The international significance of the Northern Ireland peace process: Revisiting the lessons 25 years after the Good Friday Agreement

Abstract

This article revisits scholarly, political, and practitioner debates surrounding the international implications of the Northern Ireland peace process: the so-called lessons. It begins by reviewing the literature on the epistemological and political dimensions of comparing conflicts. It identifies three different approaches to learning from peace processes. These are termed analytical-technical, political-strategic, and educative-psychological. The article applies this framework to Northern Ireland, assessing the conduct, potential, and challenges of each approach. The analysis draws on academic and political sources, as well as unique primary research on ‘lesson-sharing’ dialogues. The article discusses how the educative-psychological approach – which has been the dominant mode of lesson learning/sharing in Northern Ireland and is under-researched – demonstrates the potential for local-to-local connections to support ongoing learning within peace processes. Applying the threefold framework to other peace arenas can further advance understanding of the global dissemination of conflict resolution knowledge.

Keywords

lessons Northern Ireland peace processes

The international significance of the Northern Ireland peace process has been the topic of extensive discussion at home and abroad since the 1998 ‘Good Friday’ or ‘Belfast’ Agreement (inter alia, Bew et al., 2009; London School of Economics (LSE) IDEAS, 2011; Mac Ginty, 2019; O’Kane, 2010; White, 2013; Wilson, 2010). The ‘lessons’¹ debates have been multi-faceted, both politicised and practical, comparative, and historical. Perhaps inevitably, given the contestation and flux of the peace process, it remains an open question as to what international observers should draw from the Northern Ireland experience. Yet equally important as the lessons are how and why different constituencies have sought to learn them.

The topic is of general relevance. The assumption that real-world developments in peace and conflict can and should shape both knowledge and practice is axiomatic in the fields of peace studies and international relations. A seminal occurrence such as the signing of a peace agreement becomes the subject of learning for a range of interested parties in disparate contexts, especially scholars, politicians, and peace practitioners. The question of how this learning occurs lacks focussed research. As an advanced and extensively analysed peace process, Northern Ireland offers a rich case study in which to study the derivation and dissemination of peace and conflict knowledge. This can assist scholarly understanding of the theoretical implications of a peace process, as well as how and why various peace/conflict actors seek insight from a peace process case. Clarifying the modes of peace process learning can also help practitioners and policy makers to grasp both the potential and limitations of lesson-drawing from other cases.

This article develops and applies a framework constituting three broad approaches to drawing lessons in peacemaking. This is based on an exploration of the epistemological and political dimensions of comparing conflicts. The approaches are termed analytical-technical, political-strategic, and educative-psychological. The article demonstrates and assesses the approaches in the 25-year-long Northern Ireland lesson-sharing endeavour. It shows how academic discussions of the Northern Ireland lessons debate have focussed overwhelmingly on the first two approaches, yet the actual practice of sharing the Northern Ireland experience predominantly represents the educative-psychological approach, using dialogical methods and guided by a constructivist epistemology aimed a catalysing cognitive change in ‘learners’. This approach is under-researched but demonstrates the potential for local-to-local connections to support ongoing learning within peace processes. Applying the threefold framework to other peace arenas can further advance understanding of the global dissemination of conflict resolution knowledge.

‘Lessons’ in peacemaking: Three approaches

Three approaches to learning from peacemaking cases are evident: analytical-technical, political-strategic, and educative-psychological. Each entails particular rationales and methods. This framework is based on analysis of the peace and conflict literature on comparative conflict/peace learning. The approaches to a large extent coincide with the different types of actor most likely to pursue them: scholars, politicians, and conflict resolution practitioners respectively. However, the aim here is to show that they are not limited to the occupation of those who derive and share such learning but are rather defined by the style of the lessons and purpose of the learning. The approaches are ideal types and many individual efforts to learn straddle the approaches.

First, the analytical-technical approach attempts to use a peace process case to enhance understanding of peacemaking processes and perhaps produce practice-relevant knowledge. This approach is primarily evident in academic peace and conflict research. Peace research as it emerged in the 1950s was defined by being both scholarly and practice-oriented, both analytical and normative (Ramsbotham et al., 2016: 5). Accordingly, the peace and conflict literature comprises countless individual and comparative studies of peace processes, as well as assessments of the operation of conflict resolution techniques such as third-party intervention, transitional justice mechanisms, or power-sharing. However, despite the prevalence of the phrase ‘lessons from’ in the titles of journal articles and reports, the exportability of conclusions is often unclear (Mitchell, 2021a). As is true of the case study method generally (Gerring, 2004), research studies of conflict resolution mechanisms may suggest implications for other cases, or rather engage in ‘process-tracing’ to draw more restricted, within-case judgements (Ulriksen and Dadalauri, 2016). While conflicts exhibit patterns and face common challenges, peacemaking theories and prescriptions that are proposed are often tentative, accompanied by the caveat that context is all-important. The analytical-technical approach confronts the dual reality that, ‘Each peace process must find its own path but may be influenced by other processes and engage in selective lending and borrowing’ (Özerdem and Mac Ginty, 2019: 2).

