Brilliantly Radical or Radically Violent? : A Poststructural Policy Analysis of the Northern Irish Together: Building a United Community Peacebuilding Strategy

Abstract: With a starting point in the Together: Building a Shared Community strategy (T:BUC) published in 2013 by the Government of Northern Ireland’s Executive Office, this study examines two of the strategy’s Key Priorities: Our Shared Community and Our Safe Community, in order to analyze contemporary peacebuilding efforts carried out by the Northern Irish government. The study is guided by the research question: Why might the strategic aims such as removing all interface barriers by 2023 in the T:BUC fail in their attempts to build peace? To answer this question, the thesis takes a qualitative methodological approach relying on both primary and secondary data and Carol Bacchi’s method of ‘What’s the Problem Represented to Be’ approach to poststructural policy analysis. This methodological approach is accompanied by Audra Mitchell’s theoretical framework of plural world-building. The study finds that the T:BUC strategy problematizes the interface barriers in Belfast, the usage of symbols such as flags, as well as the division of communities within Northern Ireland - all concepts that in this thesis are argued as important ‘threatworks’ and ‘world-building’ means of the conflicting communities in order to avoid violence. The thesis concludes that by interfering with these types of world-building means, the Northern Irish government risks inducing ‘radical violence’ to these ethno-national groups and perhaps provoking escalating violence amongst them.