Cathal McCall

Hanging Flower Baskets, Blowing in the Wind? Third-Sector Groups, Cross-Border Partnerships, and the EU Peace Programs in Ireland

The EUs Peace Programs in Ireland have promoted the cross-border activity of Third sector (voluntary and community) groups. Potentially, such activity gives substantive meaning to regional cross-border governance and helps to ameliorate ethno-national conflict by providing positive sum outcomes for “post-conflict” communities. The paper mobilizes focused research conducted by the authors to explore this potential. It finds that while regional cross-border governance has indeed developed under the Peace Programs, the sustainability of the social partnerships underpinning this governance is uncertain and its significance for conflict resolution is qualified by difficulties experienced in forming a stable power-sharing arrangement at the political-elite level.

Governance and Democracy in Northern Ireland: The Role of the Voluntary and Community Sector after the Agreement

Since 1998, Northern Ireland has been the subject of a unique experiment in governance and democracy. The experiment includes the establishment of a participatory Civic Forum in which the voluntary and community sector has an important stake. Beginning with a discussion of the merits of a participatory aspect to democracy in the contemporary age, this paper identifies factors that might help establish the Civic Forum as a successful participatory institution in Northern Ireland. Key factors include the attitude towards the Forum of political representatives and their willingness to foster a participatory dimension to the new democracy. Other important factors are inclusiveness and the balance of sectoral representation in the Forum.

‘Escaping the Cage of Ethno-National Conflict in Northern Ireland: The Importance of Transnational Networks

Abstract The paper uses research on the EU Special Programme for Peace and Reconciliation in Northern Ireland and the Border Counties of the Republic of Ireland (Peace II) to interrogate the relationship between inter-nationalization, transnationalism and the amelioration of a deeply territorialized ethno-national conflict. It concludes that inter-national cooperation and territorial containment strategies risk enhancing zero-sum territorial politics without more coherent articulation of strategies for building transnational networks of cooperation and conflict resolution.

Political Transformation and the Reinvention of the Ulster-Scots Identity and Culture

In the 1990s, Ulster-Scots language and culture was mobilized by some Ulster unionists in Northern Ireland as a badge of their cultural identity. The Ulster-Scots language and culture had its eighteenth century, premodern heyday in the north-eastern counties of the north of Ireland where it expressed distinctiveness from English and Englishness. However, in common with many regional dialects elsewhere in Europe, the processes of modernization signalled the demise of Ulster-Scots. The contemporary reinvention of an Ulster-Scots identity was precipitated by the 1990s political transformation of Northern Ireland. This reinvention has multiple manifestations. It is, variously, a myth of origin, a language and culture, a communal consciousness, a reaction against Irish nationalist cultural assertiveness in Northern Ireland, an embryonic nationalism, and a component part of the British identity. Ultimately, the reinvention of the Ulster-Scots cultural narrative appears designed to offset advances made by Irish nationalists in the assertion of their culture in Northern Ireland. Ulster-Scots has also been reinvented in an attempt to provide the Ulster unionist identity with the cultural booster required to deliver security and continuity to an identity experiencing chronic insecurity and doubt during a period of political transformation. However, the ability of Ulster-Scots to deliver on these aims is questionable.

Culture and the Irish Border: Spaces for Conflict Transformation

The Irish border (between Northern Ireland – the ‘North’ and the Republic of Ireland – the ‘South’) has been described as a ‘natural’ cultural divide between the island’s two dominant indigenous ethno-national communities. However, an examination of key resources of ethno-national group culture – religion, sport and language – provides evidence to challenge this representation. Moreover, in the post-1994 period of conflict transformation, evidence is also presented to support the proposition that the Irish border region has developed into a cultural space in which Irish nationalist and Ulster unionist ethno-national communities can explore cultural differences and commonalities through cross-border, cross-community contact and communication in small group encounters. This space underpins the reconfiguration of the border from barrier to political bridge between North and South. European Union (EU) Peace programmes for Ireland, beginning in 1995, provided the support for a cross-border approach to escaping the cage of ethno-national conflict in Northern Ireland. However, post-2004 EU enlargement signalled the beginning of the end for EU Peace funding, and severe economic recession has undermined the expectation of British–Irish intergovernmental intervention to support cross-border partnerships and their work. Therefore, the outlook for the sustainability of this cross-border cultural space is gloomy, with potentially deleterious consequences for the continued reconfiguration of the border from barrier to bridge.