The political-strategic approach draws political/policy direction for conflict/peace actors elsewhere. It is pursued by policy makers and expressed in political discourse. Invoking what has occurred in supposedly analogous cases is a common and compelling device of politicians (Charbonneau and Sandor, 2019). This is due to ‘analogical reasoning’ in human decision-making, that is, the intuition that when ‘there are substantial parallels across different situations, there are likely to be further parallels’ (Gentner, 2003: 106). Other cases offer real-world, justifying evidence for political actors’ preferred courses of action. Accordingly, the discourses surrounding many protracted conflicts are filled with analogies and comparisons. For example, Israelis liken the threats they face to Nazism and fear another Holocaust, while Palestinians regard the Israeli occupation and settlement of Palestine as apartheid (Peteet, 2016; Turner, 2019). Such parallels inform the parties’ approaches to peacemaking.

International actors also use analogical rhetoric to ‘justify intervention and translate complexity into familiar solutions and programmes’ (Charbonneau and Sandor, 2019: 438). For actors promoting or managing a peace process, comparison with more advanced processes can legitimise fledgeling political institutions and provide a framework for people to understand the changes being pursued (Guelke, 2006). Rhetorical peace/conflict lessons are inevitable, and neither inherently positive nor negative. However, since peace/conflict analogies can have real effects through shaping opinion, Turner (2019: 493) argues that it is important to study ‘how societal power relations are either reinforced or challenged by their use, and whether domination or emancipation is the desired object and outcome of their application’.

A third approach to peace process learning may be termed educative-psychological and is practised by third parties such as conflict resolution non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and academics. The aim is to, through facilitating an encounter with a peace process, elicit a cognitive and attitudinal shift in individuals, and eventually, conflict parties, that can contribute to conflict de-escalation and transformation. The value of comparison in peace practice is noted by some scholars. For instance, Azar (1990) recommends it as a stimulant of dialogue and creativity within ‘Track Two’ workshops, informal, facilitated discussions between conflict parties. Zartman (2022: 35) suggests that ‘encouraging comparisons with (and differences from) other conflicts’ may be an effective way for mediators to promote the perception of ‘ripeness’ in conflict, that is, the belief that conflict protagonists are at a stalemate and that a peaceful way out exists. However, the exemplar of this approach is what Mitchell (2021b) calls ‘comparative consultation’, an intervention which uses the exploration of a comparison case, usually including travel to the location, as its central method. Facilitated by a third-party, conflict/peace actors take part in dialogues with interlocutors who convey their experiences in conflict and peacemaking (see also Dilek, 2021). Kim (2022) studied similar dialogues and exchanges between civil society actors in two conflict-affected societies (Ireland and Korea), arguing that learning about another conflict through such direct interactions can be a source of mutual solidarity and ‘reciprocal empowerment’ (Darlington and Mulvaney, 2003).

The educative-psychological approach differs from the previous two in both methods and goals. Pedagogically, the approach is dialogical, experiential, and constructivist. Learning emerges from the interaction of the participants’ knowledge and experience with the interlocutors and the context (Mitchell, 2021a). In terms of goals, rather than offer concrete policy or political direction, the educative-psychological approach aims to open participants to the possibilities of transforming their own conflicts by provoking inspiration, developing skills, and stimulating new perspectives. The educative-psychological approach is in the social-psychological tradition of Track Two diplomacy which seeks to influence the thinking of small groups of perhaps second-level and/or future leaders in the expectation that the influence will ‘transfer’ to the Track One, official realm. The goals, then, are profound but somewhat diffuse and long-term, and difficult to evaluate (see Jones, 2015).

Having described the assumptions and aims of the three approaches, the next section turns to the case of Northern Ireland. How have the three types of peace process learning manifested themselves in the multifaceted, generation-long efforts to derive international implications from the region’s experience? The section begins by briefly describing the background to the conflict and peace process.

