Intervening in Northern Ireland: Critically Re-Thinking Representations of the Conflict by Marysia Zalewski & John Barry

Author:Marysia Zalewski & John Barry [Zalewski, Marysia & Barry, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138973169
Google: ZRQ-jwEACAAJ
Amazon: B00IOPW6FK
Barnesnoble: B00IOPW6FK
Goodreads: 25832199
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2007-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Public Institutions, Overlapping Consensus and Trust

CIARÁN O'KELLY

Introduction

As Zalewski (2006: 481) states, the aim of this volume is to ‘critically question the constitution of “a problem” which appears in need of “solving”’ in Northern Ireland. Zalewski argues that ‘scholarly work on the conflict in Northern Ireland is largely produced through a specific intellectual framework – one primarily founded on the premises of positivist methodologies and liberal ideologies’ (Zalewski 2006: 481). This essay acts as a counter-point to some of the points made in Zalewski's and other essays. I argue that liberal political theory has a limited but nevertheless important contribution to make to discussions of Northern Ireland, identifying the normative dispositions that people must possess if stable public institutions are to be formed and maintained. A Rawlsian overlapping consensus comprising these dispositions is necessary for the maintenance of public institutions. That is, Rawls's ‘political sociology’, the observations that make up the starting point for his political liberalism, hold in Northern Ireland as they do elsewhere although a Rawlsian consensus will act as a foundation for institutions only where the environment is conducive.

People must trust that such a consensus, if it were arrived at, would be genuine and general and that, when they take the risk of lending allegiance to public institutions, they will not discover that other participants in the consensus had intended to cheat.1 The overlapping consensus, in other words, is necessary but not sufficient for the formation and maintenance of public institutions. A consensus on various political values can circumvent people's distinctive positions, say, on questions of national identity, but it is only possible if people believe that the overlapping consensus exists.

Northern Ireland's political woes are not entirely rooted in factors accessible to liberal or other sources of moral and political theory. The region suffers from a tragic political dynamic, namely, that although a general consensus on how society ought to be shaped exists, it is not translated into the formation of actual political institutions because people do not trust the statements of others as to their willingness to participate in them. The risks of cooperation remain too high.

I argue that theory cannot, in the end, provide definitive solutions to political conflict. Moral dispositions and recommendations as to the content of formal institutions are in themselves insufficient to lead peoples to resolve their problems. Instead, they must engage in the difficult work of building institutions and, hopefully but not definitely, will arrive at a position where public institutions can be maintained.

Northern Ireland undoubtedly presents an interesting case for political theorists to test their positions. O'Neill's neo-Habermasian position (O'Neill 2000, 2002, 2003) and O'Flynn's liberal egalitarian position (O'Flynn 2003), for instance, suggest some theoretical stances that might provide guidance towards the resolution of the conflict and the development of stable politics in the region. For Newey (Newey 2002) and Little (Little 2003), by contrast, Northern Ireland is grist to their more sceptical mills: proof of the limitations of (certain sorts of) theory. Nevertheless, all, in different ways, hold to the

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