Diplomatic parade or last struggle against fatalism? - Making sense of the Paris ministerial meeting on the Middle East Peace Process. EPC Commentary, 16 June 2016

On 3 June, the French government convened an international meeting in Paris, gathering 28 high-level delegations from all around the world, from Norway to Japan, in order to discuss the state of play and future prospects of the enduring Israel-Palestine conflict. The first ministerial meeting of the “Initiative for the Peace in the Middle East”, as it was labelled by the Quai d’Orsay, provided an important political signal, and a potential diplomatic format, to help revive the long-stalled peace process. Yet, its concrete deliverables remain beset by considerable uncertainty.

Parading through the Peace Process:Anthropology, Governance and Crisis in Northern Ireland

Because the authors both did work on the North Ireland parades, they became integrally involved as fieldworking anthropologists in the monitoring of these events, and in the creation of policy for their management. They detail how they worked with individuals and groups at every level, from protestors on the street up to the Secretary of State for the region. Later funded to examine legal and policing approaches to protests in other countries, especially South Africa, they show how they used this comparative knowledge to urge the implementation of measures which appear to have led to a diminution of violence in the parades. Finally, they assess their own contribution to the peace process in terms of contingency, timing, luck, flexibility, and industry.

Deliberative democracy and the Tasmanian forest peace process

Irish language education and the national ideal: The dynamics of nationalism in Northern Ireland

Since the beginning of the Northern Ireland conflict in the late 1960s, Irish nationalism has been identified as a prominent force in the political culture of the state. Recent studies have suggested, however, that the ‘Nationalist’ population has become increasingly content within the new political framework created by the peace process and the aspiration for Irish unity diminished. In placing the Northern Ireland situation within the theoretical framework of nationalism, this paper will analyse how these changing priorities have been possible. Through an analysis of Irish language study in Northern Ireland's schools, the paper will examine how the political ideals espoused by the nationalist Sinn Féin Party reflected the priorities of the ‘nationalist community’. It will be contended that the relationship between the ideology and ‘the people’ is much more complex than is often allowed for and that educational inequalities are a significant contributing factor to this.

Peace with Hamas? The transforming potential of political participation

Gunning, J. (2004). Peace with Hamas? The transforming potential of political participation. International Affairs. 80(2) pp.233-255 RAE2008

Difference, Diversity and Difficulty: Problems in Adult Peace Education in Northern Ireland

The peace process in Northern Ireland has been hailed, variously, as the successful resolution to one of the world's most intractable conflicts, and as a failed attempt to reconcile the conflciting claims of the two main ethnonationalist communities. At both these points, and at every other point along the continuum, recognition is given to the centrality of education. This article looks at the role played by adult learning, and contrasts two fundamentally different apporaoches. In one, Enlightenment assumptions about the power of knowledge to dispel prejudice have run alongside attempts to create a world of shared values; in the other, a postmodern acceptance of different cultures has accompnaied a peace process that builds upon ethnic diistinctions. As with the Dayton Accord and with other peace agreements brokered with international assistance, the consociational model of governance has been chosen for Northern Ireland in order to create a political equilibrium between the unionists and nationalists. Such a political framework reverses the direction of previous integrationist educational policies in favour of a celebration of difference, an approach that is fraught with difficulties.

Political Discourse and Conflict Resolution:Debating peace in Northern Ireland

This book offers new insights into the close relationship between political discourses and conflict resolution through critical analysis of the role of discursive change in a peace process.

Just as a peace process has many dimensions and stakeholders, so the discourses considered here come from a wide range of sources and actors. The book contains in-depth analyses of official discourses used to present the peace process, the discourses of political party leaders engaging (or otherwise) with it, the discourses of community-level activists responding to it, and the discourses of the media and the academy commenting on it. These discourses reflect varying levels of support for the peace process – from obstruction to promotion – and the role of language in moving across this spectrum according to issue and occasion. Common to all these analyses is the conviction that the language used by political protagonists and cultural stakeholders has a profound effect on progression towards peace.