The lessons of Northern Ireland

Conflict in Ireland originates in the British state’s uneven success in extending control over the island. These attempts included settler-colonialism in the 1600s, which contributed to sharp and enduring political and religious differences, especially between the pro-British and Protestant north-east, and the Roman Catholic and Irish nationalist south and west (Ruane and Todd, 1996). In the late 20th century, ‘the Troubles’ (roughly 1969–1998), in which Irish militants fought to remove British rule from Northern Ireland, followed the pattern of a ‘protracted social conflict’ (Azar, 1990). This variety of conflict was found in numerous post-colonial contexts. In Azar’s model, a society dominated by one identity group denies the physical and identity needs of another group or groups. This leads to protest followed by inadequate accommodation by the state. A self-perpetuating spiral of hostility begins in which identities become increasingly polarised and embittered and political and economic dysfunction deepen. Such conflicts have multiple dimensions – political, religious, economic, psychological – as well as internal and transnational elements.

A peace process emerged in the 1990s, driven by the British and Irish governments – which perceived a common interest in ending violence – and supported diplomatically and financially by the United States and European Union (EU). The culmination was the 1998 Agreement. This accord provided for a power-sharing regional government and conflict-addressing measures such as police reform and paramilitary prisoner releases. It also called for paramilitary weapons decommissioning and state demilitarisation (Cochrane, 2021). This Agreement was heralded internationally – including by the Nobel Peace Prize Committee – although power-sharing was episodic and often unstable thereafter due to a variety of political disputes. Since 1998, countless political speeches, memoirs, academic conferences and publications, media debates, and study trips have examined the ‘lessons of Northern Ireland’.

The following sections examine this activity according to the three approaches described above. To reiterate, the boundaries of the approaches are porous, and this is made clear at points in the ensuing analysis. The first two sections are based on academic, media, and political sources. The third section on the educative-psychological approach additionally (and necessarily, given the lack of research) draws on qualitative interviews carried out by the author among organisations who facilitate the sharing of the Northern Ireland peacemaking experience through dialogue workshops.² What follows is also informed by several years of facilitation of, and participation in, international engagements – including face-to-face dialogues, field trips, and online events – with politicians, civil servants, media, civil society, and students from other conflict-affected societies seeking to learn about the Northern Ireland peace process.

Analytical-technical

Numerous academic texts and events have explicitly examined the ‘lessons of the peace process’ with a view to understanding what worked in Northern Ireland and potential policy lessons for other cases. Some speeches and memoirs by politicians (for instance, Blair, 2010; Hain, 2007; McGuinness, 2012; Mowlam, 2002; Powell, 2008; Reiss, 2005; Robinson, 2012) also partly demonstrate this approach. The peace process offered an abundance of material to study: an elaborate architecture of bodies, fora, rules, procedures, and roles, which were created to fulfil functions during periods of the peace process, or as part of the new political arrangements. Observers suggested that elements of this may be worth emulation by other peace processes. These aspects include the need for, and means of, the inclusion of women (Fearon, 1999); means of delivering economic support (Buchannan, 2014); the use of international commissions to deal with difficult issues (Clancy, 2010; Walsh, 2017); the requirement of committing to peaceful means during negotiations (Darby, 2008); the inclusive negotiation process and public referendum to endorse the agreement (Amaral, 2019); use of confidence building measures and mutual concessions (Haym et al., 2020); and the reforms of the police guided by equality of representation, transparency, and accountability (Doyle, 2010).

The leading conflict resolution mechanism of the Good Friday Agreement was its consociational political institutions, which spurred a considerable amount of research regarding their merits and flaws, as well as their appropriateness in other contexts (Taylor, 2009). Contention has focussed on the group identity provisions, and the requirement to designate ‘unionist’, ‘nationalist’, or ‘other’. Supporters of these provisions see them as a necessary means to facilitate cross-community protections after a history of political exclusion and domination (McGarry and O’Leary, 2009). Critics argue that the designations simply stamp sectarianism on the heart of government (Wilson, 2010). The tendency for consociational power-sharing to marginalise identities other than the ethnonational identities privileged by the system – what has been called the ‘exclusion amid inclusion dilemma’ (Agarin and McCulloch, 2019) is a key strand in recent power-sharing scholarship in relation to Northern Ireland and elsewhere. It must be said that consociationalism goes beyond being merely a ‘technique’ and represents the overarching political and philosophical framework of the peace process, instituting power-sharing and parity of esteem between extant political blocs.

