Transforming conflict through social and economic development: Practice and policy lessons from Northern Ireland and the Border Counties

By Sandra Buchanan

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Release date: May 16, 2016
• ISBN: 9781526112309

Sandra Buchanan

Sandra Buchanan is a senior staff member of Donegal Education and Training Board's Adult Education Service and a conflict transformation practitioner

Book preview

Introduction

A number of long-term conflict transformation funding programmes or tools have been operating in Northern Ireland and the Border Counties since 1986 under the guise of the International Fund for Ireland (IFI), the EU Special Support Programme for Peace and Reconciliation and the EU Programme for Peace and Reconciliation (Peace I, Peace II and Peace III), since 1994 and the INTERREG I, II and III programmes, since 1991. All have facilitated the conflict transformation process in the region specifically through social and economic development.¹ Collectively, having contributed over €3.25 billion to the process, they have been responsible for a huge increase in transformation practice, particularly at the grassroots level, prompting previously unforeseen levels of citizen empowerment and local ownership of the peace process, consequently highlighting the intrinsic value of grassroots participatory democracy.² Despite relatively little in-depth research on their contribution to the transformation process in the region, these tools have enabled significant levels of learning to take place, albeit more so at the grassroots than the top levels of society, providing a suitable context for exploring conflict transformation in action and presenting post-ceasefire Northern Ireland and the Border Counties as a case ripe for lesson sharing.

Conflict transformation and socioeconomic development

Conflict transformation is a relatively unexplored and largely misunderstood concept within the broadly defined field of conflict management. It is also generally misunderstood within peace and conflict research, international relations and politics. Even less understood is the transformation of conflict through social and economic development, at both a theoretical and policy level, particularly in terms of the Northern Ireland conflict. Although interest has increased in recent years this has not necessarily produced a parallel growth in clarification or accuracy, as reflected in the theoretical and practitioner discourses. The term ‘conflict transformation’ is often used interchangeably with the terms ‘conflict resolution’ or ‘settlement and peacebuilding’, often referring to the same approach and usually, mistakenly, located within a post-conflict frame of reference.

Conflict transformation draws on a number of concepts inherent in conflict management (conflict resolution and settlement), democracy (citizen empowerment/participatory democracy) and development. In viewing conflict as a catalyst for social change, transformation is primarily concerned with overcoming direct, cultural and structural violence over the long-term. However, in moving from violence to peace, most practical (and theoretical) efforts have concentrated on the removal of direct violence only, usually over the short-term. Herein lies the crux of its conceptual difficulties – its emergence from a number of pre-existing traditions has left it theoretically misunderstood and conceptually confused, resulting, in practice terms (as this book will demonstrate), in ‘a relative absence of consensus among governments on the question of appropriate implementation’.³ This is starkly illustrated by Ryan who notes quite simply that ‘there is no single model of transformation’,⁴ which leaves a considerable challenge: the core difficulty it faces is that ‘its jump to prominence … has outpaced the development of its meaning in clearly understood policy and operational terms’.⁵ This has been clearly evident in Northern Ireland and the Border Counties especially when one considers the numerous weaknesses associated with the Peace programmes, for example their complexity, excessive bureaucracy, sustainability issues and low uptake from the Protestant community. On an international level this was starkly illustrated by the chaos which afflicted post-conflict Iraq, whereby the US and UK governments made next to no plans for the post-conflict reconstruction of the country when planning their invasion: the US government set up its post-conflict reconstruction office barely eight weeks before the invasion with staff only entering the country twelve days after the fall of Saddam Hussein, while in the UK, the Department of International Development looked for a reading list on post-conflict reconstruction in the days before the invasion. This behaviour has been described as ‘criminally negligent’ by Dr Toby Dodge, one of those from whom the UK government sought advice.⁶

