Beyond neoliberalism: peacemaking in Northern Ireland.

• Date: 22 December 1998
• Author: Crighton, Elizabeth H.
• Published date: 22 December 1998
• Author: Crighton, Elizabeth H.

Is the peace process in northern ireland another case of liberal internationalism at work, a neoliberal project in search of economic stability rather than reconciliation and social justice? In this article, I argue that Northern Ireland is an exception to the post-Cold War process at work in Southern Africa or Israel-Palestine. A heavily subsidized province of the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland is sheltered from global economic pressures for peace. Yet the pull of social and political change and the push of governmental policy initiatives have created endogenous incentives for accommodation. It is too early to predict whether the cease-fire and constitutional agreement now in place will hold. Neither can we know whether reconciliation will replace the fragile truce between the nationalist and Unionist communities. However, there are encouraging signs of new efforts at compromise among Northern Irish leaders from every political tradition.

In section one, I outline the implications of Northern Ireland for the liberal internationalist model of peacemaking. Section two argues that conflict management, or containment, has been a centerpiece of British policy there. Security forces have often overreacted to paramilitary violence, but they have contained the violence well enough to allow room for several positive political developments. In section three, I describe the gradual expansion of the government's social agenda from a focus on antidiscrimination to a more recent commitment to social and political justice. The concluding section assesses Northern Ireland's progress toward reconciliation and draws three cautionary lessons for peacemaking elsewhere.

Liberal Internationalism and Its Critics

One of the ironies of the post-Cold War era is the militarization of peacemaking: soldiers no longer needed for anti-Soviet defense have a new job rebuilding collapsed societies in the aftermath of civil war.(1) The shift of security concerns from interstate war to the more pressing problem of intrastate conflict raises new questions about the nature of peace, the best strategies for peacemaking, and the role of states and international actors in the peacemaking process. While scholars debate these issues, practitioners have to act, and in the current global environment they follow, for the most part, liberal internationalist principles articulated early in this century and now widely accepted by U.S. foreign policy elites. The main instruments of peace for liberal internationalists are international law and institutions, working with the multilateral support of governments. The goal is to maintain a minimalist definition of peace (the absence of armed conflict) and to move as quickly as possible to promote a transition to democratic governance and a market economy. In short, "government's role is to lay the tracks and then get out of the way" (Sanders, 1992: 370).

Northern Ireland illustrates at least three problems with this neoliberal approach. First, it conceptualizes peace as merely the reduction or elimination of armed violence. Ronnie Lipschutz (1998) argues in the lead article of this volume that such a minimalist definition of peace ignores the complex process of "social reconciliation and domestic restructuring" necessary to ensure a durable settlement. On this point, it is worth noting that British policymakers have assumed that permanent peace could never come in Northern Ireland without a political settlement acceptable to a majority of both communities, that is, without some degree of reconciliation. Given the failure of repeated attempts to build reconciliation "on the ground" and political accommodation among elites, security policies followed by the British Army and the provincial police have accepted the premise that paramilitary violence will not be eliminated, only contained to an "acceptable level." Arguably, the success of this policy has freed governmental resources for attention to political and social reform.

A second problem with liberal internationalism is that it sets the bar too low in endorsing procedural rather than substantive democracy for war-torn societies; in doing so, it risks imposing democratic forms that reinforce the political dominance of one community over another. This paradox, democratic rules with undemocratic outcomes, operated in Northern Ireland between 1922 and 1972. Majoritarian electoral laws meeting the formal test of democracy failed the substantive test by giving the (Protestant) Unionist community nearly absolute political control over provincial affairs. Electoral dominance, combined with abstentionism by Catholics, reinforced the economic privilege of Unionists and cemented their political hegemony.(2)

Liberal internationalism's commitment to "pacification through political and economic liberalization" (Paris, 1997: 59) - that is, to economic deregulation and growth - also raises a third criticism. It benefits elites interested in boosting their return on capital, but offers little of the distributional equity expected by citizens of most countries, especially countries with a history of deep division.(3) Just such distributional issues lie at the heart of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.(4) After nearly 50 years of Unionist domination, the civil rights movement of the late 1960s called for reforms such as fair access to jobs and public housing, a universal franchise, and an end to electoral gerrymandering. As the movement grew, it also splintered into moderate and more radical factions, bringing the moribund Irish Republican Army back to life and triggering counter-mobilization by (Protestant) loyalist paramilitaries.

That Catholic grievances in Northern Ireland have a strongly distributional quality has not been lost on British policymakers. Since 1972, when it suspended Northern Ireland's government and assumed authority over local security and administration, the British government has implemented fair employment and housing legislation with some success and boosted nationalist political representation by adopting a system of proportional representation in local and provincial elections.(5) The 1998 Belfast Agreement, signed in April and ratified by popular referendum in May, frames a constitutional settlement for Northern Ireland in the language of social justice. Although the centerpiece of the Belfast Agreement is the establishment of new institutions of governance, the document begins with a commitment to "partnership, equality, and mutual respect" between the two communities and includes a long section detailing provisions for "Rights, Safeguards, and Equality of Opportunity."(6) Whether substantive gains will match the diplomatic language remains to be seen, but British and Irish officials have moved quickly to implement the provisions of the Agreement, realizing that to lose political momentum is to undercut a fragile cease-fire.(7)

Anglo-irish policy(8) acknowledges equity and reconciliation as normative goals for Northern Ireland. It would also appear that both governments see social justice for Catholics and Protestants as strategically necessary for peacebuilding.(9) They share liberal internationalism's commitment to multilateralism, democracy, and capitalism, but not its neoliberal illusion that free markets and elections can build peace in the wake of civil war. Capitalist democracy and low-level war have co-existed in Northern Ireland since 1968 (and for nearly that long in Spain); that protracted civil conflict appears in industrialized democracies suggests the limits of market and electoral mechanisms in producing peace.

If the goal of peacebuilding is "to create conditions that will allow peace to endure long after the departure of the peacebuilders themselves - in other words, a self-sustaining peace" (Paris, 1997: 57), what should peacebuilders do? Lipschutz (1998) makes the case for moving "beyond neoliberalism" to a model of social reconciliation based in a "more equitable distribution of resources (and) power within a society." This strategy requires a"group sensitive" distribution of wealth and a more equitable distribution of power than most neoliberals envision.(10) Reconciliative policy transcends the limitations of purely institutional solutions by attempting to create not only "new constitutions," but also "a modicum of trust among the members of society." Peacebuilding also takes coordination, as well as the means to protect individual rights and ensure legal, religious, and economic equity. Since they are relatively independent of dominant social groups, strong states are the most likely agents of such cooperation and protection. For this reason, neoliberal policies that reduce state resources and authority may in fact be counterproductive for peace (Crawford and Lipschutz, n.d.: 11-14; Paris, 1997: 59; Esman, 1994: Chapter 8).

In the next two sections, I argue that British policymakers in Northern Ireland have repeatedly chosen state action over neoliberal ideology on a broad array of fronts: security, political reform, and social reconstruction. They may have endorsed liberal internationalist policies beyond their own borders, as in Bosnia, but at home they have followed a very different, state-centered, route to peace.

Containment as a Peacebuilding Strategy

Northern Ireland is an exception to the pattern among communal wars. The Troubles have lasted 30 years, yet in contrast to many ethnonational struggles, conflict has been less violent, more geographically limited, and less subject to manipulation by international actors. Since 1969, 3,600 people have died by violence, but on a per capita basis, this is close to the death-through-violence rate in Anchorage;(11) certainly, Northern Ireland has been far less deadly than the conflicts in Sri Lanka...