Northern Ireland stands as an enigmatic model for the world. It is a model because its leaders were able to end 30 years of political and religious strife with a peace agreement that was overwhelmingly ratified by its citizens. It is an enigma because the task was accomplished in the middle of two decades characterized by ethnic violence and terrorism. While other regions of the world were increasingly prone to such behavior, Northern Ireland ended a conflict largely defined by it.
This book endeavors to explain the role that world opinion played in this transformation. It differs from past analyses of the international factors that affected Northern Ireland. M.L.R. Smith notes that âthe majority of those studies have emanated from members of the Northern Ireland-based academic community who have projected their thinking outward, rather than international relations scholars projecting some of their ideas inwards toward Northern Ireland.â 1 This observation provides a guide to this projectâs approachâit is an attempt to project a theory of world opinion âinwardsâ to explain why the Good Friday Agreement and subsequent events occurred, where and when they did.
New research projects on Northern Ireland require some degree of justification. It is but a slight exaggeration that one could fill a small library with materials that deal with the six counties. But Smithâs description is valuable here; most studies have emanated from a community âprojecting their thinking outward.â For this reason, many of the studies go down to the neighborhood level in Belfast, Derry/Londonderry, and elsewhere. Such projects are valuable. The lessons of conflict and resolution that Northern Ireland might provide certainly warrant this attention. Such a focus, however, is unsuitable for this project.
The argument here is that transformations that occurred in the post-Cold War era created conditions for world opinion that helped make the Northern Ireland peace process possible. It does not seek to discount other factors, but neither does it dwell upon them. Many convincing discussions of alternative reasons why the process occurred when it did already exist, and there will likely be many others. The approach here focuses almost exclusively on international opinion and its effects.
The analysis is necessarily comparative due to its subjectâs nature. There are extended references to nations such as Germany, South Africa, China, India, Bosnia, Israel/Palestine, and the USA. Indeed, the book begins with the question of why the civil rights movement in the USA ended with successful legislative changes while the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland ended in the Troubles. The comparisons serve to show reasons why social movements or trends so often cross national borders, and why their results are often so different when they do. In this case, a comparison with the USA illustrates the particular alliances and symbols utilized by Unionists and Republicans during the Troubles.
The analysis is also necessarily theoretical in many parts. Too often, terms like âinternational society,â âworld opinion,â and âidentityâ are bandied about without sufficient explanations of what they mean and how they fit together. To speak of âworld opinionâ and peacemaking, for instance, requires one to have a clear idea of the termâs meaning and how it relates to other phenomena in different regions and historical periods.
Both approaches are found commonly in analyses of the Northern Irish peace process. Researchers have often compared the regionâs experiences with the attempts to resolve civil conflicts in South Africa and Israel/Palestine, to name the two most common examples. Further, several theories of conflict resolution have been applied to Northern Ireland. To take but one example, one could argue that the conflict between Unionists and Republicans was an artifact of the Cold War era, mirroring the fight between so-called imperialist powers and national liberation movements, respectively. In the post-Cold War period, the Northern Irish conflict would therefore be an anachronism, as alternative divisions such as those described in Huntingtonâs âclash of civilizationsâ 2 came to the fore. By this logic, the Unionist/Republican fight would eventually be settled in part due to their mutual attachment to the same Western civilization in a period when the major conflicts were to occur between civilizations. Even this one brief example begs the question of why a theory of world opinion should be applied to Northern Ireland.
The Catholic Civil Rights Movement and the International Transmission of Values
The first response is that world opinion deals with the international transmission of values. Since social movements follow upon values, the spread of social movements beyond specific national borders is also a topic for world opinion. However, as described in Chap. 2, the civil rights movement in the USA had very different results when it was adopted as a model by Catholics in Northern Ireland. In the USA, the movement resulted in legislation guaranteeing voting rights and equal access to public facilities; it also engendered a change in consciousness about the proper relations between the races, even though that process is still a work in progress. In Northern Ireland, by contrast, the Catholic civil rights movement resulted in the Troubles, a period of violent turbulence that lasted nearly 30 years.
Global opinion theory provides one reason why the international transmission of values generated such different results in the two areas, even while many of the grievances were similar. Because the civil rights movement began during the Cold War, world opinion had not yet developed into a coherent social force. In most cases, it was an ideological tool in the East/West conflict used to justify both sidesâ actions as in keeping with the opinions and values of nearly all other nations in the world. Under these circumstances, a civil rights movement in a place like Northern Ireland could be easily fit into the Cold War model of national liberation versus imperialism, with all of the violence such an interpretation entails. It was only when world opinion became a global force independent of ideology in the post-Cold War period that its content could be a means of ending, rather than promoting, the East/West conflict by proxy. The second chapter argues that the civil rights movements in the USA and Northern Ireland diverged in large part due to the inability of the more violent factions in the USA to promote conflict along the East/West divide. Such inhibitions did not exist in Northern Ireland, in part because there was no common basis of community values, such as those based on religion, that could substitute for the more violent model.
Underlying any common sense of community, however, is a common sense of identity. The Troubles, whether interpreted as a conflict between Unionists and Republicans, Protestants and Catholics, or some overlapping of both, clearly had a basis in the absence of a common sense of Northern Irish identity. Identity formation in nations or regions was conceived, in the past, in much the same way as many previous studies of Northern Irelandâthat is, as something generated âoutwardâ from the community to the world, rather than vice versa. However, this formation of identity also changes in the post-Cold War era, becoming a negotiation between outward projections of consciousness and inward projections of world opinion from a newly emerging international society.
