Rebellion: Civil and Uncivil in Contrasting Emerging Governments

Stuart Lenig

Comparative Politics POLS 7100

UNG

Fall 2014

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In the most recent incarnation of the BBC’s popular Doctor Who

science fiction television series, the producers replaced young charismatic

romantic lead, Matt Smith with the droll, sarcastic, and often vile Peter Capaldi, a

Scottish character actor known for spewing forth reams of profanity in the BBC’s

The Thick of It, political satire show. When Capaldi manifests as Who he arrives

complete with a thick and noticeable Scottish Brogue making him the first Who

character not to speak with a clipped upper class regulation BBC style accent.

Upon noticing that he was speaking different than all the other characters,

Capaldi began yelling, “why are you all speaking like that, all English-like?”

Eventually the new Doctor Who arrives at the conclusion that not only has he

changed into a new person, he has also transformed into a new nationality. He

blurts, “ohh, I’m Scottish, now I can really complain!” (BBC, 2014)

Much has changed during the five hundred year, plus, period of British

imperial rule. Former colonies are either freed or enjoy commonwealth status,

and despite the horrific experience of dominating Ireland (both for British and the

Irish) improved relations with the Republic of Ireland and shared governance for

Northern Ireland has brought an era of peace and prosperity to that troubled spot

of the empire.

In studying contrasting governments, of two nearby neighbor states (or at

least one that might one day become a new state) there are great contrasts to be

observed and difficult issues to face. Here, we examine the relationship of a

global colonial power, the United Kingdom and its recent historical relationship to

two adjoining colonies/nation states, Northern Ireland and Scotland. First, (1) we

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must examine the contrasting historical and political relationships between these

separate states and the colonial role of the United Kingdom. Then, (2) we need

to see the role of each player in this act of international divorce. Are such

separations always prone to violence, hatred, and trauma or do such departings

have the possibility of better relations in future dealings? A third issue, (3) is the

economic challenges for such new nation states. Can the parent and the child

have separate, strong, and vibrant economies that can reap rewards for both

parties, and will these parties maintain positive interaction and supportive

economic potential after, even an amicable split. Finally, (4) what role do

institutions in both nations play in securing a certain or dubious future for both

parties as they journey forth after their united period. Can institutions work to re-

stabilize such cultures after domestic and internal institutions managed under

colonial conditions have held sway for so long? Are these two breakaway

territories likely to emulate their captor in the way they pursue their freedom? Will

these societies be able to develop capable and substantial economic markets to

cope with the demands of statehood? Do either of these countries contain an

internal infrastructure that can produce effective institutions capable of helping

their respective states govern their territory? These are complex and longitudinal

questions that cannot be answered in such a brief and cursory study as this, but

we can perhaps begin to see the complexities of nation building in this post-

colonial era as maybe more complex and in some ways (at least for Scotland and

presently Northern Ireland) as perhaps more evolutionary and less revolutionary

a process.

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Such a study provides interesting parallels and contrasts. Ireland and

Scotland have both been dominated for more than half a millennium. Both have

suffered/benefited from a misguided and often mercantilist paternalism that

helped and enslaved the citizens simultaneously. In the case of Northern Ireland,

we possess a nearly100 year history of the independent Republic of Ireland to

weigh against Northern Ireland’s culture in captivity. Both countries, Scotland and

Northern Ireland have had long and well-established rebellion groups. The

Northern Irish in recent years have had the IRA, and the Scottish waged two

wars of independence in the 13th and 14th centuries, as well as continual clan and

Highland rebellions in more recent centuries.

The example of Northern Ireland is complicated by the fact that there are

two distinct Irish cultures, one in the South that has a record of 100 years of self-

government, and the more troubled English-held Northern Ireland, a separate

state, still partially governed by the English, that experienced a violent and long

civil war from the late sixties until the nineties. This period of unrest and

simmering rebellion known as the “Troubles’ was inflamed by acts of terrorism

and bombing by the IRA and further inflamed by acts of barbarism against the

Irish by thuggish English crackdowns on the people. Many pungent reminders of

the period’s inhumanity were recorded. This letter by an 11-year-old Belfast girl

described the horrific events that greeted citizens of the city regularly. She wrote,

