Political Science and Sociology Research Seminar: “Beyond the Binary: Civic Parties in Post-Agreement Northern Ireland”

This presentation will outline a book currently being developed about civic parties in deeply divided societies, focusing on the case of Northern Ireland after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. The book explores the place of civic parties – those that organize on the basis of issues, allegiances and identity categories other than ethno-national – within a political space structured along binary ethno-national lines. In particular, it addresses the puzzle of how these parties have managed to survive and grow in post-Agreement Northern Ireland in the context of a consociational power-sharing system explicitly designed to accommodate ethno-national groups. The book assesses the opportunities and barriers civic parties encounter in the power-sharing landscape and the strategies they have used to navigate those structures. Through an in-depth examination of the case of Northern Ireland, which is placed in dialogue with evidence from other post-conflict cases, the book aims to elucidate the phenomenon of civic parties in deeply-divided places and their potential to contribute to post-conflict transitions.

Cera Murtagh is Assistant Professor in Irish Politics and Comparative Politics at Villanova University and Visiting Scholar in the School of Political Science and Sociology and the Moore Institute at NUI Galway in 2021-22. Her research concerns conflict and peace and gender politics, focusing particularly on the mobilization of civic political parties and movements in deeply divided societies. Her work has been published in a number of journals including International Political Science Review and Nations and Nationalism. Dr Murtagh previously worked as Research Fellow at Queen’s University Belfast on an Economic and Social Research Council project entitled Exclusion amid Inclusion: Power-Sharing and Non-Dominant Minorities. She holds a PhD and an MSc from the University of Edinburgh and a BA from NUI Galway. She previously worked as a political journalist in Edinburgh and political researcher in the Scottish Parliament.

Registration

To attend, please register via Eventbrite here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/beyond-the-binary-civic-parties-in-post-agreement-northern-ireland-tickets-276925891797