ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on the temporal disjunctions of peacebuilding and examines that has occurred over an 18-year period of significant political changes and subject to fundamental challenges. The checkered evolution of political directives during transition from direct rule to local rule exposes the enigmatic nature of democratization and policy development in a complex political environment. In the transition to local rule democracy in Northern Ireland, there was the decay and erosion of key political peacebuilding goals. The association between local democracy and the inability to rise above sectarianism has significant implications for the peacebuilding project in Northern Ireland. Macro-level political reorganization of the Good Friday Agreement has increasingly sidelined the role of the civil society. Overall declines in city segregation registered between 2001 and 2011 appear to obscure lingering and problematic aspects of Belfast life. Residential segregation remains 'remarkably high in the north and west of the city where these areas had also the most intense exposure to political violence'.