“I lay awake all that night. I lay in horror, afraid and sobbing. I heard cries of fear

and shots all around me. I thought of my friends out of the next street, Would any

of them be killed?” (Magee, 1974, 143) This period kept things boiling until a

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peace deal brokered by the Clinton administration has brought a period of calm

and shared governance that has reformed the once grim landscape into a more

civilized, settled, prosperous and thankfully peaceful territory. Marc Mulholland

remarked that, “largely through the efforts of the British government, but also

helped by intellectual revisionism, demographic changes, rising prosperity, the

entry of republicanism into electoral politics, and the end to the Cold War, the

language of the Northern Ireland conflict slowly mutated.” (Mulholland, 2002,

150) The change did not come without a steep price. Over 3000 people died and

over 47,000 were injured in the long reign of violence. (Cain, 2014)

Divorce- Irish Style.

In Northern Ireland the divorce from England was a violent battle for

supremacy involving many in a protracted struggle. The separation of the

Republic of Ireland from the main body of Great Britain was a long and bloody

war. The final conflict, the rebellion that led to Irish independence in 1922 was a

complex conflict involving centuries of British usurpation, religious intolerance,

cultural, linguistic, and military imperialism, and an attitude of abuse. The

Protestant stronghold of Northern Ireland was retained by the British but

rancorous ethnic and religious divisions kept Northern Ireland in a state of siege

for much of the twentieth century.

Extremists on both sides refused to give ground. On the Protestant side

the, “Orange order,” so called because Protestant British King William of Orange

defeated King James at the Battle of Boyne, and crushed once and for all the

idea of a Catholic united British state. Members of the Orange order upheld the

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authenticity of the Protestant majority in Northern Ireland and have militantly

refused to give rights and fair treatment to the Catholic minority. (“Orange Order,”

2001) Over time the shared governance peace deal brokered in the 1990s began

to soften the harsh rhetoric on both sides and violence declined. Today, though a

border between northern and southern Republican Ireland still exists, the

difficulties that plagued that divided country seem to be declining. Critic John

Coakley writes that, “On the other hand, as the process of European integration

continues the significance of the border is likely to diminish in the longer term.”

(Coakley, 2004). Despite the long term animosities of the region and the abuses

of British rule, the Irish have considered that profitable peace is more acceptable

than righteous and destructive warfare.

The role of the British in subjugating a captive Catholic colony for

hundreds of years is clear from the shape of penal laws meant to punish the

people of Ireland. Magee writes, “a Roman Catholic proprietor had no power to

leave land at will.” (Mcgee, 1974, 35) The law did not allow landed Catholics to

pass on their land, a prime source of power and wealth in Ireland to Irish Catholic

heirs. Land was summarily pushed to Protestant heirs or devolved to owners who

were non-Catholics. Therefore Catholics were fundamentally disenfranchised

and the Church of England was used as a vehicle to keep the people under

control. If one joined the Church of England and became a de facto Englishman,

the law would favor this person. This was a form of coercion that debilitated

religion, culture, and Irish heritage.

Divorce- Scottish Style

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The roots of the Scottish struggle for independence lay in a different form

of relationship with England. Scotland is a relatively small province north of

England proper and only amounting to around 200 hundred miles of territory

north to south. While the Scottish kings briefly ruled England after Queen

Elizabeth, (1603-89) they were inept and wayward politicians of little skill and

less political savvy. Elizabeth died childless and made the bargain with Mary,

Queen of Scots, that she would allow Mary’s son, James to rule. James hoped to

unite British and Scottish institutions but achieved little. His son, Charles the First

was a disastrous manager, insulted parliament, and largely caused the

conditions for republican unrest to explode into the English Civil War of 1642 that

resulted in the 18-year-reign of the Interregnum, the period of the short-lived

English Republic. Charles himself was beheaded, but the rampant unpopularity

of Puritan rule under Oliver Cromwell, resulted in the Restoration of the

monarchy and the return of Charles’ son, Charles II from France.

