The Strengths and Limitations of the Inclusion of Religious Actors in Peace Processes in Northern Ireland and Bosnia and Herzegovina

Kmec, Vladimír; Ganiel, Gladys

doi:10.1163/15718069-24011143

Cited by 8 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 31 publications

(18 reference statements)

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“…As well as advocating for peace, religious leaders have equally used their platforms to incite violence against others. Kmec and Ganiel (2019) discuss the strengths in including religious actors at grass-roots level, while noting the limitations when they were included in 'track one' negotiations during peace-building processes in Northern Ireland, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Sterland and Beauclerk (2008: iii) highlight the 'remarkably few faith-based or faith-led peace-building initiatives being carried out in the Balkans' and that the most prominent attempts to stimulate interfaith peace concentrated only on establishing formal leadership-level Inter-Religious Councils in former Yugoslavian Republic countries, with an unknown impact on the wider communities.…”

Section: Working With Faith or Belief-based Actors For Peace (Positiv...mentioning

confidence: 99%

What About Us? Global Perspectives on Redressing Religious Inequalities

2022

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How can we make religious equality a reality for those on the margins of society and politics? This book is about the individual and collective struggles of the religiously marginalised to be recognised and their inequalities, religious or otherwise, redressed. It is also about the efforts of civil society, governments, multilateral actors, and scholars to promote freedom of religion or belief (FoRB) whatever shape they take. The actors and contexts that feature in this book are as diverse as health workers in Israel, local education authorities in Nigeria, indigenous movements in India, Uganda, or South Africa, and multilateral actors such as the Islamic Development Bank in Sudan and the World Bank in Pakistan. Some of the case studies engage with development discourses and narratives or are undertaken by development actors, while other cases operate completely outside the international development paradigm. These case studies present some important insights, which while highly relevant for their contexts also draw out important insights for academics, practitioners, activists, and others who have an interest in redressing religious inequalities for socioeconomically marginalised populations.

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Section: Working With Faith or Belief-based Actors For Peace (Positiv...mentioning

confidence: 99%

What About Us? Global Perspectives on Redressing Religious Inequalities

2022

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“…This broad call for inclusive processes without defining how, why, and for whom, has prompted mediation scholars to theorize different rationales for inclusive peace processes (Hirblinger and Landau 2020). These rationales exist on a spectrum, ranging from the strategic inclusion of armed actors for reasons related to durable peace agreements (Nilsson 2012), a need for power sharing (Raffoul 2020), and incentives for actors identified as spoilers (Blaydes and de Maio 2010; Zahar 2010; Nilsson and Söderberg Kovacs 2011); to the inclusion of civil society (Wanis St‐John and Kew 2008)—particularly women (Lorentzen 2020), youth (Grizelj 2019), religious leaders (Kmec and Ganiel 2019), and business actors (Alluri 2013)—for normative imperatives of empowerment and rights‐based participation.…”

Section: The Normative Turn In Conflict Resolution: the Third Generation Of Track Two Theory?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward a Normative Turn in Track Two Diplomacy? A Review of the Literature

Federer¹

2021

Negotiation Journal

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Almost six decades since the emergence of Track Two diplomacy, a form of informal and unofficial dialogues between conflicting parties facilitated by scholar‐practitioners, scholarship on the field has grown exponentially. Originally conceived of as a discreet complement to Track One official negotiations between armed actors in conflict, Track Two has become an established and professionalized form of broader conflict resolution. Specific scholarship on Track Two has occupied the liminal space between theory and practice, in which theoretical propositions are often born out of observations from practical applications in empirical cases. Analyzing how Track Two theories reflect these paradigms can give greater insights into the theoretical evolution of the field and where it is headed. This begets a need to regularly and systematically survey the relevant literature on Track Two given the large‐scale changes occurring in its practice. This article discusses the evolution of Track Two theories as embedded in conflict resolution paradigms, namely, strategic bargaining and problem solving; conflict transformation; and liberal and post‐liberal peacebuilding. In particular, I focus on how the recent "normative turn" in conflict resolution literature has impacted Track Two scholarship. Following the analytical framework of a mediation process applied to Track Two scholarship, I organize relevant literature into “generations” and compare what are identified as the main constitutive components of a Track Two initiative in order to understand how the theories have evolved in this second generation of literature. My analysis finds that conceptions of Track Two have moved from “narrow” to “broad”: influenced by a normative imperative toward more inclusive and participatory peace processes in conflict resolution, activities labeled as Track Two have expanded from small, discreet dialogues between unofficial actors to include more robust forms of civil society inclusion and participation.

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“…I introduce you to some of the initiatives he was involved with, arguing that they contributed to wider political, social, and religious changes. Throughout, I emphasize how Reynolds's effectiveness as a change-agent was linked with his embeddedness in the Catholic Church, due to the legitimacy and connections this gave him (see also Kmec and Ganiel 2019).…”

Section: Importance Of Historically-dominant Religious Institutionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Power from the Periphery?

Ganiel

2019

JBASR

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This article develops the concept of ‘extra-institutional religion,’ which was first introduced in the 2016 book Transforming Post-Catholic Ireland. It describes how the author’s research for a biography of Fr Gerry Reynolds, a Redemptorist based in Belfast’s Clonard Monastery during the Troubles, helped advance the concept by fostering insight into the importance of links between faith-inspired activists and institutional religion. It also develops the concept’s theoretical potential, arguing that it may be well-placed to contribute to wider change by balancing two paradoxical structural strengths: its position on the peripheries of religious, social, and political life; and its continued links with institutional religion. It relates these structural strengths to theoretical literature on religion and civil society (which alerts us to how change can emerge from the peripheries); and Grace Davie and Abby Day’s work on European religion (which alerts us to the continued importance of historically dominant religious institutions). It then describes how Reynolds’s activism was enhanced by the legitimacy and connections that came with his embeddedness in the Catholic Church. Examples include his work with Fr Alec Reid facilitating secret political negotiations during the Troubles; and public ecumenical initiatives like the Cornerstone Community, the Unity Pilgrims, and In Joyful Hope. While Reynolds was not practising extra-institutional religion, his example advances this concept by demonstrating that for faith-inspired activists, maintaining solid links with institutional religion may be more important for sparking change than was originally argued in Transforming Post-Catholic Ireland.

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The Strengths and Limitations of the Inclusion of Religious Actors in Peace Processes in Northern Ireland and Bosnia and Herzegovina

Cited by 8 publications

References 31 publications

What About Us? Global Perspectives on Redressing Religious Inequalities

What About Us? Global Perspectives on Redressing Religious Inequalities

Toward a Normative Turn in Track Two Diplomacy? A Review of the Literature

Power from the Periphery?

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