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A Spiral of Peace:
Competition, Monopoly and Diversification in the Market for Political
Violence in Northern Ireland
John Paul Sawyer1
START Fellow
Doctoral Candidate
Department of Government
Georgetown University
[email protected]
What makes Northern Ireland such an intriguing case for studying conflict resolution is the
fact that there were two substantively major, very similar peace agreements, but it took 25
additional years of violence, death and destruction before the second one was able to end the
Troubles. There are several largely symbolic differences between the two agreements, but
the failure of the first and success of the second has much more to do with the changes in
structural conditions than the actual terms of the two agreements. The exclusion of the
paramilitaries from, even antipathy toward, the power-sharing arrangements in 1973-4 meant
they had no incentive to cooperate by ending the violence, whereas their deliberate inclusion
in the 1990s produced a workable peace. Why, then, were the paramilitaries willing to enter
into the successful negotiations of 1998 when the fruits of the negotiation were just as limited
as in 1973?
I argue that enduring conflicts, like the Troubles, may end when the opposing communities
become united behind monopolistic violent political organizations (VPOs) which see greater
profitability in the cessation of violence than in its continuance. Without this monopoly of
political violence, the community speaks with multiple voices and rivals can disrupt or spoil
any progress towards peace made by other VPOs, which makes negotiating a lasting, stable
settlement extremely difficult. This is hardly a new observation, but the novelty of the
approach below lays in its application of economic theory to the production of political
violence within a political market. Such an analysis also produces the possibility of spirals of
1
A paper prepared for the Mitchell Conference, Queen’s University-Belfast, 22-23 May,
2008.This research was supported by the United States Department of Homeland Security
through the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism
(START), grant number N00140510629. However, any opinions, findings, and conclusions
or recommendations in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect
views of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
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peace, wherein monopolist VPOs can manage a transition to peace by manipulating the
supply and demand for both violent and non-violent political action.
The remainder of the paper is divided into three sections and a conclusion. First, an analysis
of the terms and implementation of the two peace agreements reveals the strong similarities
and relatively minor differences between them. Second, I review the existing explanations
for why peace was “ripe” in 1998 but was not earlier. Third, I introduce and apply economic
models to explain the importance of monopoly over violence in generating the political
conditions necessary for a peace process to emerge. Finally, I conclude with ways this new
analytical model can give insight into the prospects for peace in intractable conflicts and
policies that may encourage their end.
The Sunningdale Agreement:
The Sunningdale Agreement of 9 December 1973 built off of the reform programme
introduced in earlier British governmental policy papers to establish the benchmarks for all
future peace talks in Northern Ireland, yet failed to inspire confidence within either the
Republican or Loyalist communities. Moderate Unionists joined with the moderate Catholic
Social Democrat and Labour Party (SDLP) and moderate non-sectarian Alliance Party to
pitch a dual platform of reforms that would ensure Northern Ireland’s union with Britain but
would afford Catholics more rights and a political voice. The Unionist Party immediately
split over this issue and after a few months of steady political decline, the Sunningdale
executive collapsed amidst a massive Unionist labour strike that crippled the entire province.
On 20 March 1973, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland William Whitelaw issued the
White Paper, calling for a sweeping reform of government in Northern Ireland and
acknowledging a need for the Republic to have some say in the conflict’s resolution. It
reaffirmed the British government’s promise made in 1949 that any change in the
constitutional status of Northern Ireland would only be as a result of the will of the majority,
but it also offered a number of concessions to the Catholics. He proposed the formation of a
new devolved power-sharing government, called an “Executive,” which guaranteed the
Catholics a significant say in regional governance. Also, he recommended abolition of the
Oath of Allegiance, which would allow nationalists to enter into government without
compromising themselves politically and ideologically by having to recognise the British
sovereign. More importantly, capitulating to SDLP demands, he introduced the Irish
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Dimension into British considerations. This meant that the United Kingdom recognised that
the Republic had a legitimate interest in the affairs of Northern Ireland. To facilitate this
cross-partition interaction, a Council of Ireland was proposed wherein representatives of both
governments would coordinate pertinent policy.
The Unionist Party almost immediately split, as William Craig broke away to form the
Vanguard Unionist Progressive Party (VUPP) in opposition. This action was made more
threatening to the peace by the Ulster Defence Association’s (UDA) announcement that it
threw its support to the VUPP. However, the excessively violent labour strike of 7 February
1973 organised by Craig, the UDA, and the Loyalist Association of Workers (LAW) to
protest the internment of Loyalist militants had done much to alienate the Protestant
community from the extremists. Three Loyalist paramilitaries were shot dead, two by the
army, one by the IRA. Worse in terms of Loyalist public relations, a Protestant fireman who
was trying to put out a fire was killed by Loyalist gunmen. Thus, by mid-1973, the majority
of both communities appeared to support this new conceptualization of government.
Whitelaw moved quickly to implement his suggested reforms. On the face of it, the situation
was dramatically improving. In January, Sinn Fein had declared a boycott of local council
elections, which led to major SDLP victories, including the mayorship of Derry. These
victories established it as the representative party of the Nationalist community in the
subsequent negotiations. The reduction of internment in general and the internment of
Protestants both helped to increase the support for a political solution within the Nationalist
community. Furthermore, the increased success in tracking down and arresting IRA agitators
on both sides of the border seemed to be seriously undermining the power of the radical
Republicans. On 28 June, elections were held for a new Stormont Assembly, wherein the
SDLP won 22% of the vote, earning a fifth of the seats, despite IRA pressure to boycott the
vote. The new Constitution became law on 18 July.
Despite these positive indications, the movement toward political reconciliation was far from
smooth or assured. The first half of the Whitelaw initiative was to create a viable powersharing Executive. The second was the formation of the Council of Ireland, which proved
even more contentious than the Executive. On 21 November, after ten hours of negotiation,
representatives of the Ulster Unionist Party, the SDLP, and the Alliance Party worked out the
logistics of the coalition. Brian Faulkner (UUP) would be Chief Executive, while Gerry Fitt
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(SDLP) would act as his deputy. This agreement was greeted with high praise by the Heath
government in Westminster, but the Unionists split yet again, leaving Faulkner increasingly
isolated. Despite his power base crumbling beneath him, Faulkner proceeded to work out
plans for the Council of Ireland at the Civil Service Staff College at Sunningdale in the
beginning of December, which produced the Sunningdale Agreement of 9 December.
The Sunningdale Agreement contained two essential institutional reforms that reduced the
Unionist monopoly over the political apparatus in Northern Ireland, but also included pledges
from both the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom that partition could not be ended
without majority consent in the North. The agreement sought to give Catholics a greater say
in Northern Irish politics at two different levels. First, it locked in the power-sharing
arrangement that had already been agreed upon with the reinstitution of a devolved Northern
Irish government in Stormont. Thus, the Unionists held on to a majority position, but the
Catholics had a considerably larger say in the running of government than they had under the
previous gerrymandered system. Second, the Republic of Ireland would be given an
increased role in the politics of the North through the creation of the Council of Ireland. This
Council of Ireland had two elements: a 14-person executive council evenly divided between
ministers from the Republic and the North and a 60-person assembly with half elected by the
Dail (the Irish parliament) and half by the Northern Irish Assembly. The Council’s mandate
was somewhat vague but was primarily intended to promote harmonization of economic and
social policies on both sides of the border, including a consultative authority on selections to
the Police Authority (Tonge 2000:43). However, the threat this supranational body posed to
Unionism was limited by the need for unanimity for the executive council to make any
decisions.