The restoration went well enough for a few decades, but Charles II’s quarrelsome

son, James II led to the ‘glorious revolution’ (largely bloodless) of 1689 in which

William of Orange and later his popular wife (and later monarch) Mary secured a

Protestant throne. Rab Houston writes, that, “ now seen as a sort of emotive

nationalism or a doomed romantic anachronism, post-1689 Jacobitism was a

mainstream but elite political and religious movement based on divine-right

succession… and close dynastic loyalty.” (Houston, 2008, 15) The hopes that

there could be a revived Scottish monarchy was marginal, and though there have

been prominent Scottish politicians, Scotland has more often been regarded as

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an unruly, rough hewn child than as a true rival for supremacy at Downing Street.

In recent years, the stubbornness of Scottish character, the sense that

nationhood would provide more political, linguistic, economic, and social

freedoms for the Scottish people, and the discovery of new wealth in the

exploration of North Sea oil has reinvigorated the debate about independence.

Major political events precipitated a sense of urgency. A vote for a

devolved Scottish government succeeded in 1997. The success of the Scottish

National Party in the elections of 2007, and the promise of a national referendum

by 2010 (that actually happened in 2014) prompted calls for greater autonomy.

Though the vote on September 18, 2014, was close, (45% for, to 55% against)

Scots decided to remain in the UK bowing to promises of increased autonomy,

more authority over the wealth of Scottish oil, and more freedom over national

matters of culture and education. (Keating, 2009, vi) Scotland’s victories were

won in a bloodless democratic process. The long term slights and disappoints,

though not negligible were not at the level of the grievances and the severe

deprivation and poverty that had haunted the people of Ireland.

Critic Michael Keating argues that the work of uniting the cultures faltered,

and that Scots were never truly integrated into the union. As Keating explains,

“nation-building never took place, and the Union remained a marriage of

convenience.” (Keating, 2009, 20) More importantly, the roots of modern Scottish

factionalism isn’t as antagonistic as the strongly anti-British stance of many Irish

people. Keating argues that while the sense of a national identity is blunted, total

independence may not be a replacement goal. He writes that, “while unionism

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may have faded, it is not giving way to a hegemonic Scottish counter project for a

smaller nation-state.” (Keating, 46) The Scots seem to understand in a larger

geo-political sense that many smaller nation states may weaken the negotiating

power they currently enjoy as part of the larger entity of Great Britain.

The Economics of Disentanglement.

Another issue that plagues the arrival of new states in an international

economy is (1) the ways that a new nation might either create a viable GNP or

(2) how such emerging states can struggle to produce goods and services. The

Republic of Ireland blamed its long, languid, lack of productivity on its time as a

captive colony of the United Kingdom, but independence did little to produce a

vibrant economy. Flirtations with communism, a lack of indigenous industries,

and no national plan for an emerging economy gave the fledging republic the

economic doldrums for the better part of the century. Paseta writes that

immigration from Ireland reached an all time high by 1961 with only 2.6 million

people left in residence and 4 out of 5 children born in the 1930s having

immigrated by 1960. Paseta writes that the problem was simply, “a dearth of

opportunity and work.” (Paseta, 2003, 131)

Likewise, Northern Ireland has suffered from high unemployment and

inequality where a disproportionate share of advantages were distributed to

Protestants over Catholic citizens. Despite these horrible conditions (compared

to England) things were even worse in the Republic of Ireland. Mulholland writes

that, “in 1990, standards of living were still around 40 percent higher in the North

than in the Republic of Ireland. Consumer spending in the North was one third

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above the southern level, government spending per head on public services two

thirds higher.” (Mulholland, 2002, 43) So despite the deprivation of Northern

Ireland, under British rule, it shared more of the wealth of Britain than its southern

neighbor.

Other changes have re-configured the economics of the culture. Upon the

transformation to shared rule tighter integration with the Republic of Ireland

ensued which has helped to bolster the Northern Irish economy (as well as

stimulate the South’s economy). Still, Northern Ireland’s continuing link to the UK

makes it more dependent on the British economy and also the beneficiary of

continuing British national benefits. The Republic of Ireland, despite phenomenal

growth in the nineties is still an independent and in some ways, a more

‘dependent’ economy regularly needing to find and maintain new trade partners

and advantages to fight continued regions of continuing and unrelenting poverty.

