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- PublicationBetween the devil and the deep blue sea : nationality, power and symbolic trade-offs among evangelical Protestants in contemporary Northern IrelandNational identity is symbolically complex configuration, with shifts of emphasis and reprioritisations of content negotiated in contexts of power. This paper shows how they occur in one post conflict situation – Northern Ireland – among some of the most extreme of national actors – evangelical Protestants. In-depth interviews reveal quite radical shifts in the content of their British identity and in their understanding of and relation to the Irish state, with implications for their future politics. The implications for understanding ethno-religious nationalism, nationality shifts and the future of Northern Ireland are drawn out.
905Scopus© Citations 19 - PublicationDeducing rationalities and political tactics in the partitioning of Ireland, 1912-1925Partition is an intrinsically abstract and simplistic blunt instrument applied on a complex mosaic of peculiarities that constitute reality. There are very few modern states that are ethnically or culturally homogenous. In this context, partition is a subjective territorial tactic that can treat or exacerbate symptoms of historical, political, and geographical difficulties. While exhibiting comparative scope, especially to the role of the British State and the dynamics of national majorities and minorities, the circumstances concerning the partitioning of Ireland deviate from patterns gleaned from other examples as the evolving bases of its partition between 1912 and 1925 mutated at various stages with regard to geography, political status, and function. However, Ireland served as an important historical precedent in illustrating the disparity between the original intent and eventual result of its partition. Indeed, one can extrapolate from the Irish example that partition is better understood as a catalytic tactical process that radically reconfigures the political and geographical dimensions of conflict rather than as a decisive political instrument solving it.
722Scopus© Citations 15 - PublicationDoes being Protestant matter? Protestants, minorities and the re-making of ethno-religious identity after the Good Friday AgreementThe Good Friday Agreement of 1998 gave an opportunity to remake not just political institutions but ethno-religious distinction in Northern Ireland. This paper looks at the how individuals reconstruct their way of being Protestant in Ireland and Northern Ireland in the context of social and political change. It shows individuals renegotiating their ways of being Protestant, attempting sometimes successfully to change its socio-cultural salience, blurring ethnic boundaries, distinguishing religious and ethno-national narratives, drawing universalistic political norms from their particular religious tradition. It argues that these renegotiations are highly sensitive to the macro-political context. Changes in this context affect individuals through their changing cognitive understandings and strategic interests which, at least in this case, are as important to identification as are social solidarities.
618Scopus© Citations 15 - PublicationEthnicity and religion : redefining the research agendaThis article maps some of the effects when ethnicity and religion overlap. Sometimes one category, with its related values and solidarity, is prioritised; this is expressed in the common view that religion is subsumed in ethnicity, and religious labels become markers of ethnic groups. Sometimes the effects are additive, each source of distinction and group solidarity strengthening the other. Sometimes there are interactive effects, with dynamic and emergent properties producing a more complex field of relationship. After tracing examples and arguing against a reductive approach, three avenues for future research are highlighted. First, mapping patterns of interrelation of ethnicity and religion in cultural distinction-making and group formation, showing the conditions and effects of each. Second, looking at the longer term historical, state and geo-political conditions for change in these relations. Third, reframing theories and concepts so better to grasp the range of ways religion and ethnicity function in social practice.
1068Scopus© Citations 12 - PublicationFluid or frozen? Choice and change in ethno-national identification in contemporary Northern Ireland(Taylor & Francie, 2006-12)
; ; ; This article works with in-depth interviews from research projects in Northern Ireland to show different processes of choice and change in national identity. It argues that situational variation in identity is quite compatible with unchanging and oppositional forms of identity. Significant identity change is possible but uncommon, it requires incentives and resources, and it is more likely to occur in conflict generating than in conflict resolving directions1328Scopus© Citations 31 - PublicationHorowitz's theory of ethnic party competition and the case of the Northern Ireland Social Democratic and Labour Party, 1970-1979This article uses Donald Horowitz’s theory of ethnic party competition in order to understand the development of the Northern Ireland Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) during the first decade of its existence. The main contention of the article is that Horowitz’s thesis, although based primarily on observation of party competition in divided societies in Africa and Asia, is remarkably applicable to the SDLP in terms of the party’s evolution against the backdrop of the Northern Ireland conflict in the 1970s. Horowitz’s theory helps explain why the SDLP failed in its original objective of mobilizing a cross-community constituency behind a radical, reformist agenda, and instead became what Horowitz terms an “ethnically based party”, representing the interests of only one side of the political divide in Northern Ireland.
962Scopus© Citations 5 - Publication"Humespeak" : the SDLP, political discourse, and the Northern Ireland peace processThis paper explores the vital role played by the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) in the formulation of a new political discourse and conceptual approach to the Northern Ireland problem. In particular, it shows how John Hume, party leader through the 1980s and 1990s, helped to propagate this discourse, and in doing so influenced policy-making in London and Dublin, and thinking within the republican movement. Although the paper emphasises the importance of this influence, it concludes by considering the reasons why the Ulster unionist community have remained so unreceptive to the political discourse of Hume and the SDLP.
370 - PublicationMediating the European ideal : cross-border programmes and conflict resolution on the island of IrelandThe designation of state borders as essential lines of division in Europe is disputed by the logic of European integration. But does the actual impact of EU membership quantifiably defuse the conflict potential of these borders? The purpose of this article is to assess the impact of the European Union on the resolution of the conflict in Ireland/Northern Ireland through cross-border activity. The primary data for this research is taken from a series of semi-structured interviews with individuals directly involved in the implementation of EU cross-border programmes. Interviewees include politicians, policymakers, and representatives of the community and voluntary sector – all of whom may be viewed as ‘mediators’ of the European ideal of cross-border cooperation as a means to peace-building. The analysis contained here covers three main dimensions of the EU’s role, namely the conditions, context, and consequences of its approach to the border conflict.
466Scopus© Citations 22 - PublicationNational identity in transition? Moving out of conflict in (Northern) IrelandThis thematic section of Nations and Nationalism starts from a question of substantive political importance: How does institutional change - in particular reforms towards ethno-national equality and the opening of borders - affect national identification in divided regions? It takes the case of Northern Ireland where a radical process of institutional change is underway. It uses new approaches to national identity to map different aspects of change and continuity – in categories of identity and in their interrelations and contents, in elite and in everyday popular identifications (for useful overviews, see Abdelal et al, 2003; Ashmore et al, 2004). It examines the trajectory of the Protestant minority in the Irish state to show possible repertoires of change. The authors look respectively at self-reported categories of identity, official discourses of identity, and popular understandings of nationality. The introduction outlines the relevance of this research to current comparative and theoretical debates.
1506Scopus© Citations 9 - PublicationNational territory in European space : reconfiguring the island of IrelandThe meaning and significance of borders in nation-statehood and European integration are integrally linked in a process of change. Uncovering such connections in a case study notable for its recent transformation, this article explores the way in which the narratives and models of European integration have been used in the discourse of Irish official nationalism. Its central thesis is that participation in the space of European Union has facilitated the conceptualisation of a common Irish space in which borders (specifically the Irish border) are not conceived as barriers to be overcome but rather as bridges to the fulfilment of interests. Thus, the Irish governmental elite have used the language of European integration to reconfigure traditional ideals of latent anti-partitionism for a context of peaceful settlement.
912Scopus© Citations 8 - PublicationThe nature of meaning of identity in Northern Ireland after the Belfast Good Friday Agreement(Wiley Blackwell, 2007-02)
; ; ; ; Social identification processes can be seen as the basis of the conflict in Northern Ireland. During the conflict it can be argued that preferred social and political identities became increasingly oppositional and entrenched. This paper reviews this evidence using population level studies. It also explores trends in preferred identities since the 1998 Agreement as well as examining the patterns of preferred identity across generations with particular attention being paid to the responses of young people. In an attempt to elucidate the meaning of these identities, a series of inter-related qualitative studies that have examined constructions of national, political and religious identification are reported. These suggest a fluidity, rather than entrenchment, in post-Agreement respondents and point to the variability and complexity of identity phenomena in Northern Ireland.2321Scopus© Citations 80 - PublicationNorthern Ireland : from multi-phased conflict to multi-levelled settlementThe origins of the Northern Ireland conflict fall into three temporally distinct phases, each of which creates a particular socio-structural context that defines a set of protagonists with conflicting interests, more or less defined aims, and a given temporality of conflict. Each is superimposed on the previous phases, further defining and intensifying conflict. The result is a multi-levelled conflict and a multiplicity of aims for protagonists. This provides a useful frame for explanation of the difficulties of negotiating and of implementing an agreed settlement and for assessment of the successes and failures of the 1998 agreement.
687Scopus© Citations 5 - PublicationPath-dependence in settlement processes : explaining settlement in Northern IrelandThe recent literature on path dependence provides a model that can be used in explanation of ethnic conflict and settlement processes. Using Northern Ireland as a case study, this article identifies path dependent patterns of conflict embedded in long-term processes of political development whose change may interrupt these patterns. It highlights the importance of long-term state trajectories in constituting and reproducing these patterns, the generation of ‘endogenous’ processes of change and the impact of wider geopolitical processes in strengthening these. It shows how and why factors such as power, perception, networks and institutions vary in their impact on conflict and explains when they work together to produce settlement.
1453Scopus© Citations 51 - PublicationA politics of transition in Britain, France and SpainThe decade of the 1990s saw the beginning of a new phase of globalisation and continuing European integration, the collapse of socialism and the triumph of neo-liberalism, the mainstreaming of cultural postmodernism and the intensification of identity politics. It was a period of transition in political institutions, demands and expectations. The political discourse associated with these changes was radical: this was a global age, hybrid, regionalist, postnationalist, and above all 'new'. But just how radical were the political changes, and did they signal a new convergence across European states? This book is a study of the changing forms of the state, and in particular of changing centre- periphery relations, in Britain, France and Spain. It analyses the character and extent of the changes and their causes and consequences, not just territorially but also institutionally in the area of policing. It identifies the degree of convergence in the three states.
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