Empirical Dynamics of Mimetic Rivalry in Contemporary Northern Ireland

The concept of rivalry has rarely received close attention in the field of IR and Peace and Conflict Studies, despite its direct relation to the core issue within the field, namely the issue of war and peace. Nonetheless, several concepts emerged to address the phenomenon in both literatures such as, respectively, ‘rivalry’ (Goertz and Diehl, 2000; Hensel, 1999; Rasler, Colaresi, and Thompson, 2006; Thompson, 2001; Vasquez, 1996), ‘protracted social conflict’ (Azar, 1990), deep-rooted conflict (Burton, 1990), and ‘intractable conflict’ – or protracted intractable conflict (Kriesberg, 1993). The argument advanced is that these models display common limitations, in that they are rationalist, materialist, and – most importantly – they do not focus on the emergence of rivalry. Drawing from René Girard’s (1979, 2007) “Theory of Mimetic Desire”, Leon Festinger’s (1954) “Theory of Social Comparison”, and Giorgio Agamben’s (2009) Theory of Signature, I advance an alternative four-phase empirical framework that empirically accounts for rivalry emergence. I argue that the emergence of rivalry has endogenic-relational origins, which result from a destructive mimetic process where the intractability of the issue(s) at stake reflects actors’ mimetic polarization. The framework traces the locus of rivalry in competitive comparison and mimetic desire, two intertwined social-psychological dynamics that foster competition for status and power, and oppositional identification. The nature of this mimetic process is illustrated through an analysis of the rivalry between Irish Republicans and Irish Loyalists in Northern Ireland; this rivalry manifests today in an array of issues, among which this paper focuses on the adoption of the Irish language and why it is perceived by some as an act of ‘cultural ethnic cleansing’. In contrast to the literature that frames Northern Ireland as a post-conflict society, I argue that this manifestation reflects the status of ongoing mimetic rivalry in Northern Ireland politics and society. As a result, this paper advocates to shift the focus from accommodating non-negotiable desires and objects to tackling the high destructive reciprocity, resentment, and mistrust mirroring in both Catholic and Protestant communities.