Another expression of the analytical-technical approach is the efforts of some observers to identify dimensions of the peace process which may have proved pivotal in its success and therefore, in combination, may represent a potentially ideal peace process model. White (2013) includes the following aspects: inclusivity in negotiations; providing security for all parties; a role for third parties; and grassroots reconciliation. Mac Ginty (2019) notes, among other aspects, the significance of peace funding, rules for entry to negotiations, and ‘constructive ambiguity’ in agreements. Many of the lessons offered by politicians are in a similar vein. British figures Mo Mowlam, Peter Hain, Jonathan Powell, and Tony Blair offer closely resembling lists of lessons. Some are vague such as ‘small things can be big things’ and ‘be creative’ (Blair, 2010: 184; 185) while others are more tangible and structural. Mowlam (2002), for instance, stresses the need to include all levels of society, while all these figures note the importance of inclusivity and maintaining momentum.

In assessing the value of the analytical-technical approach, the key consideration is whether concepts and phenomena in different cases are in fact equivalent and ‘comparable’. Todd (2017: 63) highlights that the peacebuilding literature ‘often focusses on the short-term mechanisms that can be used as tools by international peace-makers. Like all tools, how they work depends on agent and context’. For this reason, the Northern Ireland lessons literature, which is in this vein (what we are referring to as the analytical-technical approach) she writes, ‘is less than explanatory’. In other words, conflict resolution mechanisms were the effects of convergence between the parties more than the causes of convergence (see also O’Kane, 2010). Todd (2017) credits international factors as facilitating change within Northern Ireland and allowing the conflict resolution mechanisms to work – the end of the Cold War, the EU context, and above all, changes in the natures and self-understanding of the British and Irish states.

Other scholars who have intervened in the lessons debate have also noted that several features of the Northern Ireland peace process such as the stable regional context including the fact that Northern Ireland was a region of the United Kingdom rather than a state, the absence of United Nations involvement in brokering peace, and the relatively low numbers of casualties and combatants, set Northern Ireland apart from many other contemporaneous peace processes (Clancy, 2013; Halliday, 2006) and limit the potential for technical knowledge transfer. Regarding power-sharing, the British government had considerable power to push and incentivise local parties towards it, ensuring that, if local parties wanted power at Stormont (which they did), it could only be based on partnership. This helps explain both why power-sharing occurred and why it has been so fractious. Moreover, assessing whether consociationalism has ‘worked’ in Northern Ireland, and thus, whether it should be exported, depends on one’s criteria for its success or failure.

Arguably, then, both unique conflict and contextual realities mean that the value of the analytical-technical approach is limited. However, we know that ‘borrowing and lending’ in peace processes has occurred (Darby, 2008), and if parties in another context are on a similar path of convergence witnessed in Northern Ireland, it may well be that adopting and adapting a technical lesson aids them in that process. That peace processes confront common problems is clearly seen, for example, in databases of peace agreements, which show recurring topic areas (see Fontana et al., 2021). Moreover, policy transfer of any nature between countries does not simply entail mechanical copying of policies but can be a process of learning in which ideas, concepts and inspiration are derived to inform context-specific approaches (Rose, 2005). More on this is said below in relation to the educative-psychological approach.

Political-strategic

This approach involves political actors drawing strategic/policy guidance from a peace process. The Northern Ireland analogy has been deployed in the discourses surrounding many other conflicts. For example, Dudai (2022) highlights how Northern Ireland has been promoted by some voices in Israel both as hopeful evidence that peace progress is possible in Palestine-Israel and a model for sharing power and territory (though more hawkish commentators have found the opposing lesson – that the Irish Republican Army (IRA) was not as extreme as Palestinian militants and so the analogy is irrelevant). By contrast, Browne and Bradley (2021) argue that promotion of a Northern Ireland model based on good relations between groups by some NGOs in relation to Palestine-Israel is designed to ‘normalize the status quo’ and avoid the just redress of Palestinian grievances. Some South Korean experts have invoked Northern Ireland in arguments for a gradualist Korean peace process in which relations between North and South are improved and border tension deescalated, rather than alternatives of ongoing frozen conflict, or speedy unification by absorbing the North (Choi, 2022).

Elsewhere, Basque separatists openly modelled their transition to peaceful means on that of Irish republicans, as seen in the ‘Irish Forum’, which produced the Lizarra-Garazi Agreement of September 1998 (Scanlon, 2023). In that document, Basque nationalists called for an unconditional negotiation process and rejected violence. President Santos of Colombia name-checked Northern Ireland frequently in speeches explaining his inspiration for and approach to conciliation with the FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarios de Colombia) guerillas (e.g. Santos, 2016), and many personnel from all sides and sectors in Northern Ireland participated in discussions in Colombia (Geoghegan, 2016). In all these examples, Northern Ireland may have served as both a genuine source of ideas, but also supplied an appealing means for actors to promote, sell, and legitimise certain policies.

