Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: The Contradictions of Peace, International Architecture, the State, and Local Agency
- 1 Lockout: Peace Formation in Northern Ireland
- 2 Bosnia–Herzegovina: Domestic Agency and the Inadequacy of the Liberal Peace
- 3 Peace Multitudes: Liberal Peace, Local Agency and Peace Formation in Kosovo
- 4 Engendering the Post-Liberal Peace in Cyprus: UNSC Resolution 1325 as a Tool
- 5 Peace Formation versus Everyday State Formation in Palestine
- 6 Afghanistan's Post-Liberal Peace: between External Intervention and Local Efforts
- 7 International Interventions and Local Agency in Peacebuilding in Sierra Leone
- 8 Local Spaces for Peace in Cambodia?
- 9 Timor-Leste: Building on Local Governance Structures: Embedding United Nations Peace Efforts from Within
- 10 Incompatibility, Substitution or Complementarity? Interrogating Relationships between International, State and Non-State Peace Agents in Post-Conflict Solomon Islands
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - Lockout: Peace Formation in Northern Ireland
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2016
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: The Contradictions of Peace, International Architecture, the State, and Local Agency
- 1 Lockout: Peace Formation in Northern Ireland
- 2 Bosnia–Herzegovina: Domestic Agency and the Inadequacy of the Liberal Peace
- 3 Peace Multitudes: Liberal Peace, Local Agency and Peace Formation in Kosovo
- 4 Engendering the Post-Liberal Peace in Cyprus: UNSC Resolution 1325 as a Tool
- 5 Peace Formation versus Everyday State Formation in Palestine
- 6 Afghanistan's Post-Liberal Peace: between External Intervention and Local Efforts
- 7 International Interventions and Local Agency in Peacebuilding in Sierra Leone
- 8 Local Spaces for Peace in Cambodia?
- 9 Timor-Leste: Building on Local Governance Structures: Embedding United Nations Peace Efforts from Within
- 10 Incompatibility, Substitution or Complementarity? Interrogating Relationships between International, State and Non-State Peace Agents in Post-Conflict Solomon Islands
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
formation / fɔːˈmeɪʃ(ə)n/ n. formation; pl. formations 1. the action of forming or process of being formed. 2. a thing that has been formed.
Introduction
On Good Friday 1998 most of the main parties to Northern Ireland's violent conflict reached a major peace agreement. The accord involved significant constitutional, administrative and security reforms. In addition to a power-sharing devolved Assembly for Northern Ireland and many other provisions, the Good Friday Agreement also provided for the establishment of a Civic Forum:
A consultative Civic Forum will be established. It will comprise representatives of the business, trade union and voluntary sectors, and such other sectors as agreed by the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister. It will act as a consultative mechanism on social, economic and cultural issues. The First Minister and the Deputy First Minister will by agreement provide administrative support for the Civic Forum and establish guidelines for the selection of representatives to the Civic Forum.
The Civic Forum met twelve times in 2000–02 but was not invited to meet again after a collapse of the devolved institutions. It was conveniently forgotten about and kicked into the long grass. In any event, it was largely made up of appointees of the main political parties. The story (or non story) of the Civic Forum is indicative of a wider issue found in many peace processes: the locking out of citizenry from the political process. In many cases, this process of locking out occurs simultaneously with an elite political narrative that refers to popular input and the public endorsement of any peace accord. Crucially, and in some very rare cases, citizens have realised that they have been effectively locked out of political and peace processes and seek ways of being heard and shaping an evolving political dispensation.
Using Northern Ireland as an example, this chapter seeks to unpack the tensions between formal processes of peacemaking and peace consolidation conducted by governments, political parties and much of civil society, and processes of peace formation that connected more readily with popular mood, needs and aspirations. What emerges is a story of several peace processes that were able to overlap at times but often did not. The unpacking of the Northern Ireland peace process is informed by a power analysis or a concern to ask the question: where did power lie?
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- Post-Liberal Peace TransitionsBetween Peace Formation and State Formation, pp. 27 - 46Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2016