Imagining International Society
Two factors concurrent with the end of the Cold War, the globalization of media and the later decentralization of media through the Internet and other devices, changed world opinion into a global social force. Global opinion theory argues that moral and pragmatic considerations in world opinion may compel a nation to change its behavior to align with other nationsâ opinions due to the threat of international isolation. While this threat may not always alter a nationâs behavior, the threat of isolation at least forces leaders and citizens to consider world opinion in their statements, actions, and policies. Such considerations portend the beginning of an âimagined international communityâ along the lines Benedict Anderson described regarding nations. 3
The English School of international relations already describes the importance of values and international community or society in a theoretical manner. However, there are several lacuna in this theory concerning issues such as the origin and spread of values, as well as why it should be considered even more valuable now than when it was first being developed during the mid-twentieth century. Chapter 3 describes the intersection of global opinion theory and the English School. The combination generates a âthicker descriptionâ of âinternational communityâ or âinternational societyâ to be applied to the Northern Irish peace process. An âinternational societyâ defined as a community of nations linked at certain historical moments by world opinion helped provide the pressure for Northern Irish leaders to make peace. Again, this does not assume that world opinion was the sole factor, or even the most critical factor, in the success of the peace process. It is, however, a force relevant to understanding some of the pressures on the regionâs leaders and citizens in the post-Cold War era. This pressure is partly due to new processes of identity formation promoted by world opinion.
World Opinion and the Construction of Identity
Identity is constructed through a negotiation between an areaâs Selbstbild (or the image citizens have of their nation or region) and the areaâs Fremdbild (or their actual or perceived international image in world opinion) in the post-Cold war era. In the past, identity was generally assumed to be a phenomenon projected outward from a nation or region to the rest of the world. The Civic Culture 4 is a prominent example of this type of analysis, notably when it asked citizens of five different countries what they felt âmost proud ofâ about their nation. These elements of national consciousness are still relevant in the present era. However, they are tempered by the nationâs international image when it comes to the construction of identity. For a nation, or a region like Northern Ireland, its Selbstbild and its Fremdbild, respectively, affect each other. Several studies of different countries show that when citizens of a nation perceive their country has a poor international image, their national consciousness suffers a similar decline. Such citizens are likely to feel lower levels of national pride and less allegiance to national symbols like the flag.
This negotiation of national identity becomes relevant to Northern Ireland for two reasons. In surveys conducted in 1993, citizens of the Irish Republic generally did not wish to be associated with Northern Ireland, even while the Troubles continued with a significant faction demanding unification of the two areas. Indeed, the Troubles were one reason why citizens of the Republic and the UK did not want to be identified with the battling factions in Northern Ireland. Since the clash of Unionist and Republican identities was a major reason for conflict, it left both sides in the Troubles with a conundrum regarding their projected affiliations.
A second reason why this negotiation became important is that surveys showed Northern Irish citizens to be susceptible to international evaluations in their feelings of regional and national consciousness. Regardless of whether citizens identified themselves as British, Irish, or Northern Irish, their levels of national pride varied with their perceived level of connection to the rest of the world. Further, this relationship only holds for the post-Cold War era, not before. The results show the sensitivity that inhabitants of the six counties felt toward world opinion.
A sensitivity to world opinion demands patterns of speech and silencing, in large part due to the meaning of world opinionâi.e. âthose opinions which one can or must express in the international arena in order to avoid isolation as a nation.â If only certain opinions can be expressed, if only a certain image can be projected in order to meet with global approval, other opinions or views of national image must be silenced. Further, these patterns of speech or silencing should be discernable according to the demands of world opinion.
Speech, Silence, and International Image
Chapter 5 begins with a discussion of the silencing processes that occur in conflict and post-conflict societies. It relates these patterns to world opinion about the regions in question, with a particular emphasis upon Northern Ireland. International values outlined in the texts and practices of various global human rights organizations demand a peace and reconciliation process occur as part of the peace in a conflict society. That very demand in world opinion creates particular problems in Northern Ireland, as many citizens believe the peace depends upon not discussing the Troubles outside of their own enclaves, whether these are Unionist and Republican, or Protestant and Catholic. A paradox causes societal distress, as the perceived global need for open speech to complete the peace process contradicts the factionsâ perceived needs for silence to maintain the peace.
Many enigmatic patterns follow. The analysis reveals that those who supported The Good Friday Agreement and its associated attitudes of tolerance toward both groups, tended to be silent prior to the referendum, even though 71 % of Northern Irish voters voted for it. After the vote, even though those in opposition tended to fear silencing, those who supported the referendum and tolerant attitudes toward both groups were not significantly more likely to speak than those who did not. The result transferred the fear of silencing to those who voted âNoâ on the peace without freeing those on the other side to speak openly. Northern Irish citizens appeared to understand they were a model for the world in their peace settlement; those who supported it were more likely to declare their identities in another country than those who did not. However, this positive image in world opinion left patterns of silencing that still need to be resolved.
World Opinion and Leadership in the Northern Irish Peace Process
The patterns of speech and silencing created difficulties for the leaders who were negotiating the peace process, as noted in Chap. 6. On the one hand, they needed to retain the support of their constituents. On the other hand, they had to participate in discussions with other world leaders who advocated a settlement of the two sidesâ conflicts. Hermley-Gordon describes the leadership style required for this balancing act as âchameleonic.â 5 This concept is useful combined with the notion of âopinion dikesâ described by V.O. Key in his classic study Public Opinion and American Democracy. 6 In their negotiations with each other and world leaders, those from Northern Ireland had to define carefully the limits on their actions that would create progress and yet retain constituent support. This balance is described as successfully creating âopinion dikesâ within which one may act as a âtrustee,â but outside of which one must act as a âdelegateâ for oneâs supporters. The problem ...