The Production of Space and the Realignment of Identity in Northern Ireland

Communal identities in Northern Ireland have been subject to a rapidly expanding political space over the past two decades. This expansion is in marked contrast to the failure of successive attempts in 1921 and 1974 to establish a durable North/South space with an institutional infrastructure. The Government of Ireland Act (1920), which created ‘Northern Ireland’ and ‘Southern Ireland’ as two new and separate regional entities, also provided for a transterritorial Council of Ireland for the purpose of promoting co-operation between the two entities on matters of mutual interest. However, the divergent political aspirations of Irish nationalists and Ulster unionists served to render the Council of Ireland inoperable. Consequently, the British, Irish and Northern Ireland governments agreed to transfer the powers of the Council to the parliament and government of Northern Ireland in 1926 with the proviso that matters of common interest be dealt with through ad hoc intergovernmental contact (Hennessey, 1997: 9–10, 39; Tannam, 1999: 39–44). Divergent aspirations for identity and state building, coupled with the sense of threat experienced by Ulster unionists, served to close down thoughts of cooperation for decades and Northern Ireland settled into fifty years of Ulster unionist hegemonic rule. The unionist hegemony was ended in 1972 when a prolonged period of civil unrest resulted in the imposition of ‘temporary’ direct rule by the United Kingdom (UK) central administration. However, the 1973 Sunningdale Agreement foundered on its attempts at creating an internal power-sharing Northern Ireland Executive involving Ulster unionist and Irish nationalist representatives, and an North/South transterritorial space under the auspices of a revived Council of Ireland. This transterritorial institution was to have its own Council of Ministers, drawn from members

Brexit, Bordering and Bodies on the Island of Ireland

Abstract The Brexit campaign to withdraw the United Kingdom from the European Union (EU) was driven primarily by opposition to immigration and the freedom of movement of EU workers to Britain. Consequently, a central focus of Brexit was the perceived need for bordering, that is, the strengthening of Britain’s borders as security barriers to prevent the movement of these unwanted outsiders to Britain. Such bordering has the potential to turn the tide against decades of debordering on the island of Ireland that was delivered by Europeanisation, the North South provisions of the Good Friday Agreement and a wealth of cross-border cooperation initiatives. From an open Irish border vantage point, this paper explores three Brexit bordering options: bordering the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland; bordering Britain and bordering the isles of Britain and Ireland. The argument is that the least costly one is to confine Brexit bordering to the island of Great Britain.

Secondary foreign policy activities in Third sector cross-border cooperation as conflict transformation in the European Union: The cases of the Basque and Irish borderscapes

ABSTRACT This paper provides a comparative examination of Third (non-public, non-profit) sector cross-border cooperation contributing to conflict transformation in the Basque (France/Spain) and Irish (UK/Ireland) borderscapes. The comparison is based on the premise that the European Union (EU) played a different role in both cases. In the Irish case, the EU contributed to the institutionalization of a peace process that included cross-border cooperation between Third sector organizations among its policy instruments contributing to conflict transformation. In the Basque case, the unilateral renunciation of violence by ETA (Euskadi eta Askatasuna) in 2010 did not generate the consistent involvement of the EU in an institutional peace process. However, some Third sector organizations became secondary foreign policy actors using EU instruments for cross-border economic, social, and cultural cooperation between France and Spain in order to reinforce their cross-border networks, which indirectly impacted on conflict transformation.

Divided Nations and European Integration

Creating new state borders or extinguishing existing ones has rarely occurred without heads being blown off.1 The “Founding Fathers” of the European integration project had an acute understanding o...

Europeanisation and Hibernicisation

Scholars across the humanities and social sciences are increasingly examining the importance of European integration and Europeanisation to changing notions of local, regional, national and supranational identity in Europe. As part of this interest, anthropologists, historians, sociologists, political scientists and others have paid particular attention to the roles which EU policies and initiatives have played in the construction of local, regional and national identity in Europe, and in the reframing of various forms of culture. This volume provides the first multidisciplinary look at the impact of European integration and Europeanisation on changing culture and identity in one member state of the EU, namely Ireland (including the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland), and the first such look at the ways in which the cultures and identities of a member state have had an impact on various versions of ‘Europe’, in and outside of the EU.