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Guest post by Sabine Carey, Marcela Ibáñez, and Eline Drury Løvlien
On April 10, 1998, various political parties in Northern Ireland, Great Britain, and the Republic of Ireland signed a peace deal ending decades of violent conflict. Twenty-five years later, the Good Friday Agreement remains an example of complex but successful peace negotiations that ended the conflict era known as The Troubles.
Since the agreement, Northern Ireland has experienced a sharp decline in violence. But sectarian divisions continue as a constant feature in everyday life. Peace walls remain in many cities, separating predominantly Catholic nationalists from predominantly Protestant unionist and loyalist neighborhoods. Brexit and the Northern Ireland protocol increased tensions between the previously warring communities, leading to an upsurge in sectarian violence, which has been a great cause of concern.
In March 2022, we conducted an online survey to understand attitudes toward sectarianism among Northern Ireland’s adult population. Our results show that sectarianism continues to impact perceptions and attitudes in Northern Ireland. The continued presence of paramilitaries is still a divisive issue that follows not just sectarian lines but also has a strong gender component.
Our findings show that the pattern of who identifies as Unionist or Nationalist closely resembles the patterns of who reports having a Protestant or Catholic background. Unionists prefer a closer political union with Great Britain and are predominantly Protestant, Nationalists are overwhelmingly Catholic and are in favor of joining the Republic of Ireland.
Catholic and Nationalist identities appear to have a greater salience for the post-agreement generations than for older generations who lived through the Troubles. For Protestant and Unionist respondents, the opposite is the case, as religious background and community affiliation have a higher salience among older groups, particularly among men. Among the adults we surveyed, for men the modal age of those identifying as Unionists is 58 years, for women it is 46.
When asked about the greatest problem facing Northern Ireland today, sectarianism still features strongly among both communities. Today, the fault lines of the conflict seem to resonate more with those from a Catholic background than with those from a Protestant background. While Protestants were predominantly concerned with poverty and crime, among Catholics sectarianism emerged most often as the greatest concern. Just over 50 percent of Catholic respondents mentioned an aspect relating to the Troubles (sectarianism or paramilitaries) as the greatest problem today, compared to only 39 percent of Protestant respondents. Most Protestant respondents selected Brexit and the Northern Ireland Protocol as the greatest problem, reflecting concerns of the Protestant community discussed in a Political Violence At A Glance post from 2021.
To what extent does economic status drive concerns? Those who see themselves as belonging to a lower-income group were more likely to identify poverty and unemployment as the greatest problem. Concerns about sectarianism and (former) paramilitary groups appeared most prevalent among those who placed themselves in the high-income group.
The continued presence of Loyalist and Republican paramilitaries is a noticeable feature in post-conflict Northern Ireland. While they are predominantly associated with violence and crime, some view them as a source of security and stability. While our findings show that concerns about paramilitaries were more prevalent among high-income earners, the perception of paramilitaries has a significant gender component. Nearly 50 percent of male Catholic respondents attributed a controlling influence to paramilitaries in their area. And while most of them saw these groups as a source of fear and intimidation, 32 percent agreed that the paramilitaries kept their local area safe. But only 5 percent of female Catholic respondents felt similarly. This difference is not as stark between female and male Protestant respondents. Both groups were substantially less likely than male Catholics to consider paramilitary groups as a source of safety.
Different perceptions of armed groups by gender are not unique to Northern Ireland. A 2014 study on Colombia found significant differences between female and male perceptions of post-conflict politics and participation. Although there were no substantial gender differences in the overall support for the peace process in Colombia, female respondents reported higher levels of distrust and skepticism toward demobilization, forgiveness, and reconciliation and higher disapproval of the political participation of former FARC members. The effect was even greater for mothers and women victimized during the conflict.
Violent attacks have dampened the anniversary celebration of the peace agreement and 25 years of relative stability. The recent injury of a police detective by an IRA splinter group, reports of paramilitary-style attacks and the use of petrol bombs against the police, coupled with turf battles between Ulster factions are continuous reminders of the presence and power that paramilitary organizations still hold across Northern Ireland. Even today, communities are kept under siege through violence and ransom. The formal termination of violent conflicts through peace agreements, as in the case of the Good Friday Agreement and other prominent examples such as the 2016 Colombian Peace Accord, does not automatically imply the disbandment of armed organizations. The impact of the presence of (former) armed groups in people’s daily lives continues to be high in most post-conflict contexts.
Findings from surveys in other post-conflict environments mirror this long shadow of war. A study of Croat and Serbian youths showed the continued impact of the Yugoslav Wars on ethnic group identities and how continued communal segregation impacts inter-group ethnic attitudes towards out-groups. A recent study finds that a decade after the civil war in Sri Lanka people from previously warring sides have very different views of peace and security. Respondents who belong to the defeated minority ethnic group, the Tamils, provided a more negative assessment of security and ethnic relations than those from the victorious majority, the Sinhalese. They also reported seeing irregular armed groups in a more protective role rather than a threatening one, when they encountered them, as we show here. And in many post-war countries, it’s the police who threaten peace, as discussed in this post. A study on Liberia found that experiences during the war continued to impact perceptions of the police afterwards. Victims of rebel violence were later more trusting of the police, while victims of state-perpetrated violence were not.
