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ABSTRACT
There are contrasting interpretations of the Northern Ireland peace process which have competing implications for the lessons to be drawn from the conflict. This article offers a Constructivist Realist critique of three leading perspectives on the peace process: Neoconservative, Cosmopolitan and Conservative Realists (or Consociationalists). The Neoconservative perspective emphasises the importance of security policy in defeating terrorists before negotiations. By contrast, Cosmopolitans and Conservative Realists emphasise the importance of constitutions and tend to ignore security. Constructivist Realists argue that all three accounts are over-generalised, provide inadequate understandings of politics and, therefore, the relative success of the peace process.
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No potential conflict was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. Ross and Makovsky, Myths, Illusions and Peace, use similar categories on the Middle East.
2. Bew et al, Talking to Terrorists.
3. Wilson, Northern Ireland Experience; Dodge, Iraq.
4. O’Leary, “The Nature of the British-Irish Agreement”.
5. Vaisse, Neoconservatism, 278–79.
6. Drolet, American Neoconservatism, 7, 11.
7. Hess, Vietnam; and Dumbrell, Rethinking the Vietnam War.
8. Gelb, The Irony of Vietnam, 2.
9. Hazelton, “The ‘Hearts and Minds’ Fallacy”.
10. Gat and Merom, “Why Counterinsurgency Fails,” 130–31, 137, 149.
11. See note 7 above.
12. Dixon, “Guns First, Talks Later”.
13. Gove, The Price of Peace; Godson, Himself Alone.
14. See note 12 above.
15. Gove, The Price of Peace, 4.
16. Gove, The Price of Peace, 5.
17. Gove, The Price of Peace, 5, 9.
18. Gove, The Price of Peace, 12–14, 55)
19. Gove, The Price of Peace, 56.
20. Dixon, Northern Ireland, 220, 174–80; and Seldon, John Major.
21. Gove, Celsius 7/7, 46–7.
22. Bew et al, Talking to Terrorists, 247, 110; and Dixon, “Guns First,” 662; confusingly Frampton was also arguing in 2009 that the IRA had not been defeated, Frampton, The Long March, 36.
23. See note 2 above.
24. Drolet, American Neoconservatism; Vaisse, Neoconservatism.
25. Dixon, “Guns First”; Dixon, “Was the IRA defeated?”.
26. Ibid.
27. Godson, Himself Alone, 397, 398, 517–8; Dixon, Performing, Chapter 8.
28. Powell, Great Hatred, 192–93.
29. Dixon, “Guns First”; Dixon, “Was the IRA defeated?”
30. Kaldor, New Wars; Shaw, New Western Way of Warfare.
31. Dixon, “Endless Wars”.
32. Dixon, “Paths to Peace”.
33. Wilson, The Northern Ireland Experience.
34. Kaldor, New Wars; Irwin, The People’s Peace Process.
35. Pollak, A Citizen’s Inquiry, 27.
36. Kaldor, New Wars, 151; Wilson, The Northern Ireland Experience, 196–97.
37. Dixon, “Paths to Peace,” 9–11.
38. Boyle and Hadden, Northern Ireland, 65.
39. Wilson, “From Consociationalism to Interculturalism,” 228.
40. Darby and MacGinty, “Conclusion,” 268.
41. Wilson, Northern Ireland Experience, 171.
42. Wilson, The Northern Ireland Experience; Wilson, “Blair’s Flawed Approach”; Wilson, “The left should think”.
43. Cox et al, “The Cost of Doing Nothing”; Wilson, The Northern Ireland Experience, 156. For a critique see Dixon “Endless Wars of Altruism”.
44. Wilson, The Northern Ireland Experience, 141, 142, 156.
45. Ibid., 157–8.
46. Curtice and Dowds, “Has Northern Ireland Really Changed?”; and Dixon, Performing the Northern Ireland Peace Process, 170–79.
47. Boyle and Hadden, Northern Ireland, 240.
48. Wilson, The Northern Ireland Experience, 153–4.
49. Dixon, Performing, 50.
50. Irwin, People’s Peace Process, 115; Curtice and Dowds, “Has Northern Ireland Really Changed?”.
51. Godson, Himself Alone, 517–18, 542, 580–81, 593; Dixon, Performing the Northern Ireland Peace Process, Chapter 8.
52. Lustick, “Lijphart, Lakatos and Consociationalism”.
53. Dixon, “Power-sharing”.
54. Bogaards et al, “The Importance of Consociationalism”.
55. Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies.
56. Lijphart, “Cultural Diversity,” 11.
57. McGarry and O’Leary, Explaining Northern Ireland, 338.
58. Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies, 238.
59. Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies, 53; and Lijphart, “Consociational Democracy,” 216.
60. Barry, “The Consociational Model”.
61. McGarry and O’Leary, Explaining Northern Ireland, 338.
62. O”Leary, “The British-Irish Agreement”.
63. The Good Friday Agreement, 18, para. 13.
64. McGarry and O’Leary, Consociational Engagements, 348.
65. Bogaards et al, “The Importance of Consociationalism,” 5.
66. Mowlam, Momentum, 231.
67. Blair, A Journey, 190; Powell, Great Hatred, 3; Dixon, “What Politicians Can Teach Academics,” 76–77.
68. Carr, The Twenty Years Crisis, 12. See Sleat, Politics Recovered for a useful overview of the revival of realism and Walt, The Hell of Good Intentions for a realist critique of Neoconservatism and Cosmopolitanism.
69. Barkin, Realist Constructivism.
70. Hay, Political Analysis.
71. Horowitz, “Constitutional Design”.
72. Brubaker, “Myths and misconceptions”.
73. Hay, Political Analysis, 35.
74. Hay, Political Analysis, 35.
75. Harris and Reilly, Democracy and Deep-Rooted Conflict, 2, 3.
76. Dixon, Northern Ireland, emphasises the politics of the conflict.
77. Coady, Messy Morality.
78. Hansard vol. 324, col. 335, 27 January 1999.
79. Reus-Smit, “Constructivism,” 54.
80. Coady, Messy Morality, 45.
81. Dixon, Performing.
82. Sinn Féin, Setting the Record Straight, 41; Powell, Great Hatred; and Godson, Himself Alone.
83. Belfast Telegraph 14 October 1997.
84. Dixon, Performing, Chapter 6.
85. Dixon, Performing, 283–88.
86. Irish Times 13 July 2006.
87. See note 52 above.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Paul Dixon
Professor Paul Dixon is Honorary Research Fellow at Birkbeck College, University of London. He has taught at the universities of Bedfordshire, Leeds, Ulster and Kingston. He is author of: The Authoritarian Temptation: The Iraq and Afghan Wars and the Militarisation of British Democracy (Policy Press 2021); Warrior Nation: The Iraq and Afghan Wars and the Militarisation of British Democracy (Forceswatch 2018) and editor of The British Approach to Counterinsurgency: From Malaya and Northern Ireland to Iraq and Afghanistan (Palgrave 2012). He has published critiques of the British military’s role in Afghanistan for Capital and Class and Parliamentary Affairs. Dixon has also written extensively about the Northern Ireland conflict, Northern Ireland: The Politics of War and Peace (2nd edition 2008) and Performing the Northern Ireland Peace Process (2018).