A Transient Transition: The Cultural and Institutional Obstacles
Impeding the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition in its Progression
from Informal to Formal Politics.
Cera Murtagh
Abstract
Women have traditionally occupied a perilous position in Northern Irish politics,
ultimately constrained from participating on their own terms by its dominant
discourses of nationalism, conflict and realism. Alienated from the formal political
structures which enshrine these discourses, many women have alternatively
embraced the informal political sphere in the form of extra-institutional grassroots and
community networks which constitute the women's movement. Though this
movement has largely conformed to the segmented structure of society, space has
continually been harnessed for women of both national communities to converge on
various issues and work across differences while remaining rooted within their own
distinct national identities and communities. To the extent that it has episodically
emerged, this style of transversal politics has been confined to collectives of the
informal arena of politics. However, with the dawn of devolution and a new
constitution for Northern Ireland women recognised the momentous opportunity to
embark upon the formal sphere and partake in the shaping of a new society and
political system. In the form of a transversal political party, the Northern Ireland
Women's Coalition affected this transition to the 'parallel universe' of constitutional
politics. However just as political opportunity structure underlies the seizure of this
political space, political obstacles can account for its loss. The combined factors of
inimical discourses, their institutionalisation within the consociational system and the
adverse political climate of polarisation effectively denied the NIWC the space it
required to progress and endure within formal politics, rendering its transition a
transient phenomenon.
Irish Political Studies, Volume 23, Issue 1 February 2008, pages 21 - 40.