Equality as steady state or equality as threshold? Northern Ireland after the Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement, 1998

It is possible to identify two starkly opposed positions on the regulation of ethnic
conflict.1 On the one hand, there is the view that such conflict is in important part
driven by a popular perception of unequal treatment on the basis of ethnic category,
such that the equal recognition of opposed ethnic identities, equal institutional
opportunities and provisions for cultural expression, equality for opposed national
aspirations, and an equalisation of group economic condition allows a diminution of
conflict and a moderation of ethnic demands. On the other hand, there is the view that
ethnic conflict is primarily elite-driven with elites framing popular grievances in
ethnic terms, so that the institutionalisation of ethnic equality and more generally the
appeasement of ethnic demands rewards intransigence among leaders and congeals
social divisions. Debates on the relative priorities of defeating terrorism or of
remedying the grievances of subjected populations refer to precisely these principles,
as do debates on the role of egalitarian measures (from affirmative action policies to
consociational institutions) in ethnic conflict prevention and regulation.2