Brokering Peace: Networks, Legitimacy, and the Northern Ireland Peace Process1

Abstract

Goddard, Stacie E. (2012) Brokering Peace: Networks, Legitimacy, and the Northern Ireland Peace Process. International Studies Quarterly, doi: 10.1111/j.1468‐2478.2012.00737.x © 2012 International Studies Association After over 20 years of fighting in Northern Ireland, the Belfast Agreement of 1998 has successfully implemented a power‐sharing agreement. Belfast was not the first attempt at a peaceful settlement; indeed, some scholars count as many as seven prior peace attempts in Northern Ireland, the most significant being the Sunningdale Agreement of 1973. Why was it that politicians successfully negotiated the peace in 1998, while these prior attempts failed? Drawing from social network theory, I argue that the Belfast Agreement succeeded, not because of a change of interests or disappearance of spoilers, but because of the presence of brokers at the bargaining table. Brokers, in particular, have the capacity to legitimate settlements—to frame settlements in such a way that they appear consistent with principles held by multiple coalitions. As a result, brokers are both more likely to build a winning coalition for a settlement, as well as marginalize spoilers who seek to undermine the peace.

The Challenges of Powersharing in Implementing the Good Friday Agreement: Twenty-Five Years of Intermittent Shared Governance

“…During negotiations and after the Agreement was signed, Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness worked diligently to convince fellow Republicans of the need to eschew violence and take the road to peace promised by the GFA (Owsiak 2017). Thus, Goddard (2012) claims that the presence of "brokers" was critical to undermining spoilers in the Northern Ireland peace process. Despite the effective marginalization of po-tential spoilers in the Republican community, it is important to recognize that the threat of future violence has not been eliminated.…”

Interlocking peace processes: Between competing and complementing peacemaking efforts in interlocking conflicts

“…It serves as a step of recognition (Greenhill, 2008), addressing fundamental symbolic and identity-related aspects of the conflict. The progress in the focal conflict’s peacemaking process greatly assists decision-makers in the secondary conflict in achieving domestic and regional legitimacy (Bar-Siman-Tov, 1994; Goddard, 2012) for a peace policy, as a significant barrier in the conflict was dissolved.…”

Brokerage from within: A conceptual framework

“…Anthropologists and other social scientists have also explored brokerage within the fields of global intelligence (Schaffer et al, 2009), human rights (Merry, 2006), knowledge and space (Dotti and Spithoven, 2017; Murphy, 1981), the migration industry (Alpes, 2013;Kern and Müller-Boeker, 2015;Röschenthaler, 2017;Spaan, 1994), transnational movements and border crossings (De Jong, 2018;Lindquist et al, 2012), people smuggling (Faist, 2014) as well as business and transnational trade, especially in China (Mann, 1984;Xiao and Tsui, 2007) and in the trade between China and African countries (Cissé, 2015;Haugen, 2018;Marfaing and Thiel, 2015;Mathews, 2015). Other recent fields of brokerage include studies on activism and peace brokers (Bräuchler, 2019;Goddard, 2012), political and power brokers (Bøås, 2012;Hönke and Müller, 2018;Münch and Veit, 2017), brokers of property and real estate (James, 2011;Reeves, 2016), the global surrogacy market (Whittaker, 2018), marriage brokerage (Min and Eades, 1995;Song, 2015) and stock brokerage (Hertz, 1998). Given such a broad variety, our contributions can certainly only cover parts of the thematic and regional spectrum.…”