Article Review Essay

Conducting their learning as the transitional funding attached to the pacification process in Federal Ireland is reaching its end, the authors raise the role of aid in fighting solving particularly with regards to intangible outcomes much(prenominal) as individuality formation. The idea buttocks this funding is that it reduces economic disparities between the conflicting groups and that the economic growth started by this funding will continue into the succeeding(a).These funds come from the International broth for Ireland (IFI), which addressed unemployment and poverty in Republi roll in the hay / Loyalist communities the Peace I funds, which promoted social inclusion, cross-community contact, and economic information and the Peace II funds (ended in 2006), which had similar goals to Peace I but targeted local, grassroots (nongovernmental) organizations. The authors also get the role of external agencies as they intervene in ethnopolitical conflict and the greatness of community development in the field pansy process.The authors be c atomic number 18ful to line that economic aid is non a magic cure for conflict as this aid, if improperly administered, buttocks at times heighten implicit in(p) conflicts. Indeed, in Northern Ireland, the approach has had mixed results. In designing their study, the authors took twain a qualitative and quantitative approach. For the qualitative portion, the authors interviewed 98 community leaders, courteous servants, and development officers from Belfast, Londonderry/Derry, and the Border region (Northern Ireland).These interviews consisted of semi-structured questions, including those attached to the Cantril Self-Anchoring Striving Scale What be your best concupiscencees and hopes for your personalised future? What are your tally fears and worries somewhat your personal future? What are your best wishes and hopes for the future of your country? What are your worst fears and worries about the future of your country? (page 166). The quantitative data was drawn from the pass 2006 Northern Ireland Public Opining Survey.The sample consisted of 1,023 bigs representative of Northern Irelands adult population. The study as a whole was designed to look at the respondents hopes and fears about Northern Irelands future. Through the inclusion of qualitative data, the authors hoped to demarginalize voices that are often not heard in the formal discourses of the mollification process. This study yielded numerous tantalizing findings. First, the authors found that more Nationalists than Unionists imagine a future where conflicting groups are able to perceive a sense of divided up community.Second, the authors found differences based on gender more females than males saw the probability for building new relationships amongst communities in the future. Third, the authors found two common fears / concerns that widen across religions, genders, and ages the fear that violence in changing the social textile of Northern Ireland and the belief that politicians are disingenuous and not interested in serving the needs of their constituency. Fourth, the authors found that more Nationalists than Unionists saw the modernization of the sparing and the political structure as means by which to support the peace process.Finally, the authors found that younger adults were more concerned about the potential reverse of the peace process and the economy than older adults The authors consider numerous theories about identity formation. In designing their study, they took into consideration geographic differences in identity formation i. e. Londonderry/Derry vs. Belfast and urban vs. rural locations. They also consider how the Irish view immigration and the infiltration of outside values. In general, this article is not convincing.Its primary strength is the detailed background to the conflicts in Northern Ireland, with a focus on the economic causes and effects of this conflict. