Translocal Deliberation: from everyday peacebuilding to political impact?

Public discourse on the constitutional future of the island of Ireland is often polarising or induces disengagement from the topic. How might deliberative engagement push the discussion beyond this point, towards a shared vision for the future? ‘Constitutional Visions from the Grassroots’ explored this question through a series of deliberative cafés across the border. Here the research team share insights from the project, and reflect on the value of translocal deliberation for peace-building and constitution-making.

In post-conflict Ireland, ongoing campaigns for Irish unity have tended to generate polarised views in Northern Ireland, and general disengagement amongst large swathes of the population in both parts of the island. There is no real dialogue, let alone consensus. In this context, our research ‘Constitutional Visions from the Grassroots’ deployed deliberative methods to move beyond identity politics towards a shared vision for the future. Could meta-deliberation help construct a shared foundation that would enable meaningful dialogue even when starkly opposing views persist?

Working with groups of women in deliberative cafés across the border, we set out to support communities to identify shared problems and values, and articulate convergent visions for the future. We organised four day-long, cross-community, cross-border deliberative cafés, and a final shorter evening café, each linking participants from four rural constituencies across Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

Each of these deliberative cafés was designed to construct shared criteria for constitutional discussion. We began with transversally defined participants – women – because they are likely to share significant everyday experiences and problems, and be open to discussion, even where they differ politically. We recruited over 100 participants by advertising through local women’s groups and local radio, and snowballing. In each café, around 30 women – diverse in terms of religious, ethnic and class backgrounds – came together to deliberate.

Deliberation took place in three phases over each day: firstly on participants’ shared problems; then on shared policy imperatives; and finally in the late afternoon, the women used the criteria they themselves had agreed in the previous sessions to assess different directions of constitutional change. In the process, they engaged in reflective and often creative analysis of the options. They did not simply adjudicate on the presented options for constitutional change, they came up with new ones, such as enhanced cross-border institutions and regulations within the existing system, and a 'variable geometry' model of asymmetric decentralisation of power within a united Ireland. Although the women still disagreed on their preferred outcomes, they gravitated to unconventional models of the constitutional future that would be more widely acceptable across the island – as opposed to the conventional models that typically provoke polarised responses.

Shared problems defined by the women in the morning, and the policy imperatives they identified in the early afternoon, defined the shared meta-criteria of constitutional deliberation.

Our approach was based on three key interlinked methodological principles: co-design, sequencing, and sufficient time. Shared problems defined by the women in the morning, and the policy imperatives they identified in the early afternoon, defined the shared meta-criteria of constitutional deliberation. As expected, this changed the language of constitutional discussion from ideologically weighted arguments to shared everyday concerns relevant to all participants. However, for us organisers, it raised a fundamental challenge: if we did not know what problems the participants would define in advance, how could we structure useful information input and prepare experts to engage in the deliberation?

If we did not know what problems the participants would define, how could we structure useful information input and prepare experts to engage in the deliberation?

Addressing this challenge required an agile and sequenced approach.

Addressing this challenge required an agile and sequenced approach. Our initial decision to engage with transversal categories of participants from four local rural constituencies defined the topics of our information posters: the typical problems experienced by rural dwellers across Europe, and comparison of local conditions (demography, health, migration, crime) in each of the four constituencies and local council priorities.

In the early afternoon, we invited policy experts to outline the existing policy avenues to address the participants’ shared problems. Since they could not know the shared problems beforehand, they sat through the initial cafés and spoke directly to the women’s stated concerns. As the overlap in the shared problems identified in each café became clear, we made short 10-minute videos with the experts for subsequent cafés.

This approach required significant relational labour with each expert. Phone calls, long discussions during shared car journeys, and reflective conversations facilitated the experts’ engagement, as well as the usual preparatory work of sharing existing research and possible themes. The experts continued their engagement with the project after each café ended and contributed significantly more time and effort than was initially expected, telling us that they found it a valuable experience to be involved in.

In the late afternoon, we presented some possible constitutional models for the island, while encouraging participants to suggest their own variants. We prepared a visual worksheet where the participants’ criteria (shared problems/imperatives) were written on the vertical axis as they were decided, and the models of a united Ireland/reformed Union (with write-in options) on the horizontal axis could be tested against them.

The deliberative process also built on everyday networks of interaction and resilience. The women themselves saw similarities across their different local and state contexts, and the sequenced approach enabled us to move deliberation from problems, through to policy and constitutional politics. We facilitated the deliberation ourselves, which also enabled us to maintain flexibility in our approach and transparency in our aims. The women regularly asked us ‘why are you doing this?’, or (for the surveys) ‘why do you need to know who we voted for?’ and we could respond in real time.

Time for trust and solidarity was essential, enabling the construction of shared problems and experiences which sustained participation later in the day.

The full-day approach was essential, allowing time for trust and solidarity to develop. The successful construction of shared problems and experiences of policy dysfunctions built a level of solidarity early in the day, which kept the process going as the women struggled to assess constitutional futures in terms of shared criteria later on.

We also convened a shorter evening session in a fifth locality, focussing on the constitutional question of UK Union or Irish Unity. In this shorter café, it was difficult to construct the shared criteria because participants had less time to discuss the problems they experienced. It was not possible to explore both the dysfunctions of existing policy regimes, as well as the opportunities of possible constitutional futures in one three-hour session. And when participants wanted to know more about our approach, there was too little time for discussion. More time was necessary to encourage engagement and creative thinking.

Even more important, although initially unplanned, was the fact that around 15 participants returned to subsequent cafés. A few from the first attended the second, and so on, unintentionally creating continuity in debates and contributing to iterative learning. Return participants told us they came back because they needed to think more about the issues. They wanted to figure out how to discuss Irish unity in terms of their own criteria. The women did not make up their minds on this complex issue once and for all, but engaged in continued reflection. In the later cafés, the return participants played a crucial role in facilitating small table sessions and explaining to new participants what we were trying to do. In this, our grassroots deliberation unexpectedly converged with recent innovations in Europe-wide deliberation.

We invited local councillors – from the main parties in the local area – to the session on policy making. In the first café the women were initially antagonistic towards them, but in later cafés, when we embedded them in the small tables, the conversations were constructive. We presented our findings to the full local councils, to a meeting of politicians in the Irish Parliament Buildings, and separately to members of political parties.

We are currently attempting to win political support for broadening the initiative across the island, and considering the extent to which our approach could be adapted and applied more widely. We end with an open but crucial question: how can deliberation at this level link to national-level Citizens’ Assemblies or even global deliberation? Our research demonstrates that trans-local deliberation can tap into everyday local creativity and channel it into wider political arenas, not simply local government but also state, inter-state and trans-border politics. There is a need for this intersection of spatial scale in deliberation that systematically enables trans-local participation and links it with the (trans)-national and the global to foster an ecology of deliberation.

About the Authors

Jennifer Todd is Professor (emeritus) in the School of Politics and International Relations, and Fellow in the Geary Institute, University College Dublin. She has written extensively on identity and conflict.

Joanne McEvoy is Professor of Politics and Head of Social Science at the University of Aberdeen, UK. Her research focuses on grassroots constitutional discussion on the island of Ireland and, more broadly, on post-conflict political institutions.

Shelley Deane is a Research Fellow on the North-South Programme, in the Conflict Institute, in the Department of Law and Government at Dublin City University (DCU) and co-editor of Irish Studies in International Affairs (ARINS).