Adrian Little

Political Action, Error and Failure: The Epistemological Limits of Complexity

The trend in government and public policy towards evidence-based policy making has recently been the subject of criticism from authors such as Ian Sanderson who argue that the insights of complexity theory undermine the claims of evidence that these forms of policy design advocate. While taking on board the primary claim of this critique, this article examines the contribution of complexity theory in more detail to suggest that the epistemological obstacles that complexity science identifies also challenge the kind of pragmatic, deliberative model that Sanderson prefers. Instead, it examines the work of Michael Freeden on failure and Michel Foucault on error to demonstrate the ways in which approaches that are less wedded to epistemological certainty can enable policy makers to think more creatively about the complex terrain they must navigate and develop more innovative and less risk-averse forms of political action.

Disjunctured narratives: rethinking reconciliation and conflict transformation:

Reconciliation has been a notable part of discourses of conflict management and transitional justice in a number of conflictual situations around the world. This article examines the recent emergence of critical theories of reconciliation with particular reference to processes of conflict transformation in Northern Ireland. It evaluates the ways in which conflict transformation in Northern Ireland is specific to that context and the variations in the usage of discourses of reconciliation compared with other ‘post-conflict’ societies. The article highlights critical theories of reconciliation which, although largely supportive of the potential of reconciliation, tend to highlight the arguments and conflicts that notions of reconciliation can generate. By examining the ways in which reconciliation is articulated in Northern Ireland through interviews with representatives of the main political parties, the article contends that narrative approaches are best suited to analysis of the issues in Northern Irish politics. The argument developed here suggests that reconciliation in Northern Ireland is part of a ‘disjunctured synthesis’ whereby the main political parties become locked into narratives of reconciliation based on opposition to the perceived position of the other.

Between Disagreement and Consensus: Unravelling the Democratic Paradox

The idea of a rational consensus has become an increasingly controversial dimension of recent democratic theory as radical democratic theorists have challenged the ways in which liberal democracies deal with political disagreement and contestation. As a result, several theorists within the liberal tradition have attempted to incorporate models of dissent in their democratic arguments but this paper contends that they tend to result in forms of majoritarianism or proceduralism which reflect the original limitations that inspired the radical democratic critique. A more useful approach is one that recognises that contestation is inherent to democratic politics and understands that the paradox of democracy is the need to embrace the impossibility of establishing rational consensus in democratic practice.

Pathways to global democracy? Escaping the statist imaginary

Critics of global democracy have often claimed that the social and political conditions necessary for democracy to function are not met at the global level, and are unlikely to be in the foreseeable future. Such claims are usually developed with reference to national democratic institutions, and the social conditions within national democratic societies that have proved important in sustaining them. Although advocates of global democracy have contested such sceptical conclusions, they have tended to accept the method of reasoning from national to global contexts on which they are based. This article critiques this method of argument, showing that it is both highly idealised in its characterisation of national democratic practice, and overly state-centric in its assumptions about possible institutional forms that global democracy might take. We suggest that if aspiring global democrats – and their critics – are to derive useful lessons from social struggles to create and sustain democracy within nation states, a less idealised and institutionally prescriptive approach to drawing global lessons from national experience is required. We illustrate one possible such approach with reference to cases from both national and global levels, in which imperfect yet meaningful democratic practices have survived under highly inhospitable – and widely varying – conditions.

Community and radical democracy

Radical democracy encompasses a variety of thinkers who are concerned with theories of political renewal and the invigoration of the public sphere. Commentators such as Chantal Mouffe and William Connolly have sought to demonstrate the political and democratic implications of diversity and value pluralism. The conceptual tool that is frequently employed in these discourses of difference is community. Unlike mainstream theorizations of community that have emerged within contemporary third way thinking, radical democracy does not seek to manufacture consensus out of difference. Instead it argues that social diversity gives rise to incommensurable value pluralism, which in turn may generate conflict and dissent. Radical democracy implies an expansion of political debate as a means of grappling with a multiplicity of communities within society. Thus, whilst sharing some of the conceptual tools of the Third Way in contemporary social democracy, radical pluralism points to an opening out, rather than a closure, of political debate.

Stopping boats, saving lives, securing subjects : humanitarian borders in Europe and Australia

In April 2015, former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott called on European leaders to respond to the migration and refugee crisis in the Mediterranean by ‘stopping the boats’ in order to prevent further deaths. This suggestion resonated with the European Union Commission’s newly articulated commitment to both enhancing border security and saving lives. This article charts the increasing entanglement of securitisation and humanitarianism in the context of transnational border control and migration management. The analysis traces the global phenomenon of humanitarian border security alongside a series of spatial dislocations and temporal deferrals of ‘the border’ in both European and Australian contexts. While discourses of humanitarian borders operate according to a purportedly universal and therefore borderless logic of ‘saving lives’, the subjectivity of the ‘irregular’ migrant in need of rescue is one that is produced as spatially and temporally exceptional — the imperative is always to act in the here and the now — and therefore knowable, governable and ‘bordered’.