Conceptually, conflict transformation was first mooted by Johan Galtung in 1976 when he set out his tripartite classification of conflict management strategies: peacekeeping, peacemaking and peacebuilding. His contribution had already widened understandings of violence (as more than just direct violence), by introducing the groundbreaking concept of structural violence or ‘social injustice’⁷ (which viewed the absence of direct violence as negative peace and the absence of structural violence as positive peace). But he went further than this by presenting methods for achieving a positive peace, hence addressing the root causes of conflict, a core conflict transformation value. This was followed by the introduction of the concept of cultural violence, defined as ‘those aspects of culture … that can be used to justify or legitimize direct or structural violence’.⁸ Innovatively, Galtung defined peace as ‘nonviolent and creative conflict transformation … to know about peace we have to know about conflict and how conflicts can be transformed, both nonviolently and creatively’.⁹

Until Galtung’s introduction of the notion of conflict transformation, the management of conflict was previously conceptualised merely in terms of peacemaking and peacekeeping, normally associated with the United Nations. Indeed it was 1992 before the term ‘peacebuilding’ entered the UN’s lexicon when the then Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali briefly discussed it in his report An Agenda for Peace. Its entrance, however, was misleadingly defined in terms of ‘post-conflict peacebuilding – action to identify and support structures which will tend to strengthen and solidify peace in order to avoid a relapse into conflict’¹⁰ – though in the follow-up 1995 report Supplement to an Agenda for Peace this understanding was widened to also encompass preventative actions. Importantly, both reports alluded to the potential of social and economic development to contribute to peacebuilding, suggesting that ‘social peace is as important as strategic or political peace’.¹¹

Consideration of this potential is crucial to clearly understand one of the central components of conflict transformation – that of dealing with the root causes of conflict. Väyrynen, in expanding Galtung’s conceptualisations, notes that:

Violence is embedded in structures … violence and conflicts may be managed by instrumental action, but they can be eliminated only by identifying their root causes. Those causes and their functions are, however, ever changing with the economic and social transformation of societies. That is why any argument that a conflict has been solved for good, that history has ended, is based on an ahistorical illusion. The only historically viable approach is to aim to eliminate the violence in present conflicts and to trace the new socioeconomic transformations which create new sources of violence.¹²

Thus, while the potential role of social and economic development has certainly been alluded to by some researchers, attempts at providing an in-depth understanding of this potential have largely been avoided by political scientists, leaving economists to bridge the gap. Work by Collier and Stewart and Brown, for example, has been crucial in addressing this issue. Collier’s research on the economic causes of conflict has found that ‘because the economic dimensions of civil war have been largely neglected, both governments and the international community have missed substantial opportunities for promoting peace’.¹³ Economists have further highlighted the complexities of the role of social and economic development as a cause of conflict (and consequently in transforming conflict). For example, Stewart and Brown argue that ‘economic and social HIs [horizontal inequalities] provide the conditions that lead to dissatisfaction among the general population and, consequently, give rise to the possibilities of political mobilization, but it is political exclusion that is likely to trigger a conflict … there is also often a provocative cultural dimension’.¹⁴ Moreover:

the horizontal inequalities explanation of conflict is based on the view that when cultural differences coincide with economic and political differences between groups, this can cause deep resentments that may lead to violent struggles … Horizontal inequalities are multidimensional, involving access to a large variety of resources along economic, social, and political vectors or dimensions.¹⁵

Experience has therefore shown ‘not only that increasing socioeconomic HIs have preceded the emergence of violent conflict, but that reductions in socioeconomic HIs, such as occurred in Northern Ireland in the 1980s, may contribute to the conditions for a peaceful resolution of such conflicts’.¹⁶

Nevertheless, key contributions to the development of transformational theory by Azar, in examining social conflicts, suggest that ‘effective conflict management involves consensus-building augmented by socio-economic development, a perspective which is compatible with the view that politics is about community building and is thus an inclusive enterprise’.¹⁷ Explored in conjunction with the work of Kriesberg et al.¹⁸ which examines the transformation of intractable conflicts, we can go some way towards understanding the dynamics of conflict transformation through social and economic development in a case such as Northern Ireland.

