Economic Assistance and the Northern Ireland Conflict


Book Description

However, it is important to note that economic aid to promote a change in Northern Ireland's economic well-being is also tied into the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which has, at its center, a comprehensive range of new political power-sharing institutions."




Economic Assistance and Conflict Transformation


Book Description

This book examines the role of economic aid in the management and resolution of protracted ethnic conflicts, focusing on the case study of Northern Ireland. The book describes the results of a study of the role of economic aid within Northern Ireland, through the viewpoints of citizens collected in an opinion poll as well as community group leaders whose projects received funding, funding-agency civil servants and development officers. The study explains the importance of economic and social development in promoting cross-community contact as well as within single-identity communities, and the need for a multitrack intervention approach to transform the conflict in Northern Ireland. It makes an important contribution to our understanding of how economic assistance impacts on a divided society with a history of protracted violence and provides important perspectives on the "peace through development" idea. One of the key unanswered questions relating to economic aid and preventing future violence is that of the significance of external economic aid in building peace after violence. By examining the respondents’ political imagery, this book expands on existing work on economic aid and peace building in other societies coming out of violence. Northern Ireland’s changing social-economic and political context reflects the fact that economic aid and sustainable economic development is a cornerstone of the peacebuilding process. The goal of the book is to provide a foundational knowledge base for students and practitioners about the role of economic aid in building the peace dividend in post-accord societies. The book will be of great interest to students of conflict resolution, peacebuilding, Irish politics, peace and conflict studies, and politics and IR in general.




Civil Society, Peacebuilding, and Economic Assistance in Northern Ireland


Book Description

This book examines the role of local peacebuilders in Northern Ireland and some of the challenges they face. The work explores the perspective and experiences of local peacebuilders in Northern Ireland and the border counties of the Republic of Ireland about their analysis and critique of liberal peacebuilding, their hopes, and concerns, and how they are aligned with external funders. It features interviews with a plethora of civil society organization workers, funding agency community development officers, and civil servants adjudicating the International Fund for Ireland and the European Union Peace and Rconciliation Fund, which highlight the participants’ local wisdom, practices, and values regarding creating sustainable livelihoods, peacebuilding insights, receiving recognition for their work, dissonance with internal and external actors, conflict transformation efforts, and and engagement with partners and allies. The rich empirical qualitative exploratory case study, situated in post-peace accord Northern Ireland and the border counties of the Republic of Ireland, speaks to the respondents’ ideas about the creation, delivery, and efficacy of peacebuilding-funded initiatives as well as their hopes and dreams for the future. In exploring this central argument, the work offers an overarching structure in which to analyze the theory and praxis of conflict and peacebuilding in Northern Ireland. More generally, it offers an important contribution to our understanding of local peacebuilders, and how economic assistance impacts on a divided society. This book will be of much interest to students of peacebuilding, conflict resolution, sociology, and British and Irish politics.




Northern Ireland


Book Description

Since the plantation of Ulster in the 17th century, Northern Irish people have been engaged in conflict - Catholic against Protestant, Republican against Unionist. This text explores the pivotal moments in this history.




Transforming conflict through social and economic development


Book Description

Transforming conflict through social and economic development examines lessons learned from the Northern Ireland and Border Counties conflict transformation process through social and economic development and their consequent impacts and implications for practice and policymaking, with a range of functional recommendations produced for other regions emerging from and seeking to transform violent conflict. It provides, for the first time, a comprehensive assessment of the region’s transformation activity, largely amongst grassroots actors, enabled by a number of specific funding programmes, namely the International Fund for Ireland, Peace I, II and III and INTERREG I, II and IIIA. These programmes have been responsible for a huge increase in grassroots practice which to date has attracted virtually no academic analysis; this book seeks to fill this gap. In focusing on the politics of the socioeconomic activities that underpinned the elite negotiations of the peace process, key theoretical transformation concepts are firstly explored, followed by an examination of the social and economic context of Northern Ireland and the border counties. The three programmes and their impacts are then assessed before considering what policy lessons can be learned and what recommendations can be made for practice. This is underpinned by a range of semi-structured interviews and the author’s own experience as a project promoter through these programmes in the border counties for more than a decade. The book will be essential reading for students, practitioners and policymakers in the fields of peace and conflict studies, conflict transformation, peacebuilding, post-agreement reconstruction and the political economy of conflict and those interested in contemporary developments in the Northern Ireland peace process.




Unionists, Loyalists, and Conflict Transformation in Northern Ireland


Book Description

Lee Smithey examines how symbolic cultural expressions in Northern Ireland, such as parades, bonfires, murals, and commemorations, provide opportunities for Protestant unionists and loyalists to reconstruct their collective identities and participate in conflict transformation.




The Troubles in Northern Ireland and theories of social movements


Book Description

This volume seeks to move beyond structure and agency perspectives by suggesting that social movement theories are best suited to foster a perspective that entails 1) an actor-based approach to the Troubles; and 2) the contextualization of contentious politics, or how the contingent and ever-evolving political contexts/opportunities/threats shaped the trajectory of the Troubles. Recent social movement scholarship has proved to be particularly useful in situating the emergence, continuation, and demise of political violence within a larger context of multiple conflicts, in which radical contention is only one possible outcome. Social movement theories also avoid the essentialization of political groups as 'radical' or 'violent'; instead, they place all political actors participating to contention, from paramilitaries to state authorities, within their complex organizational fields, emphasizing their shifting strategies as they interact with each other and adapt to the political context.




Lessons from the Northern Ireland Peace Process


Book Description

This book incorporates recent research that emphasizes the need for civil society and a grassroots approach to peacebuilding while taking into account a variety of perspectives, including neoconservatism and revolutionary analysis. The contributions, which include the reflections of those involved in the negotiation and implementation of the Good Friday Agreement, also provide policy prescriptions for modern conflicts.




Peacekeeping and Conflict Resolution


Book Description

Conflict resolution theory has become relevant to the various challenges faced by the United Nations peacekeeping forces as efforts are made to learn from the traumatic and devastating impact of the many civil wars that have erupted in the 1990s. This work analyzes the theory.




Handbook of Conflict Analysis and Resolution


Book Description

This major Handbook comprises cutting-edge essays from leading scholars in the field of Conflict Analysis and Resolution (CAR). The volume provides a comprehensive overview of the core concepts, theories, approaches, processes, and intervention designs in the field. The central theme is the value of multidisciplinary approaches to the analysis and




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