! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Ritual Contention in Divided Societies: Participation in Loyalist Parades! in Northern Ireland ! Jonathan !S. Blake ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School! of Arts and Sciences ! ! COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY! ! 201!5 ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! © 2015! Jonathan !S. Blake All Rights Reserved Abstract! Ritual Contention in Divided Societies: Participation in Loyalist Parades! in Northern Ireland Jonathan !S. Blake ! Each year, Protestant organizations in Northern Ireland perform over 2,500 ritual parades to celebrate and commemorate their culture. Many Catholics, however, see parades as triumphalist and hateful. As a result, parades undermine the political peace process and grassroots peace- building by raising interethnic tension and precipitating riots, including significant violence in recent years. This dissertation asks: Why do people participate in these parades? To answer this question, I consider loyalist parading as an example of contentious ritual —symbolic action that makes contested political claims. To understand these parades as ritual actions, I build on two central insights from religious studies, sociology, and anthropology. First, as meaningful and shared practices, rituals provide participants with benefits that are intrinsic to participating in the act itself and do not depend on the achievement of some external outcome. Second, rituals are multi-vocal, meaning that interpretations of the action can vary across actors. Participants need not share the interpretation of their actions held by organizers, rivals, or outside observers. Participants, therefore, may not see the ritual as provocative, aggressive, or even contentious. These arguments stand in contrast to traditional explanations for collective action and ethnic conflict that theorize participation in ethnically polarizing events in terms of the achievement of concrete outcomes, such as selective material benefits, provoking the out-group into overreacting, or intimidating them into quiescence. To test my argument, I conducted fieldwork in Belfast, Northern Ireland. I developed and implemented a household survey to measure mass-level opinion, designed and ran an online survey of all Protestant clergy and elected officials in Northern Ireland to measure elite-level opinion, conducted over 80 semi-structured interviews with parade participants and nonparticipants, and observed dozens of hours of parades and related events. I demonstrate that, as expected by my argument, people approach participation in ritual parades as an end in and of itself. The evidence demonstrates that participants do not view parades instrumentally. This means that people make decisions to participate in contentious behavior without consideration of their actions’ profoundly political consequences. The ritual nature of parades severs the expected connection between means (participation) and ends (political consequences), thus creating the environment for sustained conflict. Furthermore, the predictions of influential theories of ethnic conflict—extreme in-group identification or out-group antipathy—and collective action— selective material benefits or sanctions—are not supported by the data. ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Contents List of Figures ii List of Tables iii Acknowledgements iv Dedication viii 1 Introduction 1 2 Identity on the March in Northern Ireland 16 3 The Politics of Provocation: Politicians, Pastors, Paramilitaries, and Parades 42 4 A Theory of Ritual Participation 76 5 Parading For Mainly Fun and Process 120 6 Culture, Politics, and the Paradox of Anti-Politics in Loyalist Parading 168 7 For God and Ulster or Private Payoff? Assessing the Role of Collective and Selective Incentives 209 8 Conclusion 260 Bibliography 272 Appendix 305 ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! i List of Figures 2.1 Loyalist and Nationalist Parades, 1985-2013 26 2.2 Contentious Parades, 1999-2013 29 3.1 Parades with Disorder and Elections, 1990-2009 58 3.2 Histogram of Elite Opinions on Parades 70 3.3 Kernel Density Plot of Opinions on Parades by Elected Officials and Clergy 70 7.1 Example Small Area 218 7.2 Screenshot from the Land and Property Service’s Spatial NI Map 218 7.3 Histogram of the Age Participants Began Parading 221 7.4 Percentage of Respondents Marching, by Age 221 7.5 Percentage of Participants in Each Organization 224 7.6 Summary of Respondents’ Parading Behavior, 2012-2013 226 ! ii List of Tables 3.1 The Determinants of Elite Parade Attendance, Logit Models 68 3.2 Elite Opinions on Parade Routes (%) 69 3.3 Parade-Related Activities of Elected Officials and Clergy (%) 72 3.4 Parade Organization Membership