The costs of any conflict are largely social and economic, with civilians bearing the brunt of the consequences in terms of lives lost, displacement and loss of possessions, disruption of education, loss of employment/ income, psychological trauma, health deficiencies, destruction of infrastructure and redirection of investment. These are felt long after conflict has ended, usually in terms of a lasting legacy of structural violence manifested through poverty. However, the definitional morass alluded to earlier presents its own difficulties when considering conflict transformation through social and economic development. The World Bank rightly argues that without definitional clarity there is a tendency for funders to ‘risk labelling all socio-economic development efforts in a conflict setting as peacebuilding … [which] should improve conditions for economic reconstruction, development and democratization, but should not be equated or confused with these efforts’.¹⁹

This dilemma is replicated in the conflict transformation research to date which has struggled to understand the links between social and economic development and its potential for transforming conflict, usually, imprudently, examining economic development in isolation from social development. Having received little scholarly attention for many years, Collier’s introduction of the greed versus grievance perspective dominated early debates on the economics of conflict.²⁰ However, this has since proved problematic and scholars have continued to struggle with what role, if any, economics plays as a cause of conflict, in sustaining and prolonging conflict, in transforming conflict and whether social and economic development should be considered separately, while reaching no firm conclusions.²¹ Killick et al. have found that ‘to date … the international community has been slow to recognise the private sector’s potential, focusing almost exclusively on business as an agent of economic development rather than peacebuilding’.²²

Economic development’s contribution to conflict transformation can be simply divided into two schools of thought – those who believe it can transform conflict and those who believe it cannot. A resolute belief in either is somewhat foolish; economic development, properly implemented, contains huge potential for transforming conflict but is a complex issue. Indeed, it should be noted that the argument that conflict is caused by economics is not a wise approach to take either; Ballen-tine and Nitzschke, in discussing the research findings of Ballentine and Sherman,²³ state that:

one of the principal findings of this research was that among the cases studied, economic factors, whether construed as greed, grievance or something else, were nowhere the sole cause of conflict, but in some instances did play a signal role in shaping the character and duration of hostilities as well as posing obstacles for effective resolution. For this reason, they need to be taken into account by those policymakers seeking ways to achieve sustainable peace.²⁴

Thus contributors to the former school far outweigh those contributing to the latter. In considering transformation through economic development, Rupesinghe provides a devastatingly simple but accurate observation: ‘the survivors of violent conflicts cannot eat peace! We have to invest money, material and people to sustain peace. We need to look at investment in the reconstruction of infrastructure, in fair trade, and job creation.’²⁵

However, part of the problem with existing research is that it examines the role of economic development in isolation: neglecting to examine it conjunctionally with social (and indeed political) development will almost certainly create difficulties at best or ensure its failure at worst. Collier, in exploring determinants of economic growth in (civil) war-ravaged countries, has found in post-conflict situations that ‘social policy is relatively more important and macroeconomic policy is relatively less important … than in normal situations … relative to the strategies normally adopted, social policy should be given somewhat more weight’.²⁶ This is significant because, as we shall see later in the current context, those at the top level on both sides of the Irish Border were scathing of social inclusion projects receiving priority consideration (and funding) under Peace I, attaching more importance to economic development in post-ceasefire Northern Ireland and its Border Counties.

Research emerging from the transformation community is beginning to highlight the fundamental requirement to understand the role of this critical component,²⁷ not least because ‘there are sufficient examples of the local private sector contributing constructively to peace … to suggest it remains one of the underestimated and underused peacebuilding actors’.²⁸ Indeed, Smith’s peacebuilding palette and Hamber and Kelly’s definition of reconciliation demonstrate that social and economic development are fundamental transformational components that require deeper consideration; both are intimately intertwined and their separation and exclusion from the transformation process would be detrimental.²⁹ If tackling structural violence is central to conflict transformation, the role and contribution of social and economic development therefore requires further extensive research.

