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Ethno-National Identity in Post-Good Friday Agreement Northern Ireland

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Ethno-National Identity in Post-Good Friday Agreement Northern Ireland View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Open Research Exeter Consociational conflict transformation: Ethno-national identity in post-Good Friday Agreement Northern Ireland Submitted by Henry Jarrett, to the University of Exeter as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Ethno-Political Studies, August 2015. This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other University. Signature:……………………………………………………………………………… Abstract 1 The case of Northern Ireland is heralded by many as a consociational success story. Since the signing of the Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement in 1998, significant conflict transformation has taken place in the form of a considerable reduction in levels of violence and the establishment of power sharing between unionists and nationalists. This thesis, however, asks whether consociational arrangements are transforming conflict in a different way: through mitigating the salience of ethno-national identities. It argues that if this is taking place, it would be demonstrated in the focus of the election campaigns of Northern Ireland’s political parties, which would be almost exclusively based around socio- economic issues affecting the whole population, rather than narrow single identity concerns. Elections contested using Proportional Representation – Single Transferable Vote (PR-STV) offer the greatest potential to induce moderation, as this electoral system is preferential and allows inter-party lower order preference votes (or transfers) to be cast. It should, therefore, be in the interest of parties to maximise their support by moderating their campaigns with the intention of attracting inter-bloc transfers. If this is occurring, it would demonstrate a shift from traditional unionist versus nationalist politics to a more inclusive political system that is less concerned with ethno-national divisions. On the whole, however, this has not been realised. Although election campaigns are today less strident than they were in the pre-1998 era, it remains the case that they usually foreground single identity symbolism, as it is this that resonates with voters. Whilst consociational power sharing has been very successful in reducing levels of violent conflict and facilitating elite level cooperation between unionists and nationalists, it has been much less successful in reducing divisions within wider society. This indicates a dissonance between ‘high’ politics and society in Northern Ireland. The conclusions of this thesis also highlight a disparity between what political theory argues may happen and what actually does, as demonstrated by the practice of politics. It is the novel way in which this research tests its hypothesis that makes an original contribution to knowledge. This is achieved through the unique application of ethno-symbolism to analyse political party election campaigns. Table of contents 2 Acknowledgements 4 Introduction 5 Chapter One: Ethno-symbolism 12 Chapter Two: Politics in plural societies 51 Chapter Three: Electoral politics in divided societies 77 Chapter Four: Methodology 101 Chapter Five: PR-STV in Northern Ireland 113 Chapter Six: Manifesto analysis 139 Chapter Seven: Towards conflict transformation? 176 Conclusion 202 Bibliography 209 Acknowledgements 3 I begin by thanking my supervisor, Prof Jonathan Githens-Mazer, not only for his guidance throughout the course of my PhD study, but also for pushing me to go the extra mile and pursue avenues that I would never have considered were it not for his encouragement. For this I am very grateful. Several other individuals have been particularly influential and helpful throughout the time spent researching for this thesis, and thanks is extended to all of them. I am also indebted to all who kindly agreed to give up time to participate in interviews. Thanks must also be given to Rory Garland, whose decision to pursue his own PhD at Queen’s University Belfast made several fieldwork visits to Northern Ireland all the more enjoyable. Lastly, and most importantly, I thank my parents, Andrew Jarrett and Judith Dibble. This thesis would not have been possible without their support and it is for this reason that I dedicate it to them. Introduction 4 Having grown up in rural Devon with, to my knowledge, no Irish or Northern Irish ancestry, my interest in the Northern Ireland conflict originates from a somewhat unprecedented source. During a family holiday to Scotland as a twelve year old in August 2002, I was taken to Ibrox to watch a ‘friendly’ association football match between Glasgow Rangers and Leeds United. Whilst the union flags and Scottish Saltires fluttering in the stands were to be expected, the presence of a third flag – the Ulster Banner – came as a surprise to someone unfamiliar with the link between sectarianism in Northern Ireland and football in Glasgow. Equally surprising to me were the exclamations of contempt that rang throughout the stadium whenever Leeds’s Robbie Keane or Ian Harte – both Republic of Ireland international players at the time – were on the ball. After a 1-1 draw, the home supporters showed further contempt outside the stadium towards a man with dyed green hair (the colour of Rangers’s bitter cross-city rivals, Celtic) who, in a bizarre twist, later removed and proudly held up a scarf emblazoned with ‘Ulster Volunteer Force’. It was these displays of Northern Ireland related sectarianism in Scottish football that first ignited my interest in the conflict. A fascination with the case of Northern Ireland and other ethnic conflicts continued through the negotiations culminating in the re- establishment of power sharing in 2007, and other events, such as the arrest of Radovan Karadzic, accused of committing war crimes in Bosnia during the dissolution of Yugoslavia, a year later. This interest was an important factor influencing my decision to pursue an undergraduate degree in International Relations in 2008 and a master’s degree in Global Politics in 2011. Although violent divisions in ethnically plural societies can be successfully regulated through the recognition and accommodation of opposing groups, as the Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement and other conflict management settlements have shown, an important question is whether group identity can be overcome. If so, a more important question still is whether consociational institutions established by such settlements can work to facilitate moves away from narrow ethnic identification towards a shared identity. The case study of 5 Northern Ireland is significant as the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 is heralded by many as confirmation of the ability of consociationalism to provide successful conflict management in a divided society (Taylor, 2009a, p. 10). If consociational institutions can work to facilitate a shift from ethnic divisions to a unifying identity, it would, therefore, surely be Northern Ireland where this is most likely to take place. The hypothesis of this thesis is thus as follows: Due to the endurance of the consociational institutions implemented in Northern Ireland by the Good Friday Agreement, a common Northern Irish identity may, over time, come to be shared by the majority of the population (McGarry and O’Leary, 2009a, p. 83). This research aims to test whether a genuinely shared identity is showing any significant signs of being realised. McGarry’s and O’Leary’s argument is interpreted as being based on the premise that because consociationalism facilitates cooperation between unionists and nationalists at the political elite level, this may have the ability to trickle down and engender greater inter- communal interaction within wider society. This may in turn bring about a common identity that transcends ethno-national divisions and is shared by most inhabitants. It is important to emphasise that McGarry and O’Leary (2009a, p. 83) make no guarantee of this being achieved and argue that if it is, it will be the work of at least twenty years. They nevertheless offer no indication of the starting point for this prognosis (it could, for example, be the implementation of consociational arrangements in 1998 or the re-establishment of power sharing in 2007 after a five year suspension). It is, however, thought that if a common identity is likely to come about, Northern Ireland would be showing notable indicators of progress seventeen years after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. To determine if this is so, this study asks the following research question as a proxy in order to test its hypothesis: Does the preferential method of the Proportional Representation – Single Transferable Vote (PR-STV) electoral system induce political parties to moderate the single identity symbolism and rhetoric of their election campaign literature with the aim of attracting inter-communal lower order preference votes? (see, for example, McGarry and O’Leary, 2006b, p. 274). 6 Rather than test the hypothesis using a primarily quantitative framework (see, for example, Nolan, 2012, 2013, 2014; Tonge and Gomez, 2015), this study seeks to do so through a qualitative analysis of electoral politics. The rationale for this is that the election campaigns of political parties are considered to
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