Additionally, the Council of Ministers of the Council of Ireland was to have consultative
power over the police authorities in both jurisdictions. Both sides recognised that effective
and fair law enforcement was not possible without a comprehensive island-wide set of
policies. To support this cooperation, the Agreement also included a commitment to create a
common law-enforcement area, which would allow individuals to be prosecuted in domestic
courts for certain crimes committed in the other state’s jurisdiction as well as by a newly
formulated all-Ireland court system.
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Despite repeated assurances by both national governments – in the document itself and in
support of the agreement – that the question of ending partition was off the table until and
unless a majority in the North agreed to it, many Unionists felt betrayed by Sunningdale. The
sense of disillusionment was exacerbated by the Boland Case, in which the Southern courts
accepted the government’s argument that the Agreement was solely an acknowledgement of
the current de facto reality and did not constitute a revocation of the Republic’s constitutional
future claim to sovereignty over the North (Tonge 2000).
Similarly, because of these assurances about majority consent, the agreement was viewed as a
betrayal of the core Republican stance that partition was inherently illegitimate and thus nonnegotiable. In response, paramilitaries on both sides, but especially Loyalist, increased the
level of violence to undermine political support for the agreement (Rose 1999:142). Figure 1
demonstrates the significant up-tick in violence by paramilitaries during efforts by the
moderates to form, then solidify, the Sunningdale Agreement. Loyalists launched 37 attacks
and killed 80 people between December 1973 and May 1974, including a series of blasts in
Dublin that killed 33 on 17 May, and Republicans launched 71 attacks and killed 74 people in
that same period.
Loyalist Attacks and Fatalities
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
1973
8
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1974
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Republican Attacks and Fatalities
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40
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30
25
20
15
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0
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9
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1974
Figure 12
While the entire concept of power-sharing repelled many hard-line Unionists, it was the
Council of Ireland that precipitated the split within Unionism that forced Faulkner to resign
and form a new party, the Unionist Party of Northern Ireland (UPNI). Faulkner’s weakened
position was further eroded by the overwhelming victory by the anti-Sunningdale United
Ulster Unionist Council (a coalition of UUP, Vanguard, and DUP) in the snap elections
called by Prime Minister Edward Heath in February 1974. Nevertheless, Faulkner was
determined to try to make the power-sharing executive work until his government was finally
brought down by the province-wide Ulster Workers’ Council (UWC) strikes, which were
backed by the Loyalist paramilitaries, the following May.
It is somewhat ironic that an agreement reached by moderates within the two communities
had the effect of unifying the extremists against it. The Provisional’s Republican News
praised the UWC strike as “progressive and socialist, with the capability of uniting the
working-class ‘in the Wolfe Tone tradition” (Tonge 2000:44). The pattern of attacks in
Figure 1 seems to demonstrate that the Republicans increased their violence much earlier in
the peace process, which likely drove the reactive up-tick in Loyalist violence culminating in
the bloodshed surrounding the UWC strikes. Continued Republican violence communicated
the inability of the SDLP to deliver peace to the Unionist community, which undermined the
2
All statistics on violence in this paper are drawn from the Global Terrorism Database (GTD1). Black indicate
number of attacks, red indicates number of fatalities.
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tentative support of many for the peace deal and increased support for Loyalist paramilitary
action.
While the militants in both communities successfully scuttled the Agreement, the terms of
Sunningdale heavily influenced all future peace talks, including the 1985 Anglo-Irish
Agreement and, more importantly, the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. The failure of
Sunningdale demonstrated the ability of the extremists to undermine the peace process and
thus the need to include them in a significant role.
The Good Friday Agreement:
The Good Friday Agreement differed from the earlier Sunningdale Agreement in a few
respects, but was essentially the same political compromise: a power-sharing government
with significant input from both the British and Irish governments. However, it is important
to note that there were several key differences in the details and structure of the latter peace
process. First, and most importantly, the paramilitaries on both sides were included in the
negotiations. Second, the GFA included more stringent obligations for both the ROI and UK
to respect the majority opinion in Northern Ireland regarding the end of partition. Third,
structural changes resulting from the integration of Europe and the end of the Cold War
created a political space in which compromise was more possible, including an active role for
the United States as a reasonably objective, third-party mediator. Nevertheless, the terms of
the agreement are nearly identical with the establishment of a devolved power-sharing
executive (Strand One) and a North-South Ministerial Council (Strand Two), albeit with the
addition of a British-Irish Council linking the ROI and UK (Strand Three).
The Good Friday Agreement (GFA) was the product of a lengthy and often shaky peace
process punctuated by paramilitary violence on both sides. The IRA began serious secret
negotiations for ending the conflict as early as 1988, but the decision by SDLP leader John
Hume to meet with Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams for a series of talks in 1993 is widely
heralded as the defining moment in the Republican turn to peace. This event coincided with
efforts being made at the national level between the ROI and UK that produced the Downing
Street Declaration outlining the structure for a peaceful settlement. The following year, the
IRA declared a unilateral ceasefire to provide political space for the peace process to develop.
In 1995, the two governments published the Joint Framework document. Yet, following
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apparent intransigence and unwillingness to negotiate by the Major-led Conservative British
government, the IRA resumed the conflict in 1996 after a 17-month ceasefire. After
considerable pressure from US President Bill Clinton to advance the peace process, the Blairled Labour government, elected in 1997, adopted a much more open policy that allowed the
paramilitaries to have a place at the negotiating table.
The actual terms of the GFA incorporate the two strands of Sunningdale, add a third
dimension of Anglo-Irish cooperation, and solidify the guarantees for both minority and
majority rights. Strand One called for the creation of an unusually large legislative assembly
in Northern Ireland (108 seats) whose members would be elected by proportional
representation. These Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) would then elect the
executive according to the d’Hondt mechanism. This method tends to disadvantage small
parties, but it also ensures rough parity between Unionists and Nationalists within the Cabinet
even after the population ratio shifts in favour of Catholics (Beggan & Indurthy 2002;
Horowitz 2002). However, this cabinet selection model carries some risks because the
parties are essentially able to pick the ministers whose primary loyalty lies with serving the
party’s interests rather than the collective government’s (Horowitz 2002). To overcome the
possibility that the ‘opposition’ might become institutionalised within the cabinet through
obstructionist or particularist policies, the First Minister and his deputy, one from each
community, are jointly elected by the whole assembly bound by the same rules designed to
bolster moderate positions. The Assembly must pass legislation according to mutual consent
between the two communities, i.e. 60% of all votes plus at least 40% of votes within each
community (the “60-40-40 rule”). Thus, both within the assembly and the executive, both
Unionists and Nationalists could readily veto policies they vociferously opposed, but the bar
was high enough that fringe extremists could not readily disrupt the process.
