Northern Ireland and the political economy of peace: neo-liberalism and the end of the Troubles

Abstract

Since the outbreak of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the conflict has been mainly analytically understood in terms of ethno-nationalism and competing identities. However, as this thesis argues, economics have played a crucial role in the instances of violence in Ireland, and after partition, in Northern Ireland. With every development of the economy, from rural, to industrial and to social democratic, the complexity and intensity of violence shifted, but never disappeared. The current shift, the transformation to neo-liberalism, is the only conjuncture that has not adhered to this pattern. This thesis argues that the resolution to the long-standing conflict in Northern Ireland is primarily caused by the new material conditions, generated by the neo-liberal globalisation of that economy. The thesis re-examines the theoretical debates on the conflict through this globalisation framework to reveal how the Catholic community and its political representatives have embraced the new material discourse and its form of governance, therein making the previous debates on the intractability of the Northern Ireland conflict a product of a historic moment, where economics, civil rights and state power were discriminatory barriers to the full integration of the Catholic population. The changed conditions are not reducible to mere economic global forces but these were essential to breaking down the historic impasse.