The conditions in the North for a fruitful economy were often offset by the

continued long war waged by the IRA to destabilize the country. Senia Paseta in

her history of Modern Ireland writes that, “the IRA’s strategy was chillingly simple;

bomb, murder, and cause enough damage to force the British to withdraw from

Northern Ireland.” (Paseta,2003, 117) Despite the constant presence of IRA

terrorists throughout the thirty-year long war, it is remarkable that Northern

Ireland’s economy survived, and perhaps it is even harder to explain its recent

record of advances. The disturbing cycle of violence plagued the search for

freedom and independence, providing deep divisions in the society and

damaging the possibility for productive work arrangements to flower create the

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corporate and international structure needed for some form of independence to

work. The very mechanism by which independence was contested withheld the

ability for a nation-state to form.

Scottish entanglement with the economy of the United Kingdom is even

more intimately entwined. The large and profitable North Sea fishing industries,

the bonus of North Sea oil that has benefited the entire kingdom as well as

Scotland and a resurgent trade and pride in domestic industries (including a

revitalized film and entertainment business) have brightened the sense of

national prosperity. Still Scotland’s economy has never been independent and

has always been tied to the economy of the United Kingdom. Determining the

value of independence and whether a free Scotland could be a viable economic

entity is open to multiple interpretations. Jo Eric Murkens text on Scottish

Independence describes the murky nature of such predictions. He writes that,

“the unpredictability of these factors means that the assessment of the

economics of independence cannot be precise.” (Murkens, 2002, 182) Keating in

another text on Scottish Independence suggests that the road to independence is

uncertain but there may be chances for a sustainable independent Scottish

economy if the Scottish state would plan carefully. Keating writes that, “smaller

units can be viable in certain conditions and under specific external security and

economic regimes.” (Keating, 2009, 102) Keating argues that, “the managed

dependency of the twentieth-century union,” might be holding back Scotland, but

it would strongly depend on policies and institutions that Scotland follows after

independence. Perhaps the most damning instrument against independence is

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the Scottish government’s own GERS (Government Expenditures and Revenues

in Scotland) which portrays the cash situation as “an annual fiscal deficit of just

over 10% of the GDP since 1980.” (Keating, 2009, 106) This presents a dim

prospect for independence and an unsustainable and consistent growing debt

load. This is compared to the British government’s debt ratio at around 3% or

one-third the debt of Scotland itself. Underlying all the figuring is the computation

of whether or not a country or an economy is at all sustainable and whether its

productivity can save such a state from being a perpetual debtor nation

encumbered by bills it cannot pay and lacking sufficient funds to underwrite

infrastructure improvements such as roads, schools, an education system, a

medical care system, a pension for those in retirement and support for national

industries and defense necessary to maintain the welfare of profit making

ventures. Add to this, the business of tourism, and making a location attractive

for foreign and potential investors, and the difficulties of independence become

more grave if not insurmountable.

Institutions that Support the State

While it might not seem an important aspect of understanding the appeal

or value of statehood versus dependence as part of a union, institutionalism is a

key aspect of state survival and growth. Hall and Taylor’s discussion of

institutions and the new institutionalism clarifies the value of institutions and how

they can create the stability and assuredness possible for states to take and

make positive actions in governance, particularly in crucial concerns such as

economic matters. At their heart, institutions provide a layer between pure

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capitalism and self interest and assure the maintenance of structures that keep

society in motion. Hall and Taylor describe the value of institutions as similar to a

Nash Equilibrium from game theory, saying that, “individuals adhere to those

patterns of behavior because deviation will make the individual worse off than will

adherence. It follows that the more an institution contributes to the resolution of

collective action dilemmas or the more gains from dilemmas it makes possible

the more robust it will be.” (Hall/Taylor, 1996, 8) In essence institutionalism

assures a greater degree of certainty about actions and outcomes, increases

potential positive outcomes, and provides a playing field where rules,

conventions, and actors are known and more reliable.

Institutionalism effects statehood in many different ways. For example, in

the case of the United States, institutions such as the Federal Reserve provide

assurances and certainty about the money supply, financial investment

environments, and their safety. Though by no means a perfect system, and often

one that is criticized for insiders, cronyism, and corruption, it does serve to

assure investors that there are some safeguards about liquidity in American

investment procedures. A fear for many emerging nations, is the lack of

institutions and particularly a lack of interface between domestic institutions and

international ones. Needless to say, such reciprocal relationships are necessary

for international economic business to remain aloft and confidence to be shared

across borders.