Bringing together leading experts on Northern Ireland’s peace process from a range of academic disciplines, including political science, sociology, linguistics, history, geography, law, and peace studies, this book offers new insights into the discursive dynamics of violent political conflict and its resolution.

Policing for peace in Northern Ireland: Change, conflict and community confidence

The fundamental change in policing that began in 2001 was a critical part of the Northern Ireland peace process. Seventy years after its establishment the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) remained distrusted and unrepresentative of the Catholic – nationalist community. This book explores how policing changed and the significant contribution that overhaul made to the most successful conflict transformation process in recent decades. It looks at policing from an organizational perspective and focuses on leadership, strategy and culture as it traces the journey from RUC to PSNI. In this way it reflects the views of many key figures inside the organization and of key political decision makers outside of it. This book will be of tremendous interest to those seeking to explore the underlying dynamics of one of the most radical and challenging change processes in recent history and is a must read for anyone interested in the Northern Irish peace process.

Convergence/Divergence: Party political discourse in Northern Ireland's transition from conflict

This paper illuminates the role of political language in a peace process through analysing the discourse used by political parties in Northern Ireland. What matters, it seems, is not whether party discourses converge or diverge but rather how, and in what ways, they do so. In the case of Northern Ireland, there remains strong divergence between discourses regarding the ethos of unionist and nationalist parties. As a consequence, core definitions of identity, culture, norms and principle remain common grounds for competition within nationalism and unionism. There has, however, been a significant shift towards convergence between unionist and nationalist parties in their discourses on power and governance, specifically among the now predominant (hardline) and the smaller (moderate) parties. The argument thus elaborated is that political transition from conflict need not necessarily entail the creation of a “shared discourse” between all parties. Indeed, points of divergence between parties’ discourses of power and ethos are as important for a healthy post-conflict democratic environment as the elements of convergence between them.

Processing the Peace:An Interview with Teya Sepinuck

In this interview, Teya Sepinuck, the Artistic Director of Theatre of Witness reflects not only on her first two projects in Northern Ireland, but also vividly illustrates her way of working by evoking seminal moments in her previous practice. Although, she has resisted attempts to systematise the Theatre of Witness process, preferring to see it as a set of principles rather than a fixed methodology, these principles have given rise to clear guidelines that have come to govern the process through which she works. As the interview illustrates, Sepinuck, a Jewish Buddhist, has no hesitation in explaining her approach within the framework of a humanist ‘spirituality’ that explicitly deploys Judeo-Christian terminology. She invites discussion of each participant's ‘prayer-life’ and positions herself primarily as a listener rather than an interlocutor. The introduction to the interview contextualises Sepinuck's practice in relation to her previous work and other drama-based interventions in Northern Ireland. Concerns that the lack of critical distance between the tellers and their stories inhibits those who see it from freely engaging with it as they might with a fictionalised account, are also critiqued. In the interview, Sepinuck directly addresses the risk of the commodification of her work, explaining the safeguards in place to protect the participants, who have repeatedly asserted how beneficial they have found their involvement in the work to be. The sense of autonomy and empowerment that emerges from these responses represent a persuasive challenge to concerns that they are passive instruments of the Theatre of Witness process.

Protracted Peace processes: Policy (Un)learning and the Cyprus Debacle

The article examines why a comprehensive settlement to resolve the Cyprus problem has yet to be reached despite the existence of a positive incentive structure and the proactive involvement of regional and international organizations, including the European Union and the United Nations. To address this question, evidence from critical turning points in foreign policy decision-making in Turkey, Greece and the two communities in Cyprus is drawn on. The role of hegemonic political discourses is emphasized, and it is argued that the latter have prevented an accurate evaluation of incentives that could have set the stage for a constructive settlement. However, despite the political debacle in the Cypriot negotiations, success stories have emerged, such as the reactivation of the Committee for Missing Persons (CMP), a defunct body for almost 25 years, to become the most successful bi-communal project following Cyprus’s EU accession. Contradictory evidence in the Cypriot peace process is evaluated and policy lessons to be learned from the CMP ‘success story’ are identified.