Strand Two revives the idea of the Council of Ireland with the creation of the North-South
Ministerial Council. The purpose of this Ministerial Council is to coordinate issues of mutual
concern for both North and South through the regular and formal exchange and discussion of
information. The top government ministers in both Dublin and Belfast are to meet regularly
and consider active service in this Council to be an integral part of the ministerial job
portfolio. If anything, the vision of this Council was a far weaker body than had been
proposed in 1973 (Dixon 2001). Decisions must be made by consensus and thus one side
cannot unilaterally bind the other. Moreover, the issue areas the Council is meant to address
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are relatively innocuous: agriculture, education, transport, environment, welfare, tourism,
marine matters, health and economic development.
Strand Three builds upon the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985 to promote a more cooperative
relationship between the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom directly. The GFA
established the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference (BIIC) to replace Anglo-Irish
Intergovernmental Council and Conference of 1985 as well as a British-Irish Council (BIC).
The BIC includes representatives from both national governments as well as representatives
from the devolved governments within the UK, e.g. Isle of Man, Scotland, etc., who, on the
basis of consent, can coordinate policies to their mutual benefit. The actual purview of the
BIC is exceptionally vague. In contrast the BIIC, specifically mentions keeping Dublin
informed about non-devolved issues that affect Northern Ireland, namely rights, justice,
prison, policing and security policies. In addition, both governments reiterated their
obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights and committed to setting up
both public and private institutions to monitor and guarantee individual rights in the North.
Additionally, the GFA incorporates much stronger commitments to the principle of Northern
Irish self-determination while simultaneously increasing the protection of particular rights.
One of the first parts of the Agreement is a section on draft language for both the Dail and
parliament to pass that would replace each one’s claim of sovereignty over the North with a
commitment to majority consent within the North. There are also provisions for both public
and independent commissions to monitor specific civil, political and economic rights.
The GFA built off of the substance of prior peace negotiations, but had one major difference
from these earlier attempts. Rather than focus on building a coalition of moderates across
sectarian lines, the GFA explicitly included a prominent role for the extremists in both
communities (Horowitz 2002). After the failure of Sunningdale and other failed attempts to
marginalise Sinn Fein, it was apparent that the groups that controlled the violence had to buy
into the peace process and so must be included in the negotiations. Despite this simple logic,
the decision was hardly uncontroversial and the inclusion of Sinn Fein has been the
touchstone of post-GFA instability in the governance of Northern Ireland (Beggan &
Indurthy 2002; Hayes & McAllister 2002; Coakley 2003; Wolff 2002). Given that the other
parties to the negotiations were largely responsive to the moves of Sinn Fein (and the IRA),
the analysis below will focus on why the Republican extremists were willing and able to
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deliver a transition to peaceful politics.3 However, it is important to note, as Figure 2
demonstrates, that the violence produced by both Loyalists and Republicans was an order of
magnitude less during the 1990s peace process than that surrounding Sunningdale, and there
were months on end with no or just sporadic violence. Clearly, the paramilitaries on both
sides, while often stubborn and unwilling to give up violence completely, bought into the
peace process and were not keen to undermine it unduly.4
Loyalist Attacks and Fatalities
14
12
10
8
6
4
9
10
11
12
10
11
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1996
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1995
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1994
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1997
Republican Attacks and Fatalities
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25
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1994
1995
1996
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1997
Figure 2
3
Clearly, the state governments of the Republic of Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States as well as
sub-state actors have individual motivations and interests beyond merely reacting to the actions and words of
Irish Republicans. However, this model makes the simple assumption that if Republicans had ceased agitating
for a 32-County Republic earlier, both major state repression and paramilitary violence would have become
moot. As such, it makes no normative claims about the legitimacy or responsibility of any parties to the
conflict.
4
Although inter-communal violence was severely reduced, it appears there may have been an increase in intracommunal violence in this time period.
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Explaining Northern Ireland’s 1998 Ripeness for Peace
Given that the GFA has been called “Sunningdale for slow learners”,5 what explains the
learning process that allowed the same essential agreement to work in 1998 that failed in
1973? There are a number of explanations of how the context in which the struggle changed
over 25 years and, as a result, why the paramilitaries were willing to support the peace
process. First, as a result of over three decades of violence not producing any significant
progress for either party, both communities were simply tired of the killing and preferred
political means of conflict. The mutual exhaustion produced by a long-term hurting stalemate
made finding an alternative solution necessary (Zartman 1989). Second, the international
structural changes of the end of the Cold War and the integration of Europe fundamentally
altered the costs and benefits of continuing the violence. The US was free to pursue less
encumbered foreign policy because of its unipolar moment and the threat to both
communities was reduced by changes in sovereignty norms and economic development
within the European Union. Third, the turn to peace could not have happened without the
Republican leadership clique surrounding Gerry Adams, who were able to negotiate the
rocky shoals of the peace process to gradually deliver the support of a previously hostile and
uncompromising Republican base. Yet, as I demonstrate below, each of these theories
individually fails to fully explain the timing and success of the GFA.
One major explanation for the success of the GFA is that the decline in support for extremist
positions in both communities created the political space needed for more moderate voices to
be heard. Between 1969 and 1998, well over 3,200 people were killed and countless millions
of pounds worth of damage was done as part of the Troubles. The futility of continuing the
bloodshed was increasingly obvious and is reflected in a number of opinion polls. By the
early 1990s, both the Republicans and the British government openly admitted that they
could not defeat the other militarily and there needed to be some sort of political solution.
Thus, they were stuck in a hurting stalemate and the public was caught in the middle. The
resulting softening of extremist communal identity is apparent in a survey taken in 1996: only
28% admitted a nationalist sympathy, while only 17% had a unionist sympathy – the
remaining 55% refused to admit sympathy for either position (Horowitz 2002). However, the
5
Generally first attributed to Seamus Mallon of the SDLP.
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most telling statistic for this softening argument is the 71% of voters in the North who
supported the GFA in a referendum.
Yet this apparent change in support may be less compelling than it seems on its face. Hayes
& McAllister (2001) note that the experience of violence has the effect of encouraging
support for more violence rather reducing it. They also demonstrate that while there is a
sharp decline from the peak in 1978 for both communities, the levels of support in 1998 were
still higher after a drastic reduction in violence than it was in 1973, the year after the most
intense violence of the Troubles. Thus, the GFA succeeded while Sunningdale failed despite
the fact that support for violence was apparently higher from both Catholics and Protestants.
Arguably, there may have been more open opposition to paramilitary violence in the 1990s,
but crude measures of war weariness are insufficient to explain this puzzle. Even if the data
were more compelling, if the conflict really has gone “soft”, there should be less fear of
majoritarian political structures and inter- or non-ethnic parties like Alliance should have
done far better than they have (Horowitz 2002:200). However, the strongest criticism of this
explanation is the fact that it lacks predictive power and provides no insight into the timing of
conflict termination.
