‘It ain’t easy being green’: Sustainable Development between Environment and Economy in Northern Ireland’

Given the relative lack of research on sustainable development in Northern Ireland, this paper focuses on the tensions between environmental governance and regulation on the one hand, and the ‘post-conflict’ imperative for Northern Ireland to compete and grow as a regional economy without continued British state subvention and subsidisation. The paper outlines how this ‘trade-off’ between ‘environment’ and ‘economy’ is essentially misplaced. It argues that this trade-off can be avoided if there is a shift in focus from an ‘environment versus the economy’ policy position to one in which the ‘triple bottom line’ (social, economic and environmental) of sustainable development becomes the over-arching policy agenda. Sustainable development, unlike either orthodox environmental or economic policy, also connects centrally with the unique ‘post-conflict transformation’ agenda of Northern Ireland. For example, promoting a human rights civic culture, tackling socioeconomic inequality and social exclusion, and building a shared future based on supporting sustainable communities and an innovative model of a ‘green(ing) economy’ goes beyond orthodox economic growth. However, it is clear from the Executive’s Programme for Government, failure to support the creation of an independent Environment Protection Agency, and above all the prioritisation of orthodox economic growth based on foreign direct investment that neither environmental protection nor sustainable development is or will be high on the political or policy agenda in Northern Ireland.

Promoting Civil Society Across the Borders of the EU Neighbourhood: Debates, Constraints and Opportunities

One of the aims of this article it to clarify the nature of the debate over 'civil society' and its relationship to the state. It begins by suggesting that the EU's borderland provides a context in which deep-rooted 'Western' and 'Eastern' understandings of state and civil society meet and overlap. The second section outlines the geo-political reshaping of the 'Neighbourhood'. It concentrates on the influence of non-EU actors, notably Russia, complementing the EU-focused literature on the subject. The third section elaborates the consensus in the literature on the weakness of civil society in the EU 'Neighbourhood'. This is followed by a discussion of 'Western' debates over the role and significance of civil society.

Local differences, perceptions and IB claimants: implications for policy delivery

Geographical unevenness in labour market and social conditions is one reason why the 'local' has been emphasised increasingly in the delivery of labour market policy in the UK. This article explores the extent to which there are local differences in labour market conditions using the characteristics and experiences of Incapacity Benefit (IB) claimants in Northern Ireland as an example. It then offers some comments on the potential for policy initiatives to cope with these spatial variations. Evidence from a survey of 803 IB claimants is used, supplemented by focus group material derived from discussions with Personal Advisers (PAs). The article shows that whilst there are important variations between areas, largely in the quantity and quality of jobs, and the perceptions that IB claimants hold of their local labour markets, there are also similarities in the general types of labour market barriers they face across areas. There is some evidence, however, to conclude that these barriers in urban areas are particularly pronounced and that some IB claimants in these places face severer obstacles to re-integration in the labour market than those in rural areas. The article also suggests that policy delivery to cope with these geographical differences faces two problems. First, capacity to respond to local differences is limited by strong systemic impulses towards centralisation. Secondly, and paradoxically, local differences erode capacity to respond to severer urban problems because social/institutional capacity within providers and policy-deliverers in these places is limited by high staff turnover and a crowded institutional landscape.

Representing War as Punishment in the War on Terror

This paper shows how the notion of punishment has been invoked by former US President George W. Bush, and ex UK Prime Minister Tony Blair to represent war. It is suggested that in this context, the notion of punishment serves different objectives: legitimizing violence, suggesting the sovereign role taken by the US and highlighting the emergence of new sensibilities. Building on previous literature in criminology and international relations it examines points of contact between two previously distinct security mechanisms - war and punishment- and suggests possible effects of this discursive blurring. It highlights not only the need for criminologists to engage with international relations literature but also the need to evaluate closely the different nature of the international context.

China and the changing landscape of the world economy

The rapid development of emerging markets is changing the landscape of the world economy and may have profound implications for international relations. China is often regarded as the most influential emerging market economy because, during the last three decades, it has become increasingly integrated into the world economic system and its success and failure now affect the well-being of other nations in the world. As the financial crisis in the US and EU intensifies, the economic prosperity of the world depends to a large extent on the sustained development of the Chinese economy and other emerging markets, and vice versa.

