Values and Identities in Ireland's Peace Policy: Four Centuries of Norm Continuity and Change

In: Swiss political science review: SPSR = Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft : SZPW = Revue suisse de science politique : RSSP, Volume 19, Issue 3, p. 376-409

Abstract

AbstractThis article seeks to solve the puzzle of what explains Irish peace policy norm consistency for over three centuries and the recent reversal of these norms. The methodology analyses values and identities in Irish leaders' foreign policy discourses and practices, producing evidence that Irish peace policy norms are consistently: independence and neutrality for Ireland in the cause of peace and security; self‐determination; anti‐imperialism; third world solidarity; and resistance to famine and slavery. In the early 1900s, after Ireland gained statehood, the addition of: institutional cooperation; a constitutional commitment to peaceful resolution of disputes; armed neutrality; UN peacekeeping; and an explicit subordination of material interests for moral, justice‐based norms, made this small postcolonial state an historically‐driven Natural Born Peacemaker. Elite‐led norm reversals consolidated in the 2000s suggests a vital explanatory relationship with elite corruption and associated specific personality characteristics, and the need to revise elite socialisation theory to incorporate these variables.