ABSTRACT

Chapter 3 covered the internal dynamics within the Provisional IRA, the largest and most significant group in the Irish Republican movement, from its decision to announce a ceasefire in 1994 up to its culmination in the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. The 1998 agreement marked the beginning of two processes. The first was the implementation of the agreement in establishing a powersharing government in Northern Ireland which would have cross-border institutions with the Republic of Ireland and gradually greater devolution of responsibility in areas such as policing and criminal justice. The second process was the organisational disengagement of the Provisional IRA which often, controversially, ran in tandem with building the new Northern Irish institutions of power-sharing. While much of the Provisional IRA was integrated into Sinn Fein, assuming positions of power in the Northern Irish Assembly, other members expanded community activist roles which had begun to develop in the 1990s. By 2005, the Provisional IRA had officially concluded its existence as an organisation by announcing the decommissioning of its weapons and announcing the standing down of its members from engaging in violence. In the ten years since this announcement, the Irish Republican movement has by and large moved away from the sustained and intense violence that defined the period of the Troubles. In The De-Radicalization of Jihadists, Omar Ashour (2009) argues that

groups moving away from violence can then have a domino effect across the movement.1 The book’s conceptualisation of social movement de-radicalisation places this domino effect as the key intermediary stage between group disengagement and potentially wider transformation in the social movement. The disengagement of one group can have a knock-on effect and just as the leadership seeks to diffuse the disengagement frame within its own group (as discussed in Chapter 3), they can also seek to diffuse this frame externally.2 The current chapter explores how the Provisional IRA’s disengagement diffused to impact upon the movement in two interrelated dimensions: (1) competitor groups existing at the same time; and (2) the political opportunity structures. Thus, the group process of disengagement outlined in Chapter 3 leads to a diffusion dynamic (the domino effect) which is relational and structural. In other words, group disengagement has a direct knock-on effect on networks and

groups but, depending on the nature of disengagement, can transform political systems which then have an effect on political opportunity structures for the movement. The outcome of this process is not predetermined or fixed – group disengagement can manifest in different ways, sometimes not producing any significant structural change and therefore any domino effect may rely on its relational effects. The aim of the chapter is to trace the process of diffusion in the context of the Provisional IRA and the Irish Republican movement, which can then be used to engage in a broader conceptual discussion in the conclusion. Chapter 3 discussed the group process of disengagement and how it mani-

fested through an internal reframing process. In order to sell disengagement to the members in the Provisional IRA, the conditionality which legitimised violence was reframed to emphasise the grievances of the 1960s. Disengagement was framed as a means of gaining agency in creating social transformation which addressed these grievances by engaging in negotiations. A bridging frame – TUAS – pulled along members to support disengagement but its internal logic encouraged deeper support for disengagement. The Provisional IRA’s disengagement frame was conditional, first, on the success of negotiations and, second, on the success and durability of their outcome, the new political system in Northern Ireland. The consequence of adopting this framing was that the Provisional IRA needed to seriously consider organisational disengagement – otherwise known as disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR). As will be shown, the pathways by which the organisation disengaged were a crucial driver in encouraging others in the movement to disengage but it also led its framing of disengagement to diffuse. The first section outlines the broad contours of the Provisional IRA’s disengagement organisationally, outlining the different pathways in which members can disengage, specifically into community activism. The second section focuses on one specific example of how Provisional IRA members disengaged into community activism, known as the mobile phone networks, and how this network facilitated the domino effect. The third section then discusses the political changes which occurred as a result of the Provisional IRA’s disengagement, reflecting upon both how this relates to the mobile phone network and more generally how it shapes political opportunity structures for the movement.