The UK/Ireland Border and the Stability of Peace and Security in Northern Ireland: Evidence from two Deliberative Democracy Exercises

Peace and stability in any society is dependent upon citizen acceptance of the legitimacy of political and legal arrangements, and particularly so in Northern Ireland where peaceful politics is a recent outcome of a long and difficult 'peace process'. Knowing the likely level and intensity of perceived illegitimacy (non-acceptability) of different possible border arrangements after the UK leaves the EU would provide policy makers with crucial evidence when evaluating the relative merits of different border options, particularly with respect to the criteria of political sustainability and likely impact on peace and stability in Northern Ireland.

With Northern Ireland's politicians engaged in political campaigning in an Assembly election and likely impending inter-party talks to re-establish a power sharing executive, it is arguably particularly important that there is a systematic reporting of the considered views of citizens on this crucial issue of the UK's exit from the EU.

We conduct two "deliberative democracy" exercises which allow Northern Ireland citizens the space and relevant information to consider the challenging issue of Brexit and the border. Once they have become informed about the issues and reflected upon them, we ask the citizens to put forward their own views.

We are focused on answering the following questions. How difficult would it be for Catholics/nationalists to accept a policed North/South border and what level of protest would they condone? How difficult would it be for Protestants/unionists to accept a policed East/West border and what level of protest would they condone?

We seek to provide policy makers with evidence-based answers to the these questions. This evidence will prove to be especially useful when policy makers are considering the likely implications of the post-Brexit border for peace and stability in Northern Ireland.

We generate a report which summarises our key findings and presents our key evidence. We also produce a short animated film which gets across to the viewer in a dramatic, simple and exciting way our key findings.

We engage enthusiastically in submissions to the key committees, bodies and specific politicians who have responsibility for negotiating the UK exit from the EU. We contribute to their work by highlighting the likely implications, for peace and stability in Northern Ireland, of pursuing certain post-exit border scenarios.

We describe below our two main impact aims and how we seek to achieve them.


1. Policy makers will rely on our evidence when making final decisions about the nature of the border after the UK leaves the EU

The dynamic nature of the Brexit negotiations means that there may be changes, as the process of negotiations progresses, in exactly which politicians and policy makers our project will prioritise in terms of influencing. However, our departure task is to immediately develop significant and positive relations with the following bodies:

Exiting the European Union Select Committee (EEUSC),
Joint Ministerial Committee: EU negotiations (JMC:EUN)
Department for Exiting the European Union (DEEE),

From these initial positive links with these bodies, we specify a timetable for written and oral submissions.

Our project is Belfast-based and we thus need a very significant, knowledgeable and highly experienced presence in London to maximally leverage access to the highest level policy makers. Hence, we seek to employ as consultants an organisation with specific experience of feeding into the policy making world the results of deliberative democracy exercises. Such an organisation would have existing highly developed contacts in Westminster and can utilise those contacts immediately to ensure rapid and appropriate access.

As an example of a possible consultant we have engaged in detailed discussions with the Electoral Reform Society (ERS). We seek to replicate the mechanisms it utilised to achieve successful impact in Westminster regarding the findings of the two "Democracy Matters: Citizens' Assemblies on English Devolution' the ERS conducted with its academic partners.

Our influence on policy makers in Northern Ireland can be achieved by utilising our very positive existing links with the Northern Ireland Assembly's Knowledge Exchange Seminar Series (KESS). Prof Garry has already delivered a policy briefing paper and presentation on deliberative democracy at KESS (9 March 2016) and also a policy briefing paper and presentation on the UK's exit from the EU (12 October 2016). The KESS organisers are extremely keen to further engage with this type of research and to use their links within the UK political system to channel policy briefing papers to relevant actors. We plan to synergise the efforts of KESS and the Electoral Reform Society.




2. The public will learn about what are the considered views of their fellow citizens on these questions

The Electoral Reform society website and media strategy, as used in the 'Democracy Matters: Citizens' Assemblies on English Devolution' is our model for this proposed project. http://citizensassembly.co.uk/home-page/about/ We do not seek to 're-invent the wheel' in terms of maximally achieving public knowledge and understanding of our project. Rather we seek to utilise in a highly cost-effective way an already existing infrastructure and established and proven expertise. Hence, with immediate effect at the start of the project an analogous website will be created and populated by the Electoral Reform Society.

A core part of our plan to engage the public and the media (and also the policy community) in our findings is to generate an entertaining and dramatic illustration of our key findings in animation form. We follow the model of Garry (2016) who created a five minute animation of the results of his analysis of deliberative democracy in Northern Ireland: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPncxJiJWck

The team also has enormous experience in conventional media engagement. As part of the developed ERS media strategy team members are well placed to rapidly engage in public dissemination.