provides important wisdom into how the aid brought about peace that was unpopular among the general population (for e.g., funding former paramilitaries) with the bureaucracy getting in the way (Byrne, Thiessen, and Fissuh 2007;Byrne et al 2009c; Racioppis and Sullivan 2007) EU Peace III…”

Section: -2006mentioning

confidence: 99%

Building Peace in Northern Ireland: Hopes for the Future

2022

Self Cite

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Since the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, over 2 billion Euros have been poured into Northern Ireland for peacebuilding. This article presents the hopes and experiences of workers in CSOs funded by either or both funds, development officers, and civil servants employed by the funders. They confirm that peacebuilding and reconciliation projects funded by the European Union (EU) Peace and Reconciliation Fund and the International Fund for Ireland (IFI) have positively contributed to the peace process in Northern Ireland. Civil Society Organizational (CSO) projects support peacebuilding, reconciliation, and greater cooperation between the Protestant and Catholic communities. This study explored the perceptions of 120 respondents working with these funders. They indicated that designated peacebuilding funding promotes bridging, needs to be balanced, and is important to building the peace dividend and that local knowledge, practices, and skillsets should be built into the funding process. The politics of post-Brexit Northern Ireland means that understanding how to best fund peacebuilding and reconciliation is critical. At time of writing, tensions have risen.

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“…Trust is a part of the reintegration success of ex-combatants (Kilroy & Basini, 2018). Post-conflict economic aid can have effects on trust and distrust (Byrne et al, 2009). Pui-Hang Wong (2016) described political trust-building after a civil war.…”

Section: Peace and Trustmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Peace is not just the suspension of war:’ peace communication on Twitter

Klimašauskaitė¹

2021

Preprint

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‘Strategic communication is something we are very bad at’, tells us a tweet from the Geneva Peace Week. One of the examples of strategic communication is public engagement content on Twitter. Empirical studies, however, never looked at public engagement content about peace on Twitter. In turn, I use grounded theory approaches to explore and map peace communication among seven research organizations and events in the West. My data set comprises a total of 9,874 tweets in English. Thematic coding with Atlas.ti results in 4,274 codes that are grouped into 63 distinct themes. I find sustainable peace as the main type of peace in data. Yet, the themes that presumably contribute to it – health, accountability, trust, and transparency, among others – are marginal. While gender is among the dominant themes, it emerges disconnected, with a lack of meaningful integration of it in other topics such as health or participation. A pattern emerges of the level of view that is mainly positioned on the global, with the local, community, family left at the margins.

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Building Trust and Goodwill in Northern Ireland and the Border Counties: The Impact of Economic Aid on the Peace Process

Cited by 10 publications

References 26 publications

EU PEACE funding: The policy implementation deficit

EU PEACE funding: The policy implementation deficit

Building Peace in Northern Ireland: Hopes for the Future

‘Peace is not just the suspension of war:’ peace communication on Twitter

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