Regarding the political-strategic approach, it is worth spotlighting the particularly high level of activity of one Irish actor, Sinn Féin. Research by Scanlon (2023: 2) examines the party’s numerous ‘advice sharing engagements’ with peace/conflict actors which occurred in the Basque Country, Colombia, Israel-Palestine, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Turkey. The party used its soft power – its credibility both as a rebel movement and an experienced participant in a negotiation process – to support groups undergoing rebel-to-party transitions similar to that of the IRA and Sinn Féin. The most important piece of strategic advice imparted appears to have been the imperative of ongoing consultation with the wider movement to avoid splits – something Sinn Féin is widely credited as having done adroitly during the Northern Ireland peace process. The party’s impact was uneven: strong in the Basque Country, but limited or non-existent in other cases. However, the outreach may have had a domestic benefit for the party by ‘appealing to more left-wing activists in the party and helping to keep them engaged after compromises were made’ (p. 285).

Sinn Féin’s global outreach emerged from republicans’ anti-imperialist internationalism, and its contacts which stretched back into the Cold War period. Unionists did not have such links, although they did take part in many facilitated engagements of the kind described in the next section. However, the singular experience of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition – forming a political party with the purpose of attaining a seat in peace negotiations – attracted widespread international interest. After the Agreement, some of its representatives were active in global networking and lesson sharing, particularly among feminist and women’s organisations (see McWilliams, 2021).

It is not the intention here, nor would it be possible, to assess the validity of every instance of political-strategic learning from Northern Ireland; as noted above, invoking another case risks broad and inappropriate comparisons, but may well be constructive and is an inevitable strategy of political actors. Yet the challenge to the political-strategic approach is the same as noted in the previous section – accounting for the contextual specificity of what occurred in Northern Ireland. Indeed, what occurred in Northern Ireland is contested among the local actors themselves; constructive ambiguity which allowed differing parties to understand the peace process in different ways was inherent to the process (Mitchell, 2009). This emerged clearly in a political and scholarly debate which followed the restoration of power-sharing in 2007 regarding the question of what Northern Ireland’s experience implied for how states should handle anti-state militants. Several figures associated with the British state proposed that one of the lessons of the process was that states should enter dialogue with militant groups with as few preconditions as possible and that this might be a useful insight for other cases, such as Israel’s approach to Hamas (Ancram, 2008; Hain, 2007). A somewhat compatible republican view was that IRA violence forced the British state’s openness to dialogue with few conditions (Adams, 2003). Others argued that dialogue was not unconditional but subject to clear strictures and underpinned by the ‘hard power’ of British counter-terrorism (Bew et al., 2009; Trimble, 2007).

This contestation will remain; suffice it to note here that both preconditions and flexibility in applying them were part of the peace process (see Dixon, 2013; O’Kane, 2010). But this debate shows the ongoing discursive battles of legitimacy which have followed the 1998 Agreement. Unionists believe that the IRA’s ‘terrorism’ was effectively defeated and that the Union with Great Britain was secured; republicans believe their legitimate armed struggle forced the British to negotiate and they are on a path to Irish unity (Mitchell, 2015). These contradictory views mean that political-strategic lessons may also be similarly contestable. Understandably, then, political-strategic lessons are often at a high level of abstraction, such as Northern Ireland shows the importance of leadership, or perseverance, or that peace is possible in the most unpromising of circumstances.

Educative-psychological

Certain of these party-to-party contacts may exhibit the third approach, educative-psychological, although as described above, explicit, bilateral political advice is not the goal of this approach. The work of Northern Ireland politicians and other participants in the peace process to share their experience with counterparts from around the globe in direct, face-to-face settings follows in the footsteps of actors in the other prominent peace success story of the 1990s, South Africa. Northern Ireland political leaders were hosted there on two occasions, in 1994 and 1997, for intensive discussions with the major parties (Arthur, 1999). Indeed, some facilitators of educative-psychological lesson sharing in Northern Ireland are convinced of its value in part because they believe that Northern Ireland’s learning from South Africa was valuable at a crucial stage of the peace process: ‘it is clear from our own experience that international involvement and example can play a useful role . . . in bolstering the will to change and take risks’ (Irish Department of Foreign Affairs, 2008: 8).

