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Syracuse University SURFACE Dissertations - ALL SURFACE December 2016 THE DYNAMICS OF CONFLICT: TRANSFORMING NORTHERN IRELAND Ronit Berger Syracuse University Follow this and additional works at: https://surface.syr.edu/etd Part of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons Recommended Citation Berger, Ronit, "THE DYNAMICS OF CONFLICT: TRANSFORMING NORTHERN IRELAND" (2016). Dissertations - ALL. 559. https://surface.syr.edu/etd/559 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the SURFACE at SURFACE. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations - ALL by an authorized administrator of SURFACE. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ABSTRACT The main goal of this project is to gain a better understanding of the process of conflict transformation. More specifically, I wish to examine what are the circumstances that push Dual Wing Resistance Organizations (DWRO), and particularly, the Irish Provisional Republican Movement to behave in one of four different ways: convergent towards violence, convergence towards cooperation, divergence and confusion. My main argument is that in order to understand conflict transformation processes and what pushes an organization to behave in a particular way one must look into the interaction between factors at three levels of analysis: the context, organizational dynamics and leadership. Beyond this claim, my analysis focuses on answering a couple of other questions as well: Can studying a process and not just snap-shots in time lead to better understanding of organizational decisions? Can any one particular factor be responsible for every type of behavior? Can any one factor be relevant in the same way in all types of cases? Are some factors more relevant in leading to some types of behaviors over others? Can any one level of analysis explain all types of behaviors? and lastly, what is the role of leaders in conflict transformation processes? particularly, what role did Adams play in the process, what type of a leader was he and did he change over time? To answer my questions, I process traced the Northern Ireland conflict from the end of 1983, when Gerry Adams became the president of Sinn Féin and until the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in May 1998. I divided my timeline into 24 cases, ten cases of convergence towards cooperation, three cases of convergence towards violence, eight cases of divergence and three cases of confusion. For each case, I examined the four-months period leading up to the studied behavior. I looked for actions by the British (government, military, court and police), the Irish (government, military, court and police), Unionists (political parties, as well as loyalist paramilitaries), intermediaries, promoters of peace and spoilers. I also looked into the potential role elections and agreements had to play. I then looked into the state of organizational dynamics in the period leading to each of my cases, what was going on within the organization, was there preference divergence between leadership and rank and file? Was there preference divergence between the two wings? Was there preference divergence between leaders? At that point I looked more closely into the workings of Adams – was he being sensitive to the context? Was he pushing his own agenda forward and bringing the organization with him or was he letting the organizational constraints dictate his behavior? This process helped me in answering my questions, but also to understand whether factors from the different levels of analysis interacted with each other in leading to particular behaviors over others. I found that it is indeed illuminating to look into a process as a whole. Studying single-snap shots of behaviors can never tell the entire story. Looking into particular cases without considering past interactions between the various actors relevant in the conflict environment may lead to misunderstandings. I also found that the organizational decision to behave in one way or another is determined by the interaction of factors from the various levels. However, I also found that even the same type of organizational behavior can be driven by different organizational goals. Meaning, sometimes the organization chooses to diverge out of necessity and fear of splintering, whereas in other times it is a tactical decision. In any case, the choice is not determined by the organizational dynamics alone, but by the context and the leadership as well. Meaning, both divergence and convergence can be driven by an organizational need to survive, but it is the context and the leadership that will determine which of the two behaviors will be adopted. The other side of the coin is that the same organizational motivation can lead to different behaviors, depending on the context and the leadership. When it comes to the particular contextual factors, I found that the British were relevant in all of the cases studied. Additionally, the British played a significant role in pushing the organization towards convergence, whereas the Unionists were found to be much more active during times of divergence, but not necessarily relevant for organizational decision making per se. The context as a whole mostly helped in explaining the choice between violence and cooperation. The particular factors within the context level were far less straight-forward in their effect. All factors were found to have both positive and negative effects. Promoters of peace were mostly acting in positive ways, but even they had some actions that were seen as negative from the Republican Movement’s point of view. The Irish Republic was mostly negative in cases of divergence and only negative in cases of convergence towards violence and elections were found to be significant more in times of divergence than in time of convergence. When the context could not explain particular behaviors, organizational dynamics and leadership helped filling in the gap. Lastly I found Gerry Adams to be a strategic leader that was hugely central in the progress of the conflict transformation process, due to his unique position within the organization, his leadership skills, his sensitivity to information, his long-windedness, his political skills and his charisma. He may not have been central in every organizational decision that was taken, and he may have been pulled by his own organization towards positions that were contrary to his agenda, but he nonetheless was central for the transformation of the movement from violence to cooperation and for the conflict transformation process as a whole. THE DYNAMICS OF CONFLICT: TRANSFORMING NORTHERN IRELAND By Ronit Berger Bachelor of Laws (LL.B) Tel Aviv University, Israel, 2008 Bachelor of Arts (B.A) in History of the Arts, Tel Aviv University, Israel, 2008 MA in Government: Diplomacy and Conflict Studies, IDC Herzliya, Israel, 2009 Dissertation Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science Syracuse University December 2016 Copyright © Ronit Berger, 2016 All rights reserved AKNOWLEDGMENTS I cannot even express how much I have waited for this moment. I am not going to lie, I have been counting the days. But with all seriousness, being able to write my acknowledgment means that I am finally done! It took me longer than I originally planned, but that is water under the bridge now. Because I am done! And I have sooooo many people to thank for. I want to open with my Ima and Aba (mom and dad), because they are the most important people in my life. They are the only reason I was able to even come to the United States and study. Yes, it was accompanied by many, many, moments of Jewish guilt for me not being around for the holidays, for birthdays, for family gatherings (really got lucky there) and for any other random day. But they were always there for me. Their support, albeit the guilt, was endless, in every form possible. Well, except coming to visit me here. They came once, the day I got the keys to my first apartment in Syracuse and have refused to return ever since. My dad refers to Syracuse as ‘that cemetery ridden place’ (My first apartment was indeed surrounded by them). It was hard to live so far away from them for so long, but now I know it was worth it. And they definitely tried to make it easier by sending me boxes of food and cloths and everything possible all the time. I am, after all, their little one. But now I cannot be happier that I had this opportunity to make them proud. Maybe now they will even take interest in what I was working on for all these years and stop asking me why I quit the law firm. Keeping with the family line, I would like to thank my amazing sister for always being there for me, for sending me packages of Israeli snacks, for making sure my sanity has not left the building at least once a week, for sending me gazillion pictures and videos of Ilay and for making me smile and reminding me to breath. vi Next are my mentors. Peg, my dearest advisor, who collected me already in the first semester and believed in me before I even believed in myself. Who challenged me, who pushed me, who introduced me to many new and exciting opportunities and who supported me and my dreams. But most of all, thank you Peg for all those hours of sitting and chatting with me, brain- storming and just talking politics, those are the moments I appreciated the most during my time in Syracuse. Assaf, my true mentor, and now, finally, a colleague. Thank you for pushing me forward, for introducing me to your brilliant way of thinking, to various (sometimes boring) literatures I did not have a chance to read before, for letting me take part in your book project during which I have learned so much, for making me feel that my ideas are worth listening to, for your endless support throughout the years and most of all, for making me laugh all the time.
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