Beyond simple war weariness, many of the social and economic reasons for paramilitary
support had significantly declined in importance since the mid-1960s. Many of the structural
injustices against Catholics in the North had already been resolved, while the Catholic and
economically underdeveloped South had gradually become less inhospitable to Protestants.
Moreover, the economic growth of the Celtic Tiger and the European integration project
increased cross-border interactions and eased fears of the North being separated from an
advanced industrial economy in favour of a backwards agrarian one. Paralleling the economic
explosion in the South, the North experienced sharp economic growth in the mid-1990s,
coupled with a significant decline in unemployment (Wolff 2002:105). The European
Community (EC) and, later, European Union (EU) contributed fairly heavily to the economic
and political development of both parts of Ireland. Perhaps more significantly, the nationalist
and unionist members of the European parliament had to cooperate to maximise the benefit to
both their communities at home, which may have contributed to future cooperation in the
peace process (Racioppi & O’Sullivan See 2007).
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The EC/EU also provided forums for the national governments of the United Kingdom and
Republic of Ireland to develop more cooperative policies that somewhat lessened the political
significance of Third Strand arrangements.6 But perhaps the greatest contribution of
European integration is the effect it has had on the norm of sovereignty (Stevenson 1998,
Hayward 2003). As European states ceded elements of their sovereignty, the importance of
the state seems to have declined somewhat. European identity is more malleable and
accepting of diversity than strictly nationalist identities. Thus, if Northern Ireland is equally
integrated into the economies of the South and the UK and is restricted by the same EU rules
and norms protecting the rights of both the minority and majority, does it really matter which
state nominally controls the territory? Furthermore, the expansion of rights afforded citizens
of other EU countries made the dual nationality portion of the GFA much more viable from at
least a bureaucratic standpoint.
Yet there are a number of limitations to using European integration to explain the turn to
peace in 1998. Dixon (2006) points out that the EC had nothing to do with the decision to
sign the Sunningdale Agreement, indicating that there were underlying processes driving the
peace. The same year Gerry Adams began to move toward a pan-nationalist front, Guelke
(1988) observed that this integration had not transcended sectarian nationalism, but merely
internationalised the issue of Northern Ireland. More significantly, the groups that were able
to usher in the peace, most notably Sinn Fein and the DUP, are strong and enduring Euroskeptics who have opposed the integration project from the beginning. Their hostility to the
European project appears to contradict the belief that EU integration was pivotal in sustaining
and stabilizing the peace.
Another structural explanation focuses on the effect of the end of the Cold War. The fall of
the Soviet Union ushered in a unipolar moment when the United States could pursue a more
liberated foreign policy (Krauthammer 1990). As a result, the special relationship with
Britain became less vitally important for national security and President Bill Clinton was able
to put additional pressure on Westminster to make concessions. He sent a special peace
envoy, former Sen. George Mitchell, who was “one of the central features of the talks
process” (Coakley 2003:42). Also, the decision to grant Gerry Adams access to the United
6
This European dimension was not always cooperative and was often quite conflictual. For example, the
Republic of Ireland brought suit against the United Kingdom before the European Commission and European
Court on Human Rights over British security policies in Northern Ireland.
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States and, more controversially, to the White House helped legitimise Sinn Fein as a valid
negotiating partner. Yet this narrative is somewhat contrived because it ignores the
continuities within British, Irish, and American policies over the previous three decades
(Dixon 2006). The Americans had previously expressed an interest in helping to settle the
Northern Ireland issue, but were always cautious about not wanting to make things worse.
More fundamentally, the British had been trying to gradually disengage since the beginning
of the Troubles, so the American intervention did not substantively shift British policy. This
lack of a real effect is most visible in the fact that the terms of the GFA are so similar to
Sunningdale.
A third type of explanation focuses on the role of leadership in ending enduring conflict. As
applied to the Northern Ireland case, the Republican leadership was able to manipulate and
guide their resistant community into the peace. An experienced reporter on the Troubles,
Suzanne Breen argues that “[f]rom the start, this peace process has been leadership, not grass
roots driven. That is both its greatest strength and weakness” (2002:7). Ed Moloney, another
well-respected journalist, traces the beginnings of the peace process to the rise of a clique
surrounding Gerry Adams within the Provisional movement (2002). He argues that this
group saw the futility of the armed struggle as early as the mid-1970s but had to carefully
guide the rest of the movement toward their point of view without splitting the movement.
Indeed, the adoption of non-violent, electoral politics is what caused the major splits of the
IRA in 1921 and 1969 and the Adams clique’s moves in this direction led to two much
smaller splits in 1986 and 1997. In 1983, Adams assumed the presidency of Sinn Fein and
almost immediately sent a letter to the Catholic Church suggesting a broader nationalist front,
which Bishop Cahal Daly declined (Hennessy 2000). Despite this rebuff, Adams continued
his moderating efforts and had consolidated sufficient support for ending abstentionism (at
least in the Dail) by 1986. After recognizing the difficulties the Republican violence was
causing for Sinn Fein’s electoral success, Adams noted in 1988 that “there is no military
solution, none at all” and urged the movement to consider alternative means (Taylor
1997:353). Pruitt (2007) argues that these sorts of public admissions make for poor military
tactics, thus indicate a genuine desire for peace well in advance of the public peace processes
of the 1990s.
While the role of Adams and his fellow travelers is undeniably important and their ability to
deliver a mostly intact Republican movement to the peace is highly commendable,
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explanations that emphasise the leadership element suffer from two major flaws. First, it is
very difficult to create a generalisable theory that adds understanding to other conflicts.
Second, it does not explain the permissive environment that allowed them to change strategy.
A leader that goes too far ahead of his or her constituency will have great difficulty in
guiding the whole group along the chosen path.
These various explanations offer differing accounts of the role of structure and agency in
driving change toward accepting peace, but a full explanation requires both elements. The
agent is inherently limited by the available options within the system, and while systems tend
to be sticky and difficult to change, with the appropriate vision and skills, the agent can
sometimes transform the system.
Economic Analysis of Political Markets
As shown above, the most common and seemingly persuasive explanations for why the peace
process was successful in the 1990s but not earlier are insufficient. Instead, I offer a new
economic analytical approach that provides insight into both the structural limitations and
strategic decisions that violent political organizations choose. This approach assumes that
individuals exchange political support for goods and services that advance their preferred
political agenda in a way that approximates a political market. Both political parties and
violent political organizations (VPOs) produce these goods in order to gain political power
just as firms produce economic goods in exchange for financial profit.7 Admittedly, this type
of analysis may be difficult to quantify because political support has both material and nonmaterial components. Nevertheless, such an approach not only provides a coherent structure
for the elements that have been proposed above, but it also highlights the role of competitive
strategies.
Mia Bloom’s (2005) theory of outbidding highlighted the role of competition between violent
groups to explain suicide terrorism. Bloom argued that these groups turn to an extreme form
of violence under three conditions: 1. when the community is permissive of this form of
violence, 2. when other methods have failed, and 3. when there are multiple groups vying for
7
A useful example that lies somewhere between standard economics and this economic view of political
markets is the use of violence for illicit commercial purposes. A criminal or drug gang may employ violence
entrepreneurs or violence specialists in order to drive rivals out of the local market and maximize profitability
and power. Thus, it literally purchases the violence to further its larger strategic aims.