Controlling the Shadow Trade

From tackling illicit flows of small arms to combating nuclear smuggling, the shadow trade has become a central target of attempts to control the means of violence. This article argues that much of this practice and literature is framed in unhelpful terms that posit two distinct worlds, an upperworld and underworld, that separates illicit flow networks from the familiar world of state security policy. This implies that the possibilities for controlling the shadow trade are limited or require expansive and expensive controls. The article then examines the formation of illicit flow networks, drawing on examples including narcotics, small arms, nuclear materials, nuclear technology, major conventional arms, dual use technologies, and chemical weapons precursors; and finds that state and hybrid actors rather than extensive private networks are constitutive of illicit networks in many ways. It concludes by reclaiming hope for controlling the means of violence in this hybridity.

Citizenship education in divided societies: Teachers’ perspectives in Northern Ireland

This paper aimed to investigate in what ways teachers’ developing understandings of citizenship education in a divided society reflect discourses around national citizenship and controversial issues. Based on thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with 13 post-primary teachers in Northern Ireland undertaking an in-service programme in citizenship, findings indicate that the controversial nature of past conflict maintains its sensitivity in the educational context though other categories of potential exclusion, such as race and sexuality, compete for space in educational discourse and teaching. Few teachers used controversial issues identified as challenging hegemonic beliefs as an opportunity for role modelling citizenship. However, teachers rarely explored the complex interlinkages between traditional and alternative categories of exclusion. It is argued that this may render teachers’ understandings of citizenship and societal conflict disconnected, which in turn may hinder the potential for citizenship education to address societal divisions and to promote active peace in the long-term.

Pitfalls in Strategic Planning: Lessons for Legitimacy

The paper considers how planning as a political activity is underpinned by concepts of justice and how professional practitioners are consistently faced with making ethical choices in the public interest. The key objective is therefore to identify the centrality of ethics in praxis. In this context, political liberal theory is empirically useful in exploring both the role of participants and the processes employed in strategic planning. A case study analysis generates key issues which are relevant to planning in the wider arena and an extensive series of interviews provides interesting insights into the dynamic between those involved and the effectiveness of procedures followed.

So Why Did the Guns Fall Silent? How Interplay, not Stalemate, Explains the Northern Ireland Peace Process

The precise rationale for, and timing of, the Northern Ireland peace process of the 1990s and beyond, which developed after more than two decades of conflict, has yet to be fully explained. It has been a common assumption that it arose from a stalemate involving the Irish Republican Army (IRA), the 'regular' pro-state forces of the British Army and Royal Ulster Constabulary and the 'irregular/ultra' pro-state loyalist paramilitary groups of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and Ulster Defence Association (UDA). Under this interpretation, military/paramilitary deadlock led to ripeness for peace, amid reappraisals by all parties to the conflict of the utility of violence accompanied by reinterpretations of earlier political orthodoxies. The IRA could not remove the British sovereign claim to Northern Ireland; British forces could not militarily defeat the IRA and loyalists and republicans were engaged in a futile inter-communal sectarian war. This stalemate thesis has obvious attraction in explaining why a seemingly intractable war finally subsided, but is less convincing when subject to empirical testing among republican and loyalist participants in the conflict. This article moves away from 'top-down' generalist narratives of the onset of peace, which tend to argue the stalemate thesis, to assess 'bottom-up' interpretations from the actual combatants as to why they ceased fighting. It suggests an asymmetry, rather than mutuality, of perception that there was 'military' cessation by the armed non-state groups, with neither republican nor loyalist interpretations grounded in notions of stalemate. The article concludes by urging a wider consideration of the important and persistent interplay of the military and political in conflicts such as Northern Ireland.

Conflict, Transformation, and Former Loyalist Paramilitary Prisoners in Northern Ireland

Following the 1998 Belfast Agreement in Northern Ireland, levels of paramilitary violence have declined substantially. Among loyalists, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and associated Red Hand Commando (RHC) have formally renounced violence, and dissolved their 'military structures', and perhaps the most reticent of all of the major paramilitary groupings, the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), has taken on board the central tenets of conflict transformation, and 'stood down' all of its 'active service units' in the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF). Thus, paramilitary violence now is mainly confined to the activities of 'dissident' republican groups, notably the Real and Continuity IRAs, although low-level sectarian violence remains a problem. Such dramatic societal and political change has resulted in a focus on the roles of formal party political leadership as agents of social change. This gaze, however, tends to obscure other important events such as the efforts, structures and approaches taken at the grassroots level to uphold and sustain conflict transformation and to maintain a reduction in violence. This article provides analysis of the role played by former loyalist paramilitary combatants in conflict transformation, and draws on material obtained through significant access to those former paramilitaries engaged in processes of societal shifts. In both personal and structural terms there is evidence of former combatants working to diminish the political tensions that remain as a result of the long-term inter-communal hostility developed across decades of violence and conflict.