Models of Civil Society and Their Implications for the Northern Ireland Peace Process

Lessons on Government from one Non-State Entity to Another

“…In the 1990s, however, Sinn Fein helped coordinate the Mitchell Review, which provided necessary multinational oversight to move the peace process along and to hold each party accountable for disarmament and political compromise. 25 By turning to the international community for aid in humanitarian and political processes, the Irish republicans finally achieved their sociopolitical aims and gained lasting political legitimacy around the world.…”

Path Dependence in Settlement Processes: Explaining Settlement in Northern Ireland

“…These approaches build variously on theories of ‘bridging’ social capital (Putnam, 2003), the role of civil society in transitions to democracy (for discussion, see Keane, 1998) and theories of how boundaries and distinction are challenged and maintained (Lamont, 2000). However, while these approaches can explain constraints on conflict and local variations in its form, they do not explain the move to settlement (see Farrington, 2004).…”

“…The Irish government's post-1950s strategy of openness first to economic and later to cultural and political impacts had developed, by the 1980s, into a distinctive self-conscious project of adapting to the new global environment by playing off powerful British, US and European forces against one another to national advantage. This led to major socio-economic changes: the ‘Celtic tiger’ economy (O Riain, 2004), while secularisation weakened the entanglement of religious and cultural differences and interests with national categories, encouraging some unionists (most prominently the business class) to reconsider their relationship to the Irish state. There was also a direct impact on strategy towards Northern Ireland: sovereignty was no longer of core importance, borders were permeable and economic interests paramount; Irish unity came to mean ever greater island-wide integration while keeping an openness to Britain in both parts of the island (Hayward, 2004).…”

The Belfast Agreement and the Politics of Consociationalism: A Critique

“…56 In sum, the Civic Forum is widely seen to have failed, having come to constitute a space which civil society does`not control'. 57 Altogether then, consociationalism proves hostile to deliberative politics: the constitutional question has been postponed and civil society has been depoliticised. In such ways, the Agreement turns its back on, rather than faces, the future.…”