Most engagements that have taken place have been facilitated by non-governmental third parties such as conflict resolution NGOs and academics (see footnote two). A prominent practitioner of this approach has been Irish-American academic, Padraig O’Malley (Devenport, 2009). Jonathan Powell, who led the British government’s negotiations during the peace process, established an NGO, Intermediate, to share the learning that he had gained in Northern Ireland and promote conflict resolution elsewhere. The Irish government produced a comprehensive unpublished document (Irish Department of Foreign Affairs, 2008) on the lessons of the Irish peace process in order to guide its engagement with actors from other conflicts, often done in partnership with NGOs. In 2007, the government created a Conflict Resolution Unit with lesson sharing as one of its remits.

These engagements follow the pattern described earlier: talks delivered by actors from Northern Ireland to groups from overseas; opportunities for questioning and facilitated debriefing; and travel to sites associated with conflict and peacebuilding such as the ‘peace walls’, offices of community peace organisations, and transformed public space. What are Northern Ireland interlocutors conveying in these encounters? Experiences within the process, from the point of view of their political party or organisation, make up most of the content. They also include the sharing of technical information about how the peace process operated. Facilitators of these dialogues recognise that techniques cannot be mechanically exported between different contexts. As put by one facilitator,

It’s not about teaching lessons, it’s not about imposing templates, it’s about sharing experiences and insights. It’s about people saying, ‘we’ve been through an awful conflict, we may have some insights from our experiences from which you may gather some learning, please cross-examine us’ (Quentin Oliver quoted in Devenport, 2009).

In fact, some facilitating organisations note that the lesson of Northern Ireland is that there is no blueprint; peace actors anywhere must pursue their own, unique processes (such as White, 2014).

Nevertheless, facilitators believe that learning about the mechanics and architecture of the Northern Ireland peace process is worthwhile for two reasons. One is that even solutions which are not deemed workable can assist the imaginative thinking needed to design accommodations that could work.³ Second, technical solutions convey a sense of possibility: it demonstrates how one set of conflict actors found solutions to match their challenges. As one facilitator said, Northern Ireland shows that ‘other places have the same problems, and they find ways to deal with them’.⁴

That unionists and nationalists hold fundamentally competing understandings of the peace process in Northern Ireland was mentioned above. Regarding the potential for bias and misunderstanding in contact with people from other conflicts, facilitators recognise this as an unavoidable danger. All the facilitators can do is to provide the widest range of perspectives possible. In her research on participants in study trips from Turkey to Northern Ireland, Dilek (2021) identified a degree of ‘confirmation bias’, in that some of her interviewees found the evidence they wished to find in Northern Ireland to support their positions on Turkey. Preparatory study and facilitated debrief sessions can mitigate misunderstandings. One facilitator admitted, ‘I do think there are times when the agenda has been too simple or the interlocutors have not been diverse enough’.⁵

Despite the challenges of interpreting Northern Ireland, facilitators recognise the educative value of exposing participants to multiple viewpoints because a clash of perspectives is an essential characteristic of this, and probably all, peace processes. As one stated, ‘It’s impossible to have a master narrative [of a peace process]. You have to have opinions and narratives which are conflicting and which force people [participants] to realize that these people don’t agree on this’.⁶ Another noted that participants had to learn that ‘people make peace for different reasons’.⁷ Indeed, Jonathan Powell (2008) emphasises that this is one of the lessons of Northern Ireland: that peace is achievable despite ongoing disagreement on major issues. Even Peter Robinson (2012), the former DUP (Democratic Unionist Party) leader and one-time arch-critic of the ambiguity in the Agreement, saw the value of sharing clashing narratives: ‘We can’t tell other people how to solve their problems but we can explain to them how we addressed our own, not just from one perspective but from all perspectives’. Some of the facilitators also noted that it is unavoidable, and natural, that some groups from overseas are more interested in the positions and experience of certain actors than others.

Northern Ireland is probably a leading site of experiential, interactive study trips related to conflict/peace. The reputation of the peace process as a success, together with the facts that the region is English speaking, peaceful and developed, and contains many peace process participants who are willing to tell their story, makes it amenable for all manner of actors wishing to learn from a real peacemaking case. White (2014: 179), from the Glencree Peace Centre, writes that one of Ireland’s strengths is the depth of knowledge and experience in peacebuilding that exists there, mainly due simply to the conflict and peace process’ longevity:

concepts of peacebuilding and specific interventions which have been applied and tested in Ireland over three decades are very familiar and even considered basic or ‘old-hat’ by many peacebuilding practitioners in Ireland. Yet these very same phenomena are considered enlightening in many other contexts.