In the case of Northern Ireland, the paternal relationship with Great Britain

has allowed it to achieve a higher level of internal institutionalism than many new

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nation-states. The curious relationship that Northern Ireland enjoys, increased

autonomy, shared governance, and not total independence illustrates that this

quasi-statehood status can work to a nation’s advantage. As Paul F. State

describes it in his Brief History of Ireland, the state of Northern Ireland is still very

much a part of the United Kingdom with the Queen of England as the supreme

monarch and authority, and a government still adminstered by the Northern

Ireland Office, a British government post, and the Secretary of State for Northern

Ireland. The people of Northern Ireland are represented by 18 seats in the House

of Commons (British Parliament). (State, 2009, 363) While these sobering facts

might sound like encumbrances (and during NI’s turbulent recent history these

mechanisms did at times provide authoritarian control), these institutions have

assured a level of cultural and governmental stability that would not exist without

the fundamental role of institutions to cushion the North’s venture into more

active self-government. A monarch, an overseeing unit of government, and

representation in a legislature offer important forms of legitimization for people

and stability for a business climate. Added to this the local and indigenous

institutions include (1) the recently constituted Northern Irish Assembly, which is

composed of 108 members elected by popular vote (of six members per the 18

constituencies of Northern Ireland). Another local addition is (2) the Northern

Ireland Executive (like a local prime minister, with assistant deputies) that is

voted in from the members of the Assembly.

Of primary importance to economic growth is access to economic partners and

institutions. Northern Ireland participates in the EU through its relationship to the

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UK and benefits from the British financial institutions such as the pound monetary

system and the Bank of England and commercial banks in the UK.

However, institutional preference and prejudice has played a role in the

development of Northern Ireland’s unequal economy historically favoring

Protestants and disadvantaging Catholic residents. McGee writes that,

“economic development….especially in the nineteenth century tended to

separate the province from the rest of Ireland so that by 1880 the Belfast area

could be fairly accurately described as an outpost of industrial Britain attracting

capital, raw materials, and skilled labor from England and Scotland, and finding

markets for its products in all parts of the world.” (McGee, 1974, 41) So despite

the fact that Northern Ireland tended to marginalize and punish its Catholic

minority, England’s economic might brought industry to the island.

Despite these historical shortcomings, contemporary Northern Ireland is

significantly healthier than its recent past incarnation. In Max Hastings angry

1970 text, Barricades in Belfast, he describes the economic conditions as

mournful saying, “shipbuilding, textiles, farming and fishing have been the major

businesses for many years, and although successive governments have made

strenuous efforts for years to bring in new industry, still they are not keeping

pace.” (Hastings, 1970, 32) The conditions for the residents of Northern Ireland

have improved. Author Martin McGuiness speaking in Belfast in 2012 said, “we

can never forget our history, but I am interested in writing a new history for future

generations, one that is inclusive and prosperous for all our people.” (Cochrane,

2013, 283) While history has shown negative and prejudicial management of

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Ireland, hopes are high that a future Northern Ireland will become less prejudicial

and less bound to historical antagonisms of church and lineage.

Another form of institutionalism has arisen to confront the reassertion of

violence in Northern Ireland. Hall and Taylor refer to this sort of institutionalism

as sociological in nature saying, “that many of these forms and procedures

should be seen as culturally specific practices, akin to the myths and ceremonies

devised by many societies, and assimilated into organizations, not necessarily to

enhance their formal means-ends efficiency, but as a result of the kind of

processes associated with the transmission of cultural practices more generally.”

(Hall/Taylor, 1996, 14) Feargal Cochrane in his Northern Ireland, The Reluctant

Peace explains how some of these post-paramilitary institutions are starting to

function to mitigate sectarian clashes. Not all of these sociological forms of

institutions are especially healthy, but they are active. One of the most notorious

groups is RAAD, the Republican Action Against Drugs. Mothers take their drug-

dealing sons out to alleys to be knee-capped, literally to be shot in the knees to

prevent the proliferation of drug dealers. It is a dubious claim to social activism,

but it seems to help reduce drug violence, if indeed it introduces a new level of

civic vigilantism, itself a disagreeable and continuing problem in the polis.