Citizen empowerment

What sets conflict transformation apart from other management processes is its inclusion of those at the grassroots, concentrating on empowering ordinary citizens who make up civil society and suffer most during conflict. However, like other conceptual understandings within conflict transformation, there is no commonly agreed definition of what constitutes civil society, neither in the academic nor practitioner communities. Those that do exist are blurred, ranging from the grassroots masses to well-organised and established (international) non-governmental organisations (NGOs), based mainly on Western conceptualisations. Pugh notes that ‘the social-civil dimension of regeneration has been a poor relation in peacebuilding’³⁰ and by asking who owns peacebuilding he asserts the need to develop ‘the idea of regeneration through peacebuilding as a concept that fosters local ownership, engagement with local norms and values and integrated social development processes to underpin the non-violence in societies’.³¹ This is an area which has gained considerable currency in recent years, due in part to the comprehensive contribution of John Paul Lederach’s 1997 thesis, which contends that outsiders (usually Track I actors) cannot create a sustainable peace; they can assist in brokering peace and contributing financially but its long-term sustainability depends on those directly affected by it (local or Track III actors) taking ownership by leading its creation, implementation and sustainability. For Lederach, conflict transformation, in seeking constructive and sustainable social change, is the art of ‘how to move from that which destroys toward that which builds’,³² requiring ‘a long-term view that focuses as much on the people in the setting of conflict building durable and flexible processes, as it does specific solutions’.³³ However, as Donais observes, ‘while the principle of local ownership enjoys broad rhetorical acceptance it has proven inherently difficult to operationalize’.³⁴

In the Northern Ireland context, this increasing interest in civil society transformation activities has not been matched by an increase in research: very few publications deal explicitly with the link between conflict transformation and citizen empowerment. This is despite empowerment practice having received sizeable attention among the grassroots over the years, albeit without official recognition from the top.³⁵ It has also received extensive recognition through the Peace programmes. In the Irish context, the issue of social capital gained some currency a number of years ago,³⁶ but this was driven more by a rising concern in the Republic about shrinking levels of active citizenship (or volunteering), as expounded by Robert Putnam, than by a concern about the transformation of conflict, and certainly not the transformation of the conflict on its doorstep.³⁷ The difficulty with the Northern Ireland case study is that for too long academia has largely concentrated on elite-level politics and solutions with little or no attention given to the critical role of the grassroots. While Williamson et al. have provided some local understanding of the role of community and voluntary action in the post-ceasefire context,³⁸ Cochrane and Dunn’s contribution (and, to a lesser extent, Williams, Farrington and Power)³⁹ in extensively examining the role of community and voluntary peace/conflict resolution organisations (P/ CROs) in the Northern Ireland conflict stands alone in representing the first serious attempt to address this deficit, rightly highlighting how little is known about P/CROs and their contribution to the social and political development of Northern Ireland, despite the work they have carried out. It is at the macro level that the significance of such organisations, if taken together, can be found:

While it is difficult to point to a concrete cause and effect with regard to the P/CRO sector and the peace process in Northern Ireland, and although its impact on the political process has been peripheral rather than central, it would be reasonable to conclude that Northern Ireland would have been a lot worse off without its contribution to peace and conflict resolution over the last thirty years. This sector filled a vacuum left by the political actors in the 1970s and 1980s, and created a visible tier of people who presented some alternative to the political nihilism exhibited within the constitutional debate for most of the period from 1969 until the early 1990s.⁴⁰

Grassroots organisations also often provided the means for top-level actors to interact when they were unable to do so in public. Moreover, Cochrane and Dunn maintain that ‘there is tangible evidence that the ideas and ethos promoted by the NGO sector have impacted directly on the political structures of Northern Ireland’⁴¹ – institutional recognition of the role of civil society was provided by the Good Friday Agreement which resulted in the creation of the Civic Forum comprising representatives of civil society ‘[to] act as a consultative mechanism on social, economic and cultural issues’.⁴² While Cochrane and Dunn argue that ‘this novel institution would not have been created without the intellectual contribution by the P/CRO sector during the duration of the conflict’,⁴³ Bell’s examination of its short life (October 2000–October 2002, when it was suspended) highlights the difficulties faced by grassroots actors in having their voice heard, particularly by those at the top.⁴⁴ Crucially Cochrane and Dunn have highlighted that ‘within the P/CRO sector in Northern Ireland there is a very underdeveloped analysis of the causes of the conflict’.⁴⁵ This is important because, as shall be seen later, the three programmes examined here have provided a limited response to addressing this issue despite its centrality to successful conflict transformation. However, this has been a fault of the transformation process in the region as a whole, not just the P/CRO sector or certain transformation tools.