Similarly, another facilitator said that in Northern Ireland, ‘there’s a degree of reflection and introspection which we don’t have another contexts’.⁸ Significantly, facilitators of these trips mentioned that one of the most instructive aspects of the case was its flaws: ‘If everything was perfect [in Northern Ireland] I wouldn’t take people there’, said one.⁹ This, it was thought, allows people to not only learn from mistakes made, but also to apprehend the limitations of what any peace process can deliver. Another said that Northern Ireland’s persisting problems gave the trips more credibility: ‘Cynics may be allergic to the fact that . . . why do you [the facilitating NGO] only talk about successful peace processes? But the cases that are incomplete help answer the cynics’.¹⁰

Discussion

This analysis shows that there is a disjuncture between the large body of scholarship on the international significance of the Northern Ireland peace process – which either pursues, or considers, the analytical-technical and political-strategic approaches – and the actual face-to-face practice of sharing the Northern Ireland experience, which takes the form of the educative-psychological approach. One reason for this may simply be that activity in the educative-psychological mould, due to its nature, lacks visibility. Another may be the dispositions of academic disciplines. The topic of the lessons of Northern Ireland tends to attract scholars in politics, history, and international relations who may be less inclined or equipped to focus on ‘softer’, intangible phenomena. As already noted, the educative-psychological approach cannot produce immediate and easily evaluated impacts. The unsatisfactory language around the activity may also be a factor in it avoiding research or media attention. ‘Lesson sharing’ is probably the most frequently used term to describe the engagements, presumably due its simplicity, and despite its flaws. Other terms used by the facilitators include ‘dialogue groups’, ‘comparative study visit’, ‘study tour’, ‘capacity building’, ‘peace sharing’, ‘facilitated dialogue’, ‘exchange’, and ‘informal dialogue platform’. Inconsistent terminology obscures the content and goals of the practice.

In any case, the significance of recognising the educative-psychological approach lies not only in illuminating the dominant manifestation of post-1998 lesson sharing in Northern Ireland, which has been hitherto underappreciated. It also reveals Northern Ireland’s importance within the international turn away from peace models and towards locally designed and rooted peacebuilding (see Mac Ginty and Richmond, 2013). Among the visions of peacebuilding which have emerged in the wake of the dominance of liberal peacebuilding are complex-systems approaches (e.g. Ricigliano, 2012). These recognise that imported techniques cannot work within unique and dynamic systems in which all elements of the system co-influence. Advocating ‘adaptive peacebuilding’, De Coning (2018: 312) writes,

The recognition in the adaptive peacebuilding approach of the fact that there is no external privileged knowledge or predetermined model, and that the design and decisions should emerge from the process itself, creates meaningful opportunities for all stakeholders, and especially for local societies and communities, to co-own and co-manage the process.

Instead of relying on templates, peacebuilding must constantly experiment, learn, and adapt. Learning from other cases can contribute to this continuous, non-prescriptive, open-ended learning. Although the constructive transfer of knowledge and inspiration can occur through the analytical-technical and political-strategic approaches, clearly, it is the educative-psychological approach which is best equipped to illuminate and convey a peace process in all its richness and complexity. As this research has shown, Northern Ireland has constituted a dynamic space within which peace/conflict actors seek to enhance their agency through experiencing firsthand one example of a post-settlement reality, interacting with agents and subjects of change, considering conflict resolution mechanisms, grappling with opposing narratives, witnessing the transformation of space, and deliberating on their own predicaments from a new vantage point. Rather than external or top-down imposition, the educative-psychological approach involves horizontal learning and empowerment between conflict/peace actors.

In fact, not only may Northern Ireland contribute to adaptive learning elsewhere, but it is also a living illustration of why such learning is required. As the facilitators stressed, Northern Ireland demonstrates the nature of a peace process as non-linear, always contested, and always unfinished. To the extent that Northern Ireland has indeed navigated post-Agreement challenges, foreseen and unforeseen (and it has done so only with partial success), this was achieved through experimentation, adaptation, and learning based on experience.

