| Despite its many fits and starts the Good Friday peace process seems to have what many of its contemporaries lack, a broad base support from people on both sides of the divide. I argue that this broad base of support stems from specific events and policies that impacted the everyday lives of the general population. These policies have widened the role choices available to both Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland, allowing them greater latitude in daily action and self-identification. This greater latitude in self-identification leads to changes in behaviors and attitudes towards out-groups. I believe that it is this combination that creates the conditions of popular support for a long and difficult peace process seeking to resolve deep-rooted social conflicts. And I believe that a better understanding of which events and policies are effective and which are not can help guide both policy makers and concerned citizens in other troubled parts of the world. My analysis shows which policies were perceived as the most significant by the general population, how these policies significantly changed the environment leading to opportunities for identity-widening and how behaviors and attitudes have changed as a result. This work has implications for our understanding of the success or failure of peace processes, our understanding of the nature of identity transformation and the creation of sub-national or supra-national identities and for our understanding of the nature of conflict transformation and peace-building. Data for this study was drawn from a series of grass-roots level interviews, content and discourse analyses of nearly 1,800 newspaper editorials and longitudinal analyses of eleven years of province-wide attitude surveys. |