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the support of the same constituent population. For her, the violence of suicide terrorism not
only acts to coerce the enemy toward political concessions, but it also is the means of
attracting popular support within one’s community as the most dedicated to “the cause”.
However, given the dynamics she puts forward, there is no reason this competitive effect
should be limited to just suicide terrorism. All political groups that use violence should
theoretically be beholden to a constituency whose support they need to survive in an
otherwise hostile environment so as to influence/coerce the broader political agenda.
Although Bloom merely implies this, the outbidding effect stands in contrast to a monopolistcontrolled market, which would, ceteris paribus, produce less violence as seen in Figure 3. A
producer maximises its profits at the point where marginal revenue equals marginal costs, i.e.
at the point where any additional units would produce greater additional costs than benefits.
Thus, a monopolist can maximise its profits or political power by producing a lower amount
of violence (QM) than it would under competitive situations (QC).
Competition vs. Monopoly
Marginal
Cost
PM
Political
Support
Average
Revenue/
Demand
PC
Marginal
Revenue
QM
QC
Violence
Figure 3
While her theory clearly draws on very basic economic concepts, she does not cite any works
on economics and, as a result, it is not thoroughly developed. Most critically, her outbidding
theory lacks a nuanced understanding of a competitive economic environment. Where she
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points to the number of groups as the sole determinant of competition, I draw on the Five
Forces of Competition introduced by Michael Porter (1998) as a rigorous means of measuring
the level of market competition and illuminating the strategic implications of different types
of competition.8
Porter’s Competitive Forces
Potential Entrants
Threat of new
entrants
Industry Competitors
Bargaining power
of suppliers
Bargaining power
of buyers
Suppliers
Buyers
Rivalry Among Existing Firms
Threat of substitute
products or services
Substitutes
Figure 4
Porter argues that a firm must make strategic decisions based on the full competitive
environment, taking into account the bargaining power of buyers and sellers, the possibility
of new entrants to the market, the effect of substitute goods, and the interaction it has with
other firms in the market. Most significant for this paper are the elements in the vertical
column of Figure 4: the threat of new entrants from splintering, the relationship of existing
paramilitaries, and the role of substitute goods, such as non-violent political activity.
Buyer/Supplier Bargaining Power:
A buyer of political goods is an individual who exchanges his or her support for the political
good being produced. In contrast, a supplier is an entity that provides the material
capabilities necessary to actually produce the good. For example, suppliers to a VPO would
8
Bloom has a number of critics who cite instances of groups like the LTTE in Sri Lanka or al Qaeda who use
suicide terrorism despite the lack of competition (Pape 2005, Pedahzur 2005, Sanchez-Cuenca 2006, Goodwin
2006, Hoffman 2007). However, they share Blooms misconceptualization of competition as solely the number
of peer rivals. I posit that if one applies a more nuanced economic analysis, these problems should be resolved.
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include arms dealers, providers of safe havens, etc. Within the market of political violence,
buyers have extremely little bargaining power, but suppliers may have quite a bit.9 Given the
way the market is modelled, buyers are diffuse, and so lack the coordination necessary to
engage in bargaining.10 In contrast, most VPOs are extremely sensitive to the needs and
demands of their suppliers. Although many weapons can be manufactured from everyday
items, the source of more sophisticated weapons, such as plastic explosives, may be much
more limited. If the relationship is an extended one, these suppliers may require the group to
adopt or proscribe certain strategies to ensure future deliveries. Similarly, if one includes
labour as a supplier, the degree to which it is organised is also very important. If the rankand-file members can make demands of the leadership outside the chain-of-command, they
may be able to force through their preferred strategy. For example, the abandonment of
peace talks often results from this sort of grassroots pressure.
Threat of Substitute Goods:
Substitute products are those that “can perform the same function as the product of the
industry” (Porter 1998: 23). A perfect substitute is one that can be used interchangeably with
the product without any cost or loss of value to the consumer. However, the range of
substitutes is much broader and can include a number of products that more or less function
similarly to the product in question. For example, Coca-Cola and Pepsi are near perfect
substitutes whereas a bicycle and an automobile are potentially substitutable under certain
conditions. However, most perfect substitutes are goods produced within the same industry
and so would simply be included as part of the market analysis. The effect of substitutes on
market competition is instead focused on imperfect substitutes produced by other firms
outside the industry in question.
The reason substitute goods matter is because the relative price associated with the substitute
provides a strong limitation to the profitability of the product in question. In other words,
9
This statement in no way diminishes the importance of demand in driving terrorist behavior, but rather implies
that this demand is communicated in a free market manner. Buyers/constituents for the most part lack an
organization that can enhance their power beyond their free market capabilities. Also, it may make sense to
partially combine buyers and suppliers in this analysis of terrorism because there is often a significant overlap
between those who politically support and those who materially support a given group.
10
Arguably, a strong media can be an organized consumer that can wield considerable leverage over the VPOs’
activities. However, the media has a much more immediate effect by shaping individuals’ perceptions and
support or opposition for violence, thus influencing the slope and magnitude of demand.
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when there is large amount of good A being produced at a low price, which is a very close
substitute for the more expensive good B, most consumers will opt for good A. Even if B is
not a close substitute, if the price differential exceeds the costs associated with switching to
good A, at least some consumers are likely to make that switch. Thus, the demand for
substitute goods are inversely related, although not necessarily strictly collinear.
In the current conceptualization of the market for political violence, different forms
(bombings, shootings, kidnappings, etc.) and targets (civilian, politicians, soldiers, children,
etc.) of violence are considered to form a bundle of such close substitutes that they are
essentially the same product. Thus, a substitute good would be something that is a nonviolent activity that supports or furthers the group’s stated political or social goal.11 For
example, this may include peace marches or participation within the existing political system.
This substitutability would indicate that as political violence goes up, the demand for nonviolent politics will go down and vice versa.
Rivalry between Existing Firms
Rivalry between existing firms is the strategic interaction between firms jockeying for power.
This is what most people think of when they discuss competition as firms engage in
behaviors they believe will lead to an edge that will provide greater profitability. Almost
invariably,
competitive moves by one firm have noticeable effects on its competitors and
thus may incite retaliation or efforts to counter the move…This pattern of
action and reaction may or may not leave the initiating firm and the industry as
a whole better off. If moves and countermoves escalate, then all firms in the
industry may suffer and be worse off than before. (Porter 1998: 17)
Within this rivalry, there are two basic strategies: expand production or differentiate oneself.
The first is often self-defeating as rivals match the behavior and saturate the market, driving
the price down. The second are limited by the sensitivity of the consumer to relatively minor
11
Although this did not exist in Northern Ireland, an alternative understanding of substitute goods for one
VPO’s violence might also include political violence pursued by another kind of VPO, i.e. non-constituent, that
simultaneously advances the first group’s political/social goals as well as its own. For example, Catalan and
Basque separatists both increase the pressure on the Spanish government to make concessions toward
independence or autonomy, and if it does so for one, it would be more likely to grant it to the other.