As important as Cochrane and Dunn’s contribution has been, its focus has been on those organisations specifically involved in peace and reconciliation work, which in itself has been a relatively limited section of the grassroots, in essence those already converted. The programmes examined in this book have been catalysts for an unprecedented level of participation and empowerment of ordinary citizens by using social and economic development to enable the wider involvement of the grassroots in the transformation process; the academic literature has simply not examined in-depth this extraordinary level of empowerment from a conflict transformation perspective or indeed a political perspective in terms of participatory democracy. This examination has largely been left to practitioners to undertake, albeit mainly in relation to the work of the Peace programmes, thus presenting a deficit to be addressed.

The Northern Ireland conflict and the Border Counties

The Northern Ireland conflict has been extensively analysed historically and politically. However, this is just one aspect of the conflict; there has been little assessment of the conflict’s financial, psychological, emotional, social and economic costs. Moreover, the region’s overall conflict transformation process, particularly through social and economic development, has received little academic attention. While components have been alluded to, with the macro-political component receiving generous coverage, a comprehensive treatment of the overall process has remained elusive. Neither have any explicit attempts been made to transformationally examine any of the three programmes. Certainly Byrne has provided some analysis of the impacts of the IFI and Peace I in terms of building peace through economic aid,⁴⁶ while some analysis exists on the contribution the programmes have made to cross-border cooperation.⁴⁷ However, in spite of a growing volume of implementation, programme evaluation, audit and annual reports, there is a serious dearth of research on the overarching impact these programmes have had on the transformation of the Northern Ireland conflict or on their implications as transformation tools for conflict management, transformation and peacebuilding practice in this border region and elsewhere, either individually or collectively. Doubtless much of this is due to the infancy of the programmes, as they are still in their implementation stage, yet the academic and transformation communities appear, erroneously, to be waiting for them to run their course before engaging in serious assessments. However, a lack of analysis from the beginning can prove problematic when it comes to long-term process planning, sustainability and success.

Nevertheless, the advent of the Peace programmes in particular has seen an increase in research focusing on the transformation process from the perspective of the tools themselves and, more generally, in terms of explorations of aspects of the process rather than thorough treatments. On both counts, the greatest amount of analysis of the transformation process has been generated by the non-academic community⁴⁸ with the largest analytical base provided by those directly involved with the administration and evaluation of the Peace programmes, the various Intermediary Funding Bodies (IFBs), with grassroots-based IFBs, drawn from the community and voluntary sector and those charged with carrying out the mid-term and ex-post evaluations voicing the most criticism; both sources provide very useful insights into the transformation tools and by extension, the transformation process. The IFBs in particular have not been afraid to bite the hand that feeds them or, indeed, unlike the academic community, to assess a live process, providing some extremely valuable and scrupulous judgements.

Significantly, research by Hillyard et al., which resulted directly from the Peace programmes, examines poverty and conflict from an international perspective to extract the lessons and implications. This study, as the only one in the context of the region’s conflict transformation process to seriously examine poverty (including social and economic issues) as a cause and consequence of conflict and relate it to Northern Ireland and the Border Counties, rightly highlights that internationally ‘at the level of policy there is increasing emphasis on ensuring that all forms of intervention are integrated around the objective of conflict reduction and that tackling poverty is an essential part of this’.⁴⁹ Crucially, it highlights the complexity of the poverty–conflict relationship and how little has changed for some in the region; thus ‘the key challenge now is to mainstream peace-building and conflict resolution within anti-poverty strategies and reconstruction programmes’.⁵⁰

