Ethnic Conflict and Its Resolution: the New Northern Ireland Model

ETHNIC CONFLICT AND ITS RESOLUTION: THE NEW NORTHERN IRELAND MODEL The agreement reached between the British and Irish governments and the Northern Irish political parties in April 1998 was a complex and subtle political document that built on experience in other societies and that itself has some capacity to serve as a model for others. This paper begins by examining the nature of the problem that the new settlement is designed to resolve, commenting briefly on the extent to which it shares common features with other cases of ethnic conflict. It proceeds by describing the contours of the process by which a successful accommodation was arrived at, and concludes with an analysis of the central features of the settlement. In addition to their three-part constitutional core, these included wide-ranging compromises in the areas of equality and citizenship, rights, reform of policing and of the criminal justice system, prisoner release, and demilitarisation and decommissioning of paramilitary weapons. Publication information Revised version of a paper presented at the Colloquium of the Research Committee on Politics and Ethnicity of the International Political Science Association, Patiala, India, 6-8 January 2000. The author is indebted to participants at the colloquium and to Joseph Ruane for comments on an earlier draft. BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION John Coakley is lecturer in politics at University College Dublin and director of the Institute for British-Irish Studies, and former secretary general of the International Political Science Association (1994-2000). His publications include The social origins of nationalist movements (editor, Sage, 1992); The territorial management of ethnic conflict (editor, Frank Cass, 1993); and Politics in the Republic of Ireland (coeditor, 3rd ed., Routledge, 1999). ETHNIC CONFLICT AND ITS RESOLUTION: THE NEW NORTHERN IRELAND MODEL