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differences between different firms’ products and the ability of others to mimic these
differences. The suicide terrorism that results from Bloom’s outbidding mechanism can be
viewed as a crude form of “branding” behavior within a competitive market, wherein groups
attempt to distinguish their violence from the very similar products of rivals. However, if
multiple groups use suicide terrorism, the differentiation benefit is eliminated, and the groups
must maximise their revenues by increasing production to the competitive market level.
There are a number of structural elements that regulate the level of rivalry between firms.
First, a market is likely to be unstable, i.e. highly competitive, if there are a large number of
firms or at least several roughly equal peer competitors. Uncertainty plays a significant role
in these situations and conflict is more likely. In contrast, if the market is highly
concentrated, “the leader or leaders can impose discipline as well as play a coordinative role
in the industry” (Porter 1998: 18). This is a classic example of resolving the collective action
problem by reducing the number of players to improve coordination capabilities (Olson
1965).
Second, if the industry is not rapidly growing, the consideration turns from absolute gains to
relative gains and market share becomes the predominant issue. Newly-formed markets may
have much higher growth rates as individuals become radicalised by the actions and reactions
of the VPOs and the state. However, with some possible exceptions, the size of a mature
market for political violence tends to be relatively fixed.
Third, high fixed costs often push firms to maximise production in order to minimise
marginal costs. VPOs may have extremely high fixed costs as a result of having to maintain
secrecy regardless of the amount of violence they produce. Similarly, mere membership in a
VPO is often a proscribed activity that carries criminal penalties regardless of the actual
commission of any criminal acts to further the organization’s interests.
Fourth, when there are large economies of scale, i.e. marginal costs shrink as production
increases, supply may cycle between over- and under-production. Firms will produce a lot of
the product at once, then stockpile the excess if possible and only resume production once it
becomes profitable to do so again. Perhaps this side-effect of economy of scale helps to
explain the interesting finding that suicide terrorism tends to take place within the context of
campaigns (Pape 2005) or the more general finding of cyclic patterns in international
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terrorism (Enders & Sandler 2006). Such groups may find that the mobilization process
necessary for terrorism – especially suicide terrorism – is both difficult to start and to turn
off, thus they must switch back and forth between overproduction and underproduction of
violence.
Finally, if there are high barriers to exit, groups will continue to produce in the market even if
it is no longer profitable to do so. “Rather, they grimly hang on and, because of their
weakness, have to resort to extreme tactics” (Porter 1998: 21). These exit barriers certainly
exist for many VPOs. First, the legal consequences of producing violence do not disappear
even after a group has ceased those activities, unless the government elects to provide
amnesty. Second, there are psychological barriers to walking away from sunk costs – if a
VPO member has killed for “the cause”, he or she may not be able to walk away without
accepting some personal responsibility and guilt for those deaths. Third, if the individual has
spent most of his or her adult life in the group, he or she may lack other skills that would be
useful in a civilian industry.
In addition to the structural determinants of rivalry, one must also examine the strategic
interaction between organizations. Before any firm can choose its ideal strategy, it must have
a good idea of what its peer rivals are likely to do in response. To increase violence output
and gain more political support may look attractive on its face, but if all the other VPOs
match or exceed production in response it will drive down everyone’s political support. In
order to avoid such self-defeating moves, the strategic firm must know its competitors current
strategy but also assess the future goals, assumptions, and capabilities of its competitors in
order to predict likely future moves (Porter 1998:67).
Threat of New Entrants
Bruce Greenwald and Judd Kahn (2005) drastically simplify Porter’s analytical model by
arguing that in most markets, threat of entry is the strongest determinant of competition. A
standard rule of thumb in economics is that when a firm earns large profits, others will be
attracted by this excess and will set up shop to capture some of the surplus. In the long-run,
this increased competition leads to zero profitability. This could mean the creation of a new
VPO, the splitting of an existing group, or the strategic alliance/merger of an existing group
with another political party or VPO. Porter defines the level of new entry threat as a measure
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of both the barriers to entry and expected reaction of existing firms. Structural barriers to
entry include the high costs of clandestinely setting up and arming a new VPO while reactive
barriers include attempts to physical attack and/or wipe out a new rival. If there are no
structural barriers and no credible reactive barriers, market players will have to behave as
though the market is more competitive than it appears in order to reduce the allure of market
entry.
Two structural barriers worth noting within a market for political violence are the production
cost advantages that come from experience and government policy. Whereas a new entrant
will may have to expose itself to interdiction by the state or a rival in order to find access to
materials, manpower, safe houses, etc. in order to produce violence, enduring VPOs generally
have already developed proprietary technology and/or methods that give it an advantage over
competitors in effectively resisting counterterrorism efforts. Similarly, political violence is an
inherently risky task and some elements are more dangerous than others. For example, a
novice bomb-maker is much more likely to seriously injure or kill himself and possibly others
than a master engineer who has rigged thousands already. The value of experience extends to
the strategic and tactical decision-making of a terrorist leadership, who probably have a better
understanding of the capabilities and weaknesses of the state, the competitors, and their own
organization. However, this type of information or capability is not protected in the same
way the economically proprietary technologies are. There are no externally enforceable
patents; rather, each group must enforce its own secrecy and ensure information security. As
a result, defection of members to another group are especially dangerous and damaging and
VPOs will likely rely on reactive barriers to prevent them from leaving.
The final structural barrier to entry is government policy. In a pure economic model,
governments may be able to significantly shrink or even completely shut down select markets
through extreme regulation or taxation. In a market for political violence, a state’s counterterror policy can affect overall production costs across the entire market or it can be targeted
against a select group or groups. For example, the state may want to crush all violent
resistance or it may especially target a Marxist-oriented group through heavy-handed policies
while being much more tolerant of a religious VPO. In addition, the government may
intervene in the relationship between groups to force each to adopt a more competitive
strategy. It can plant false rumors or commit acts that undermine cooperation in the name of
one of the active or a new group in order to sow confusion and also try to get members of
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groups to desert. Thus, the importance of government policy in shaping the size and scope of
terrorist activity cannot be overstated.
Irish Republican Competition
This market analysis is particularly germane to the study of Republican political activity, both
violent and non-violent, because in the Northern Ireland context, “the decision whether or not
to use constitutional or extraconstitutional methods is less a moral one than a matter of
expediency and practicality; if violence is seen to have the greatest chance of achieving the
required political goals, then it will be utilised” (Hayes & McAllister 2001: 912). The
structural conditions and resulting payoff calculations for these substitute goods within Irish
Republicanism clearly changed between 1973 and 1998. In 1973, there was significant threat
of reentry into the market by the Official IRA or at least a splinter of it. Moreover, there was
strong support for the paramilitaries and very little support for Republican political activity –
but at least some sense of threat from the substitute politics of the SDLP. In contrast,
following the taste of electoral success in the 1981 Hunger Strikes, the Provisional movement
had cultured a significant political machine that was an independent source of political
power. Most importantly, the IRA had established a monopolistic position in the market of
violence with its violence disbandment of the IPLO in 1992.