among Elites (%) 73 5.1 Types of Purposes Attributed to Loyalist Parades 128 5.2 Purposes of Loyalist Parades Reported by Participants: Intrinsic vs. Instrumental 129 7.1 Information on the Neighborhoods Included in the Survey 215 7.2 Determinants of Current Parade Participation, Logit Models 229 7.3 Robustness Check: Rare Events Logit 254 7.4 Robustness Check: Multiple Imputations 255 A1 Robustness Check: Alternative Measures of Protestant Identification 305 A2 Robustness Check: Alternative Measures of Anti-Catholicism and Family Ties 306 A3 Interviewees Quoted in Dissertation 307 ! iii Acknowledgments It is my great pleasure to thank all the people who helped me research and write this dissertation. Jack Snyder has guided my thinking since day one. I thank him for trusting me to research what I thought was important and providing criticism to make it sharper. Al Stepan pushed me to think big and speak to debates that matter. Michael Doyle always provided moral support and encouraged my exploration—and directed me to financial support to make it possible. Jim Jasper provided detailed and thoughtful comments on my work that really took it to the next level. And Tim Frye ensured that I was careful with my argument and didn’t step too far. Two people not on my committee deserve special recognition: Ron Hassner, who has been a teacher, mentor, and cheerleader for a decade; and Lucy Goodhart, whose dedicated guidance set me on the right track as I launched this project. I thank all for them for their continued support. In Northern Ireland, many people graciously gave me their time and views, not to mention their tea. First and foremost, I want to thank all of the people who invited me into their homes and offices or met me at restaurants, cafes, and pubs for interviews. I truly appreciate their willingness to share their stories. Thanks also to the many people who provided much-needed counsel on my research: John Barry, Jonny Byrne, Paula Devine, John Garry, Neil Jarman, Dave Magee, Kieran McEvoy, Dirk Schubotz, Peter Shirlow, and Ben Walker. Gladys Ganiel kindly let me use the database of clergy contact information that she and Therese Cullen compiled for the ‘Visioning 21st Century Ecumenism’ research project at the Irish School of Ecumenics. I appreciate the hard work of my survey enumerators, especially Rachel, Brenda, Tracey, Allison, and Julie. Finally, the good folks at Common Grounds Cafe and especially Black Bear Café kept me well caffeinated and let me set up shop. iv A few people in Northern Ireland went above and beyond. In particular, I want to thank Dominic Bryan, who taught me much of what I know about parades and who sponsored me as a visitor at the School of History and Anthropology at Queen’s University Belfast; Mark Hammond, who kindly lent me a bicycle on three of my trips (once before he had even met me!); and Jon Evershed, who provided lots of good craic and was an keen companion in fieldwork. My research in Northern Ireland was generously supported by a Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant from the National Science Foundation (SES-1263772); the Endeavor Foundation (formerly the Christian Johnson Endeavor Foundation); Columbia University’s Department of Political Science and Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict, and Complexity (at the Earth Institute); and APSA’s British Politics Group. Many thanks to Joe Chartier for helping me deal with all the Endeavor grants. Earlier fieldwork in Jerusalem was funded by Columbia’s Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion. A number of people read drafts of chapters and provided instructive feedback. Kate Cronin-Furman deserves some sort of medal for doing it more than anyone else. A heartfelt thanks to her and to Hadas Aron, Jonathan Evershed, Lee Ann Fujii, Jeff Goodwin, John Krinsky, Michele Margolis, Aidan McGarry, Tonya Putnam, Robert Shapiro, Nick Smith, Jon Tonge, David Weinberg, Lauren Young, and Adam Ziegfeld for valuable comments and critiques. Along the way, I had helpful conversations with Séverine Autesserre, Courtney Bender, David Buckley, Al Fang, Nils Gilman, Kimuli Kasara, Isabela Mares, Yotam Margalit, Jeremy Menchik, Tonya Putnam, Bob Scott, Lee Smithey, Paul Staniland, Alissa Stollwerk, and Dorian Warren. Finally, I would like to thank the discussants, audiences, and organizers of the Politics and Protests Workshop at CUNY Graduate Center, the Cooperative on Working Class Politics in Northern v Ireland at Queen’s University Belfast, the Columbia University International Politics Seminar, the Political Science Graduate Student Conference at the University of Pennsylvania, and the annual meetings of the American Political Science Association (2014), Association for the Study of Nationalities (2014), International