Another, more optimistic, example of civic institutionalism is MOVEON,

Mothers Opposed to Violence Everywhere in Our Neighborhoods. This group has

arisen from moms who wish to end the continuing cycles of violence that still

haunt certain neighborhoods of Northern Ireland. They protest these clandestine

shootings, and while like the RAAD adherents, they abhor drugs and the violence

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it does to society, they cannot condone vigilante justice. Northern Ireland still

struggles to create fair institutions that serve its complex mixed population. A

hopeful sign is the devolved power awarded to the OFMDFM (the Office of the

First Minister and the Deputy First Minister) that has allowed more decisions to

be handled locally and requires separate groups to meet and work out problems.

An example is the Girdwood Barracks settlement project. As the British Army

decamped from Belfast, and as their need to keep order declined, they left

behind several acres of Army Barracks in the center of Belfast. While sectarian

groups wrangled about who was to get new housing proposed for the contested

section of the city (five years), the Protestants and Catholics eventually were

compelled by a deadline for an EU development grant to arrive at a decision.

Trust comes slowly, but compelled by institutions like the OFMDFM and the EU

the Northern Ireland government is making slow, fitful, but regular progress.

Institutionalism is something problematic in Scottish society as well. The

Scots are a diverse people and Highlanders are a particularly complicated

subgroup. Houston writes, “more importantly than language, ethnicity, or religion

to Highlanders’ identity was their emotional and material relationship to family,

community, and land.” (Houston, 2009, 96) The forging of Scottish identity was

as much marketing as reality. Clan loyalties and a Gaelic sense of individuality

propelled the mythic sense of the highlander. Another fruitful association was the

patronage of royalty who added their imprinter on Scottish society. Queen

Victoria and her husband Prince Albert bought Balmoral castle in Scotland, lived

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there often, and adopted Scottish dress (tartan and kilt) to accommodate their

new address.

While largely symbolic, the Tartan, proclaiming the colors of clan identity,

provided a rallying cry for Scotch life. The Kilt itself was also an adopted tradition.

The British, not the Scots, invented the kilt in the eighteenth century, and

imported it to Scotland where it was quickly adopted. Sir Walter Scot popularized

the wild and adventurous Highlander in his popular Ivanhoe and Rob Roy novels

that turned Scots into crusading superheroes. More recently the Highlander

series of films and television programs and Starz network’s Outlander series,

based on the popular novels of Diana Gabaldon has raised the public profile of

the Scotch mythic character even further.

At the same time, it was a freedom from too much government, too much

institutionalism, and too little oversight that created the roots of the Scottish

Enlightenment in the eighteenth century and precipitated the fierce desire for

Scots to be free in the last century. Arthur Herman in his, How the Scots Invented

the Modern World, remarks that, “by the act of union, Scotland found itself yoked

to this powerful engine for change, which expanded men’s opportunities at the

same time as it protected what they held dear: life, liberty, and property.”

(Herman, 2001, 50) For Herman the neglect the allowed the Scottish to

experiment and to innovate fostered a stronger economy and engaged a people

that had previously been victims of weak, but interfering government. Under

British rule, the Scottish had the benefits of strong central authority, but little

direct interference. In a sense, this sort of institutional benign neglect benefited

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the development of a distinctly Scottish character. A particular contribution of the

Scots in the eighteenth century was the concept of human nature and history or

that, “we are ultimately creatures of our own environment, that was the great

discovery that the Scottish school as it came to be known, brought to the modern

world.” (Herman, 52)

To the Losers go the Spoils: Independence in an Age of Interdependence.