After the experience of two major and bloody splits within Irish Republicanism over the issue
of abstentionism in 1921 and 1969, there was very little sympathy within the Provisional
movement for engaging in political activities. Not surprisingly, the leadership of the
movement responded to these preferences by relegating Provisional Sinn Fein to a secondary
position below the Provisional IRA and refusing to engage in electoral politics. Instead, they
ceded the nationalist non-violent political space to the Social Democratic Labour Party
(SDLP), although, with only a few exceptions, they tended to undermine the SDLP by
consistently encouraging boycotts of the elections. Their hostile view of “constitutional”
politics was reinforced over the next decade by watching the Officials and their various
splinter groups steadily decline and abandon their Republican roots in favour Marxism.
However, the electoral success of Provisional hunger-striker Bobby Sands, who was elected
to Westminster parliament in 1981, caused a reevaluation of politics.
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Gerry Adams orchestrated a major change in Sinn Fein’s abstentionist policy in 1986. As a
result, representatives elected to the Dail in Dublin would start to take their seat and engage
in constitutional politics. According to traditional Republican ideology, the Irish government
in the South is as illegitimate as the British one in the North and this decision caused a
relatively minor split. Rory O’Brady, a member of the old guard who had been PIRA Chief
of Staff, led a walk-out, but only a fairly small minority left with him to form the Republican
Sinn Fein (RSF). However, this change in policy allowed the Provisionals to gradually
develop the skills and political machinery necessary to compete successfully in national
elections in both the North and South that would prove important later during the peace
process. Adams was thus able to begin a process that both increased demand for non-violent
Republican political activity and, through valuable experience, lower the production costs of
the same.
1973 Non-Violence Market
Marginal
Cost
Political
Support
Marginal
Revenue
Average
Revenue/
Demand
Political Activity
1980s Non-Violence Market
Marginal
Cost 1
Political
Support
Marginal
Cost 2
P2
Demand 2
P1
Demand 1
Q1
Q2
Political Activity
Figure 5
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In the market for political violence, the optimism of the previous two years that the
Republican paramilitaries could force the British Army out of Northern Ireland had already
begun to fade by 1973. The Northern Irish and British governments had imposed a number
of counter-terror policies that made production of violence more difficult and costly. First,
while the 1971 decision to begin internment without trial had driven up support for the
Republican paramilitaries and was initially been poorly applied, it was a useful tool for
disrupting ongoing operations. However, much more significant was the ending of
Republican-controlled no-go areas in 1972. The loss of safe bases where the paramilitaries
could plan, equip, and launch attacks drastically increased the cost of these attacks and not
surprisingly caused a noticeable drop-off in the amount of violence they produced.
The public relations disaster resulting from the killing of a Catholic priest, a gardener, and
five cooking ladies in the Aldershot Barracks bombing and the murder of Ranger William
Best, a Catholic home on leave from the British Army, caused the Official IRA to declare a
ceasefire in 1972. The political costs of violence production as a result of the apparent
incompetence of the Officials simply made continuing the violence unprofitable. This
ceasefire turned into a permanent ceasefire that has only sporadically, but never officially,
been broken. However, in the immediate aftermath of the ceasefire, there was considerable
pressure within the Official IRA to resume armed conflict. Many of these more militant
members subsequently coalesced behind Seamus Costello and split to form the Irish National
Liberation Army (INLA) and Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP) in the end of 1974.
When that split turned into a bloody feud, the Provisionals were happy to stand by and let
their ideological enemies kill each other. Thus, despite the appearances that the Provisionals
were the only group active in the market, the threat of entry by a group that would likely
adopt an extremely competitive strategy meant that the Provisionals could not act in a
monopolistic fashion in 1973 and produced at QC rather than QM in Figure 6.12
Alternatively, the Provisional IRA may have strategically decided to increase the level of
violence beyond the competitive point (QS), in a move akin to the business strategy of
“dumping”. By flooding the market with extra violence for a short-term loss, they were able
12
It is important to note that although the Provisionals were the only Republican group officially active, there
were at least two attacks by the Officials and two more by unidentified Republican extremists during the
Sunningdale period, killing six people. In contrast, the Provisionals killed 61 people in 67 attacks. (GTD1)
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to undermine the position of the SDLP in the non-violent market, thus protecting their share
of the overall power-base within the Republican community.
1973 Violence Market
Marginal
Cost
PM
Political
Support
PC
Average
Revenue/
Demand
PS
Marginal
Revenue
QM
QC QS
Violence
1980s Violence Market
Marginal
Cost
Political
Support P2M
P1
P2
Demand 1
Demand 2
Q2M
Q2
Q1
Violence
Figure 6
The early 1980s was a period of very limited competition for the IRA. The INLA had
essentially flamed out with a spurt of violence in 1982, but that quickly fell to negligible
levels by the following year. Following the ascendancy of Gerry Adams to the leadership of
the Provisional movement in 1983 and subsequent development of non-violent political
capabilities, there was a noticeable decline in the overall Republican demand for violence and
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the number of attacks dropped precipitously until 1986. At that point, the IRA had to
increase its violence production to ward off two competitive threats. First, they wanted to
prevent a split within the IRA to match the split in Sinn Fein. Second, the INLA engaged in a
bitter feud in 1986/87 that produced an extremist faction that was more willing to engage in
pure sectarian violence, which took the name of the Irish People’s Liberation Organization
(IPLO). Thus, the increased supply of a substitute in the form of Sinn Fein political activity
in the mid-1980s produced a demand shift for violence that led to lower violence. However,
the increased competitive environment following the 1986 split led to a return to
approximately 1983 levels of violence.
1992 marked the crucial turning point in the Provisional IRA’s relationship with other
Republican paramilitaries that allowed a mostly united Republican movement to deliver the
GFA in 1998. While the Provisionals had long been the most prominent violent actors within
the Republican movement, it was not until the forcible disbandment of the feuding IPLO
factions in November that it truly established its dominance. Bloody feuds were hardly a new
phenomenon in Northern Ireland, but this was the first Republican feud that was ended by a
third party with violence rather than mediation. The Provisionals had stood by in 1975 when
the Officials and the Republican Socialists tore themselves apart. Similarly, in 1987, when
the INLA engaged in a vicious internal bloodletting, the Provisionals remained essentially
neutral. However, in 1992, after weeks of increasingly hostile propaganda and calls for the
IPLO to disband, the Provisionals engaged in a sweeping, geographically dispersed operation
targeting both IPLO factions in what has come to be called “The Night of Long Knives.”
Within a matter of days, both the IPLO-Army Council and the IPLO-Belfast Brigade had
‘voluntarily’ disbanded in exchange for an amnesty by the Provisionals. This sent a very
clear signal to militants about the dim prospects for future entry and that the IRA had the
capability and the will to defend its monopoly position.