Much research is rightly concerned about how to avoid the conflict trap. Yet even countries that avoid falling back into full-scale civil war oftentimes do not offer adequate security and peace for all groups of their civilian population. Continued vigilance of unequal experiences and perceptions of security are necessary to work towards meaningful and lasting peace.
Sabine C. Carey is Professor of Political Science at University of Mannheim. Marcela Ibáñez is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Chair of Political Economy and Development at the University of Zurich. Eline Drury Løvlien is Associate Professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Department of Teacher Education.
This work was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) via the Collaborative Research Center 884 “Political Economy of Reforms” at the University of Mannheim.
Guest post by Oren Samet and Susan Hyde
Western governments today spend billions on international democracy promotion programming, from election support to civic education initiatives. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, this aid was associated with significant democratic development around the world. But the winds have since shifted.
Not only has backsliding among established democracies become a concern, but dictators have gotten better at resisting the forces of democratization and keeping themselves in power, including by erecting barriers to democracy assistance. Democracy promoters have had to adapt to this new reality, increasingly embracing non-confrontational programming that avoids challenging regimes directly.
Many such programs, particularly those that focus on civic education and participation, are designed to operate in contexts that are already democratizing or at least where regimes are genuinely open to reform. When applied to more entrenched authoritarian systems, however, these programs face a potential dilemma. Recognizing the legitimizing value of democratic processes both at home and abroad, dictators may try to leverage the presence of democracy promotion to bolster their own position, using it to provide a veneer of democratic legitimacy to undermine public demand for genuine democratization.
In this new environment, as barriers to programming increase and democratic progress slows, can traditional tools of democracy assistance be effective? And as authoritarian regimes entrench themselves globally and seek to burnish their “democratic” credentials, could democracy promotion efforts be doing more harm than good?
In a recently published article, we suggest that there may be hope yet for democracy promotion—but it’s important to dial back expectations. Citizen-focused initiatives—even in autocracies—can still impart important building blocks of democratic culture, including civic knowledge and demands for accountability. Democracy promotion efforts no longer possess as much promise of bringing down dictators or forging pathways to rapid democratization—arguably, they never did. But the effects on individual citizens are still beneficial. Perhaps even more importantly, we find little evidence of democracy promotion’s potential to be coopted by regimes.
Our study examined the effects of a real-world town hall-style initiative by a major international democracy promotion organization, which brought members of parliament to meet with their constituents in rural Cambodia. The goal was to empower citizens with knowledge and awareness to demand greater responsiveness from their elected representatives. It was similar to programming run in many countries, but Cambodia’s political context made it especially tricky.
Cambodia is an electoral authoritarian regime where the head of government, Prime Minister Hun Sen, has been in power for decades. Billed as an international post-conflict success story in the 1990s, by the early 2000s, Cambodia’s democratic progress had stalled, and recent years have seen the solidification of a durable dictatorship. Hun Sen and his Cambodian People’s Party repeatedly went after the political opposition and limited space for free expression. All the while, the regime sought to emphasize its democratic bona fides by focusing on the procedurally democratic aspects of the system—elections, parliamentary processes, and legal codes—despite the fact that these institutions are far from democratic in practice.
In such an environment, it’s reasonable to have concerns that democracy promotion may be manipulated to serve autocratic interests. But our findings suggest that—at least with respect to the domestic public—this may be more difficult than it sounds. Although the program we studied increased interest and willingness to engage with the existing system, citizens who participated were not swayed into believing that Cambodia was a functioning democracy. Instead, they maintained a healthy skepticism about the regime’s authoritarian nature, while gaining an appreciation for the value of opposition parties and professing an increased willingness to take actions like signing a petition or contacting elected officials.
Our results echo findings from studies of similar initiatives in other countries, including fragile emerging democracies and post-conflict settings like Mali, Liberia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Many of these programs were found to foster greater public knowledge, political efficacy, and demands for accountability. But the fact that such programming can have similar effects in a place like Cambodia, even amidst the added hurdle of more authoritarian constraints, is noteworthy.
Since the program we examined was carried out, the Cambodian regime has taken a sharp turn further from democracy, dissolving the country’s main opposition party and expelling prominent democracy promotion organizations in 2017. It’s tempting, given these developments, to suggest that the resources devoted to democracy promotion were wasted. But such an assessment ignores effects on individual citizens. While democracy promotion programs were not able to deter the regime from anti-democratic moves, political change can be hard to predict. Should a democratic opening re-emerge in the future, citizens will be more equipped to take advantage of it.
Our findings suggest that—despite the difficulties of working in autocratic environments and the broader challenges democracy faces globally—democracy promotion is still both possible and beneficial in electoral authoritarian regimes. When carried out effectively, its ability to foster a more engaged and informed citizenry does not necessarily come at the expense of a public blind to the autocratic nature of its government or the need for democratic change. This represents a potentially hopeful sign for policymakers and practitioners.
In a 2021 speech, USAID Administrator Samantha Power highlighted the need to “reinvent” the playbook on democracy promotion globally. But while a rethink is certainly in order given worldwide shifts, traditional tools, including programs designed to promote civic awareness and engagement, remain useful components of the toolbox.
Oren Samet is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the University of California, Berkeley, and a dissertation fellow at the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation. Susan D. Hyde is Robson Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, and a research affiliate with the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation Future of Democracy initiative.
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