Finally, remarkably few references have been made to the Border Counties when discussing the conflict’s impact, other than referring to its political origins, despite their centrality to the transformation process. As O’Dowd and McCall postulate, ‘whatever else the Northern Ireland conflict is about, it is certainly about borders in both a material and a metaphorical sense’.⁵¹ Although Channel Research astutely observes that ‘while the significance of the border has changed over time, it has nevertheless been a core issue in the conflict and will have a central role to play in any sustainable peace process’,⁵² worryingly:

both governments seem to have agreed that the future development of the peace process is now dependent on agreement between the political parties representing both traditions in the North. While clearly such agreement is critical, what seems to be lacking is an adequate appreciation, or a sense of urgency, vis-à-vis the role of the cross-border dimension in building peace and reconciliation and in facilitating the improvement of intercommunal relations within Northern Ireland.⁵³

Policy context

In a policy context, neither the Irish nor UK governments possess conflict transformation policies relating to the conflict on their doorstep; their strategies in this regard have been firmly placed within the (international) development cooperation arena.⁵⁴ In doing so a serious contradiction emerges: on the one hand, they obviously see a need for laying out their position on international peacebuilding (however disjointedly) by articulating its role through addressing international conflicts; on the other hand, from this perspective, they do not relate conflict transformation to their own internal conflict.

The only policy pronouncement from the Irish government is from a development cooperation perspective. Its position in this regard was laid out for the first time in its 2006 White Paper on Irish Aid, which argues that ‘poverty and underdevelopment can be at once a cause and a consequence of conflict … More broadly, most of the work of Irish Aid can be seen as removing or reducing the causes of conflict.’⁵⁵ However, this makes no reference whatsoever to a conflict transformation policy (international or domestic) or to the Northern Ireland conflict other than in terms of lessons learned:

Ireland is well placed to play a more active role in international conflict prevention and resolution. Our own history, and the positions we have traditionally taken on issues such as decolonisation, disarmament and the Middle East, have resulted in considerable international goodwill … We are committed to seeking to play a greater role, where appropriate and possible, in facilitating or assisting peace processes and in supporting countries or regions emerging from conflict.⁵⁶

Thus the Irish government’s contradictory view of its conflict sees it as an internal matter and not appropriate for inclusion in its pronouncements on conflict management; yet it was a conflict that was internationalised by the government for many years as it sought political and financial support and solutions. Certainly many lessons have been learned that can be shared with others, but it would be a mistake to think that the conflict on its own doorstep has been totally transformed and therefore does not merit further articulation from a policy perspective. Similarly, Smith highlights how the UK does not, as such, have a peacebuilding policy, but rather ‘a plethora of statements about aspects of their policy approaches’,⁵⁷ again placing it firmly within the international development cooperation arena and again making no reference whatsoever to the conflict on its doorstep in Northern Ireland. As shall be seen later, this has had serious implications for conflict transformation practice in the region.

Research methodologies

The book develops its theoretical framework through the exploration of current debates on conflict transformation, focusing primarily on the theoretical contributions of Johan Galtung and John Paul Lederach (particularly his interdependence, justice and process–structure gap theories), creating a number of criteria against which the three programmes are assessed. A large number of semi-structured interviews were conducted across the complete range of Lederach’s peacebuilding pyramid (see chapter 1), including individuals involved as project promoters who implemented projects funded by the programmes (normally) at a grassroots level (Track III actors); those at the middle level, involved in implementing and managing the tools (Track II actors); and those at the top level, politicians (Track I actors), some of whom were involved (unusually) in project promotion or in programme implementation, management and policy development.⁵⁸ There was an abundance of actors to interview regarding the Peace programmes due to their recent and widespread nature, with fewer actors familiar with the IFI. Serious difficulties in this regard related to the INTERREG programmes: actors with direct experience of INTERREG I and II, such as staff, have since moved on and institutional memory has been lost in the process as programme activity had long ceased, while the Special EU Programmes Body (SEUPB) staff who manage INTERREG IIIA and IV have no knowledge of these previous programmes. Moreover, activity spread generated by INTERREG was not as widespread as that of Peace. Additionally, some interviewees presented difficulties through their lack of understanding of conflict transformation, understanding conflict transformation as conflict resolution, reflecting the definitional and conceptual morass surrounding the field.