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1990s Violence Market
Marginal
Cost
Political
Support
P2M
P1
P2
Demand 1
Demand 2
Q2M
Q2
Q1
Violence
1990s Non-Violence Market
Marginal
Cost 1
Marginal
Cost 2
Political
Support P
1
P2
Demand 2
Demand 1
Q1
Q2
Political Activity
Figure 7
This monopoly over Republican political violence allowed the Provisionals to effectively
wind down the amount of violence available in the market, which led to an increase in
demand for non-violent political activities. This increase in political demand coincided with
the efforts of the Clinton administration, which gave Gerry Adams political cover, broadened
the appeal of Sinn Fein within the nationalist community, and essentially acted as a subsidy
offsetting Sinn Fein’s production costs for non-violence. As Figure 7 shows, these effects
combined to tip the balance heavily in favour of producing non-violent rather than violent
political goods. When political payoffs started to wane because of apparent British
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recalcitrance, the IRA temporarily turned back to violence, but quickly returned to nonviolence when the Blair government made it more attractive again. Even the two splinter
groups, Continuity IRA and Real IRA, and a reconstituted INLA were unable to act as
spoilers to this pacification process because they could not risk the IRA turning their violence
production capabilities on them and forcibly driving them out of the market.13 Thus, while
they did produce violence between 1996 and 1998, it was within levels tolerated by the IRA
and when this was exceeded in the Omagh bombing of 1998, the IRA openly visited the
homes of 60-80 dissident Republicans with a message to stop. All three groups immediately
ceased operations and RIRA and INLA both publicly declared a ceasefire within two weeks.
Thus, the IRA was able to effectively and easily close the market at the time of its own
choosing.14
Conclusion
The success of the Good Friday Agreement compared to the failure of the Sunningdale
Agreement highlight the importance of including violent actors in a peace process. Broader
social, international structural, and private leadership factors certainly played a part in
ushering the Republican militants toward peace, but one must also examine the internal
dynamics within the market for political violence to get the full picture. While the
Republican paramilitaries were fractured in 1973 in addition to being excluded from the
peace negotiations, by 1998, the IRA had established a firm monopoly over violence and had
diversified its production portfolio to include both violence and non-violence. Thus, it was
able to carefully manage a transition to peace while maintaining and even increasing its
overall political power. This insight mirrors Pruitt’s explanation of the move toward peace in
Northern Ireland as the result of a “conciliatory spiral” or “benevolent circle”, wherein the
state and the IRA responded in tit-for-tat fashion to de-escalatory moves by the other,
allowing them both to modify their motivations to end the conflict and their levels of
optimism about the outcome of the negotiation (2006).
13
Arguably, the IRA allowed these other groups to temporarily edge the amount of violence toward competitive
equilibrium in order to increase the pressure on the British to make concessions without overly damaging the
IRA’s status as a negotiating partner. In other words, these other groups produced violence that was useful, but
deniable. The increased level of violence threatened to undermine the demand for non-violent politics and the
IRA’s negotiating partners forestalled this demand shift by increasing the payoff structure for peace. In essence,
the IRA had a cooperative relationship (Porter’s Force Five) with these groups and shared in the political profit
from their production of violence.
14
All three sporadically attempted to reenter the market over the next few years, but had all ceased activity by
the time the IRA publicly closed the market by renouncing violence in 2005.
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The importance of violent competition as an undermining factor for generating a successful
peace process, and thus monopoly’s potential stabilizing role, is not an inherently new
insight, even if the methodological approach is. Bard O’Neill points out that multiple groups
pursuing different violent strategies simply get in the way of each other, limiting the
effectiveness of each other’s strategies, and “the [negative] effects of such strategic
dissonance are of no small consequence” (1990:48). In contrast to the incidental nature of this
strategic interaction, Stedman points to the problem of spoilers, or groups that use violence to
deliberately undermine a peace process that threatens their power or interests. He argues that
there are three types of spoilers: “total”, which will never accept a compromise peace,
“limited”, which seek redress of a particular grievance but may be incorporated into the peace
process, and “greedy”, which “holds goals that expand or contract based on calculations of
cost and risk” (1997:11). His solution to this spoiler problem is for external parties to
manage them through inducement, socialization, or coercive techniques, i.e. give them what
they want, change what they want, or make it too costly to pursue. However, as the Northern
Ireland case demonstrates, the problem of spoilers is also internally reconcilable. A peacetransitioning VPO with either absolute or significant monopoly power, by definition, can
prevent spoilers from ruining the peace.
Thus, as Pruitt argues, the bulk of the armed parties to the conflict must be part of the central
coalition for it to succeed, which effectively means that negotiation with “terrorists” is often
unavoidable (2006). Obviously, the state’s first preference would be to eliminate VPOs
entirely to prevent deterioration of the constitutional framework for political discourse as a
result of violence. However, this is often not possible and the state must make a careful
decision about its level of tolerance for violence. If the VPOs cannot exceed this threshold of
violence, it may be best to simply live with the VPOs; if they can, it may be best to negotiate
a settlement that may require painful sacrifices. However, even if the state is willing to
negotiate, the uncertainty of the willingness and ability of a VPO to deliver on its side of the
bargain often undermines this process. Violent monopolists ease the second concern and
repeated interactions can build up the trust necessary to ease the first. Thus, states may have
to take counterintuitive (and usually very secret) steps that empower their enemy in order to
win a lasting peace. The British government at least believes that it succeeded in such an
endeavor in Northern Ireland. For example, British Secretary of State Patrick Mayhew
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famously admitted that British had helped Gerry Adams to “carry the hard men in the
republican movement with him” (Dixon 2006:65).
While Northern Ireland is an ideal case for demonstrating the importance of violent
monopoly power, it may lead to an overly restrictive policy implication, but it need not.
According to the application of Porter’s Five Forces above, the competition effect can happen
even when there is only one VPO in the market. But by the same token, a non-competitive
environment can exist even when there are multiple groups within the same constituency. If
VPOs can work out a stable cooperative agreement, they may be able to split the peace
dividends. For example, if Fatah and Hamas could agree on a binding and enforceable powersharing plan within the Palestinian community, such that both were guaranteed a certain
amount of power in the post-agreement state, the likelihood of spoiler-type activities would
be greatly reduced.
Thus, if a state and/or the international community are incapable of 1. eliminating the threat
of the VPO entirely, 2. mitigating the threat from the VPO to tolerable levels, or 3. fostering a
single monopolist VPO to begin a spiral of peace, the next best option would be to help,
overtly or covertly, them to form a stable broad front capable of jointly generating the spiral
of peace. However, because this involves strategic calculations, collective action problems,
and high incentives for cheating, it is an inherently lesser option than a true monopoly.
Therefore, it is clear that a unified violent opposition is much more capable of delivering a
sustainable peace if it so chooses. While monopoly of political violence is no guarantee that
the VPO will attempt to generate spiral of peace, it at least it makes that a strategic option.
An additional insight from this research is that if the state is unwilling to negotiate and is
willing to accept a continued hurting stalemate, a monopolist VPO may be able to simply
reduce the level of violence to tolerable levels. Either way, concentration of the market for
political violence towards monopoly, especially when coupled with diversification into nonviolent politics, is generally a strong force for reducing violence.
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