With the refusal of the Scottish people to ‘referendum’ themselves into

sovereignty we see a quietly and subtly changing landscape. While nation states

undoubtedly are not going away any time soon, the world has begun to come to

grips with an increasing social, ecological, and economic environment that favors

interdependence over complete independence. Murkens phrases it, explaining

that, “public opinion in stateless nations has also shown itself very reluctant to

make a hard and fast distinction between independence and advanced forms of

devolution, while being much clearer on just what powers they would like to see

exercised at which level.” (Murkens, 2002, 290) Therefore the movement of Irish

and Scottish independence may have faltered not for a lack of will or for the

violent objection of the United Kingdom, but for the fact that the world and its

means of governing itself may be slowly evolving into clusters of smaller nation-

state/city-states conglomerated to share costs, expenses, national defense,

ecological woes, and planning issues, but separated by diverse cultures, regimes

for educational planning, economic activity, sectarian schisms, and

provincial/tribal/clan-based customs and cultures. A pairing of separate cultures

with merged economies and moderately interfering centralized governments may

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be the wave of a future, in essence a sort of mixture of federalism and

regionalism.

Simply put, in a world connected economically and technologically,

interdependence may be the best method for survival in a complex world of

global communities bound by varied customs, economic codes, and patterns of

transit. The world has fundamentally evolved, at least in part. Cochrane writes

that in Northern Ireland people have moved on. He says, “people are no longer

interested in killing each other over rival nationality claims or religious

labels,”(Cochrane, 2013, 312) a situation that seems to have evolved civic

discourse. The idea of who owns Ireland and its troubled past with the North and

Great Britain coupled with a distrust and disinterest in religious debate shows the

influence of a world less concerned with nation states, bloody wars of

independence, religious hierarchies, and status in a fixed and unyielding society.

Instead new priorities include the life and rights of individuals, the devolution of

sovereign powers to smaller local ensembles, the growing influence of inter-

connected international corporations, the prevalence and growing influence of

NGOs and the DIY libertarian ethic that has even swept and galvanized pockets

of American politics. In particular the case of Ireland, so haunted by a destructive

past with the United Kingdom for once may be looking beyond past animosity to

new cooperative challenges. The sphere of influence may have moved from

individual nation states to confederated associations like the European Union.

In Scotland, the twin historical truths, behind claims for nation state-hood

and the concept that Scotland has and continues to benefit from a paternalistic

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relationship with England, vie for centrality. Herman douses the claims for

independence with a dose of reality saying, “ the notion that its history as part of

the British empire is one of systematic abuse and exploitation is absurd: if

anything Scots have been overrepresented as part of the ruling establishment.”

(Herman, 2001, 361) Herman further rails against the idea that Scotland and the

Scottish are and were treated like the Irish. Herman rejects this callous rewriting

of Scottish history saying it, “does a disservice to not only to historical truth, but

to Scotland itself.” (Herman, 361)

The truth of such independence movements is decidedly mixed. While

abuses during colonial periods did occur, the twentieth century saw laborious

efforts to extricate colonial powers from the fates of former colonies. While

beleaguered former colonies can live in a state of victimization by their former

captors, the world community will only allow such issues to color the outlook for

national restitution and global help for so long. At some point, nations, or the

people that comprise such nations must exhibit a will to govern and create the

governments they need to effect positive change and the modernist notion of

industrial/economic/living standards progress. Both Scotland and Northern

Ireland have scapegoated the United Kingdom for centuries, but the historical

record is starting to recognize that the former colonial powerhouse is exercising

restraint in dealing with troubled regions that perceive the binding union as an

evil adversary and not a fair dealing broker of an even-handed confederation.

Diehl and Frederking in their Global Governance anthology remarked that, “while

international organizations continue to play a greater role than they ever have,

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state sovereignty and lack of political will continue to inhibit the long-term

prospects of those organizations for creating effective structures of global

governance.” (Diehl, 2010, 4) Global governance cannot effectively handle all

local problems as Diehl and Frederking have pointed out. Further, blaming a

former parent as the nexus of all contemporary internal problems is simply

blaming without reason. In the road to independence or the seemingly preferable

option of devolution, aspiring new nations, or invigorated regional government

schemes will, like American big city mayors, have to start looking for local,

partnership, cooperative, and negotiated solutions to the peoples’ problems, and

avoid the colorful, but often pointless rhetoric of holding former colonialists

responsible. They may find that the best solution to post-colonial malaise is to

de-emphasize historical wrongs, and like, South Africa, begin again.

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References

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