This book also draws on my own experience as a project promoter in the Border Counties and on a cross-border basis for almost fifteen years with the IFI, Peace I, II and III and INTERREG I and II. Lederach views this as the universal sharing of the personal, noting that:

In the professional world of writing, we view with caution, even suspicion, the appearance of the personal, and lend a higher accent of legitimacy to models and skills, theory, well-documented case studies, and the technical application of theory that leads toward what we feel is the objectivity of conclusion and proposal. In the process, we do a disservice to our professions, to the building of theory and practice, to the public, and ultimately to ourselves.⁵⁹

Bearing in mind the tenuous relationship between practice, research and theory to date and difficulties in accurately assessing the transformational impacts of individual projects or, indeed, an individual conflict transformation tool or process, it is in this spirit that the ‘personal’ is utilized.

Understanding conflict transformation through social and economic development in this region requires an understanding of the effects of the conflict on social and economic development on both sides of the border. Two data sources are therefore needed – raw data and statistics in terms of the economy, unemployment, educational disadvantage, social exclusion and poverty combined with an analysis of the conflict’s effects on these issues.⁶⁰ Raw data is abundantly available from a range of official sources including the Censuses of Populations North and South and various government departments and agencies, supported by deprivation indicators for Northern Ireland (Noble indicators)⁶¹ and the Republic (Haase indicators).⁶² However, in trying to understand the effects of the conflict on social and economic development, it must be remembered that in some respects the nature of the divided society (both within Northern Ireland and across two jurisdictions) makes this difficult to measure with accuracy. In the Northern Ireland context, for example, the Census of Population provides a lot of information. However, unlike the Republic of Ireland, where the Census takes place every five years, with a full range of variables recorded every ten, thus providing a consistently comprehensive overview of the population on that side of the border, the Northern Ireland Census is only carried out every ten years.⁶³ At critical times it is not even possible to make direct comparisons as, for example, in relation to the Northern Ireland Census, there were extensive changes made to definitions between the 1971 and 1981 censuses, while many simply did not answer the questions posed (e.g. those relating to religion), estimated at up to 74,000 for the 1981 Census.

Cook et al. provide a comprehensive discussion of the problems associated with the various data sources currently available on both sides of the border, the difficulties surrounding the conceptual distinction between the terms poverty, deprivation and social exclusion, the problems with multiple deprivation indices and the spatial framework; they conclude, however, that ‘the only feasible sources of information for a comparative study, even within either of the two jurisdictions, are the small area data derived from the census of population’.⁶⁴ The obvious limitation in using this approach in one jurisdiction is that one is confined to using the variables for which census data is available. In drawing a comparison between two jurisdictions, the limitations are multiplied. One of the main problems identified by Cook et al. is that of the non-overlap of specifics, whereby ‘even when both censuses provide information on the same topic, the way in which the information is classified or presented may inhibit direct comparisons’.⁶⁵ The Peace III documentation also highlights this problem.⁶⁶ Ultimately this does not bode well for translating theory into practice; Hillyard et al., experienced researchers in this field, have found that ‘at the basic level of social and economic data, comparisons between North and South, and between specific parts of Northern Ireland and the South, such as border areas, are still not readily and routinely available to inform the policy process’.⁶⁷ Nevertheless, using multiple information sources and research methods went some way towards overcoming this difficulty.

Conclusion

This book is concerned with providing greater conceptual and theoretical clarification of conflict transformation, specifically from a social and economic perspective. It seeks to examine the practical lessons learned in Northern Ireland and the Border Counties and their consequent impacts and implications for practice, with the aim of making a number of practice-based recommendations for other regions emerging from violent conflict. It aims to integrate theory and practice by linking reflections on practical experience with conceptual ideas from the current debates on conflict transformation. By combining this with a theoretical framework, a deepened understanding of conflict transformation and an expanded assessment of the impacts of the three tools will be provided. It argues that deep structural violence remains, and while the nature of the three programmes ensured that valuable grassroots capacity has been equally as instrumental as mid-level actors in delivering and sustaining conflict transformation, particularly where the political has failed, tools such as these are limited in what they can achieve on their own.