The limitations of social psychological interventions in conflict are well recognised. These limits include the uncertainty of how individual change can have a wider impact, the danger that it reduces conflict to attitudinal dysfunction and downplays real structural injustices and power disparities, and the problem of evaluation (Steinberg, 2013). However, intractable conflict undoubtedly results in political psychological paralysis among leaders and followers alike (Azar, 1990). This paralysis must, by definition, be overcome if progress towards conflict transformation is to occur. Educative-psychological learning from another peace process may be one contribution to this. As shown here, such learning is not solely about the kind of attitudinal change in which images of the ‘other’ are rehabilitated. It also incorporates acquiring knowledge and motivation to develop concrete political accommodations through experiencing conflict resolution techniques and overarching peace frameworks implemented elsewhere.

It is beyond the scope of this, perhaps any, article to quantify the impact of the three approaches on the many contexts to which the learning has been directed. However, what is apparent is that a conflict/peace analogy – whether established though academic analysis, political rhetoric, or conflict resolution practice or all three – can be self-reinforcing, and can have a stimulating effect on the discursive landscape of a peace process: that is, the totality of policy discussions, political fora, public and community debates, media content, and scholarly work dealing with how to approach conflict issues. An analogy can provide a framework of discussion, external input, and a focus of interest for deliberation on peacebuilding at all levels. The Basque Country and Colombia, for example, benefitted to some extent in this way from the deliberate promotion of the Northern Ireland comparison (Scanlon, 2023). South Africa played a similar role in Northern Ireland; the connections were not restricted to the two visits of Northern Ireland political leaders mentioned above, but provided the basis of numerous conferences, trips, and contacts involving many types of actor during the peace process. Indeed, transitions from dictatorship to democracy in Latin America and Eastern Europe contributed in this way to South Africa during the early 1990s, providing the basis for conferences and study trips (see Boraine, 2000). As is probably the case during any new policy/political venture, analogies and lessons from elsewhere are an inevitable and potentially constructive, if also contested, dimension of a transitional society’s emerging understanding of what may be ahead.

Conclusion

This article has developed a framework comprising three contrasting ways in which observers derive knowledge from a peace process. It has used this framework to make sense of the debates regarding the implications of one of the most celebrated peace success stories of recent decades, Northern Ireland. In particular, it has highlighted the prevalence, and examined the conduct, of the educative-psychological approach.

This article has not audited the quality of peace in Northern Ireland. This has been done extensively elsewhere (e.g. Coulter et al., 2021). Political violence has all but ended. However, party politics is often antagonistic and has been embittered by Brexit, disputes over cultural issues are frequent, residential and school separation continues, paramilitaries still control many working-class areas, transitional justice is incomplete, and socio-economic and gender divisions remain deep. The Agreement has been said to have led to ‘fragile peace’ (Cochrane, 2021), ‘political purgatory’ (Rowan, 2021), and ‘benign apartheid’ (see Nagle and Clancy, 2010). Nevertheless, questions of time and peace are relative. Given the number of failed peace accords globally, a generation with little political violence is enough to describe the peace process a success. As Mac Ginty and Wanis-St. John (2022: 3) advise, ‘peace accords should be situated in a complex temporal hinterland in which people see time differently and in which peace is rarely a neatly defined end state’.

This study points to four avenues for further research. First, the framework above can be applied to other peace processes to gain a comprehensive understanding of how they are being ‘used’ by various parties. Second, as noted, the educative-psychological approach to learning from a peace process deserves greater attention as a peace methodology. Evaluation is difficult. To attempt this, more research among participants is needed, not only straight after an encounter with Northern Ireland, but perhaps years after. As Track Two scholars note, effects of informal, facilitated deliberations may take years to have an effect (Jones, 2015).

A third avenue is to examine exchanges of meaning between particular conflict/peace comparative pairs. Not only will people from different conflicts find different insights of value from Northern Ireland, but there may be internal contestation about those insights within a conflict party – such as the opposing lessons found in Israel. Finally, more research is warranted on the international interaction of different peace sectors. Contact facilitated with an educative-psychological purpose has occurred not only between politicians and policy makers, but civil society groups as well, including business, faith, youth, and women’s groups. Peacebuilding is a systemic, multi-sectoral endeavour. Further research can examine how such transnational exchanges support the various civil society contributions to a peace process.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

David Mitchell

Notes

Author biography

David Mitchell is Assistant Professor at Trinity College Dublin at Belfast, and Coordinator of the MPhil in Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation. He is author of Politics and Peace in Northern Ireland (Manchester University Press, 2015) and co-editor (with Dong Jin Kim) of Reconciling Divided States: Peace Processes in Ireland and Korea (Routledge, 2022). He has published research articles in Co-operation and Conflict, Government and Opposition, International Review for the Sociology of Sport, and many other journals.

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