Are National Conflicts Reconcilable? Discourse Theory and Political Accommodation in Northern Ireland

Questions of identity and difference appear to be ubiquitous in the landscape of contemporary political theory. Debates among egalitarian liberals, libertarians, socialists, and Marxists about the appropriate distributive arrangements in modern societies have, for better or worse, been overshadowed of late by the challenge of a politics of identity.1 The impulse for this form of politics has been articulated in theories that are inspired by communitarian, feminist, and poststructuralist concerns and the shift of emphasis from conflicts of material interest to conflicts of identity has brought the issue of incommensurability to center-stage in current debates. Is there any shared standard that might allow us to achieve political reconciliation among social groups whose identities appear to conflict? Is rational progress possible in regulating such conflicts or are we faced with competing and irreconcilable rationalities? Is communal ‘war’ of some form inevitable or can differences be sorted out through reasoned agreement? These issues are clearly urgent in contemporary politics at a global level and they continue to demand urgent attention at national level. Conflicts of national identity typically call into question the legitimacy of the state, the justice of its key institutions and the inclusiveness of the ethos in which those institutions are embedded. When the state and its territorial boundaries, or the fit between citizenship and national identity, are at stake the threat of incommensurability looms large. I want to address pertinent theoretical issues with reference to one of the most intractable national conflicts of the recent past: the dispute about the constitutional status of Northern Ireland. I will first clarify the issues at stake by classifying into two teams those contemporary theorists who address such matters. My argument is that if theory is to have a critical role in the analysis of such conflicts then it should be used to indicate how political reconciliation might be achieved in a manner that is fair to all. One theoretical source for such a form of analysis can be found in the discourse theory of democracy defended by Jürgen Habermas, particularly when the institutional dimensions of this approach are given their due. Having outlined briefly some apposite features of the discourse theoretical approach, I will indicate how this theoretical framework might be put to use in analyzing the national conflict in Northern Ireland and the ongoing attempts to