Democratic Melancholy: On the Sacrosanct Place of Democracy in Radical Democratic Theory

In recent years radical democracy has become a prominent perspective in contemporary political theory. However, radical democracy involves numerous theoretical arguments and interpretations of democracy as can be witnessed in the work of some theorists who have been influential on radical democratic politics such as William Connolly, Judith Butler and Wendy Brown. Although all of these theorists agree that there are serious problems in the dominant liberal conceptions of democracy, some of them seem reluctant to criticise the workings of democracy in favour of analysis of the limitations of liberalism. While radical democrats need to recognise these limitations, the article contends that the main elements of modern democracy such as popular sovereignty, voting, representation and the rule of law also need to be subjected to critical scrutiny. Otherwise the work of theorists such as Connolly, Butler and Brown tends to produce a melancholic lament for democracy lost which draws attention away from the idea of the ‘constitutive failure’ of democracy that animates some of the radical democratic canon of contemporary European theorists. In short, the article contends that radical democratic theorists need to recognise that democracy is not sacrosanct.

Multiculturalism and the Politics of Difference

One of the primary accusations levelled at the kind of universalism that underpins political liberalism is that it is ‘difference-blind’. This criticism takes many different forms but is often associated with feminists (Young 1990) and leftist communitarians (Taylor 1992).1 However, in recent years it has also been clear that many theorists within the liberal tradition like Kymlicka, Kukathas and Raz have also been concerned with the capacity of liberalism to provide the mechanisms that allow diverse societies to cohere, whilst still remaining true to such values as freedom, equality, toleration and diversity. More recently still, the debate over liberalism and social diversity has been clarified in the literature over the political implications of multiculturalism. The two key contributions to this debate have been the reworking of multicultural politics by Bhikhu Parekh (2000) and the refutation of these arguments from a universalist liberal perspective by Barry (2001). This chapter will examine the applicability of these theories to the political situation in Northern Ireland and assess the value of multiculturalism to the rethinking of democracy there.

MULTICULTURALISM, DIVERSITY AND LIBERAL EGALITARIANISM IN NORTHERN IRELAND

The problems of organising diverse, pluralistic societies have animated contemporary debates in liberal political philosophy. Within these debates it is widely accepted that the ‘fact of pluralism’ throws up considerable challenges for the ways in which we conceptualise freedom, equality and justice. This has generated a substantial body of work concerned with the limitations of liberal theory when it comes to cultural diversity and numerous responses which attempt to rearticulate traditional pluralist principles through the medium of the ‘politics of recognition’ or multiculturalism. It is unusual, then, that these debates have not been prominent in discussions over the political future of Northern Ireland but perhaps this reflects the tendency of political analysts to see it as a ‘place apart’. It is also apparent that Northern Ireland has been neglected in the theoretical literature when examples have been developed to demonstrate the implications of these theories for institutional design in contemporary politics. This article examines these theoretical perspectives and argues that the example of Northern Ireland shows up many of their limitations. At the same time it contends that democratic theory has much to offer contemporary debates in Northern Irish politics but that they are constrained within a traditional and somewhat orthodox liberal democratic paradigm. Part of the reason for the limited paradigm within which Northern Irish political debates tend to take place is the hegemony of the ‘two traditions’ model (Finlayson 2001; Little, 2003, 2004). According to this perspective the ‘problem’ in Northern Ireland lies in the existence of two separate ethno-national blocks which are (sometimes tenuously) related in a number of complicated ways to a deep religious and cultural schism.

Fear, hope and disappointment: Emotions in the politics of reconciliation and conflict transformation

The place of reconciliation in processes of conflict transformation is a deeply contested political issue. Reconciliation has played differing strategic roles in a variety of conflictual contexts. In some instances, such as Northern Ireland in the 1990s, the demands of reconciliation and the pursuit of truth seemed a step too far in the process of reducing political violence. In others, such as South Africa, it was a pivotal part of the transformative dynamic offering hope for a more unified post-apartheid settlement. Meanwhile in contemporary Australia, the idea of reconciliation continues to provide a rhetorical framing for the renegotiation of indigenous politics. This paper analyses these differing approaches to and uses of reconciliation and contends that they are underpinned by political narratives which invoke emotions of fear, hope and disappointment. This suggests that understanding these sentiments is fundamental to addressing the temporal challenges of the politics of reconciliation and the structural–agential dynamics of conflict transformation.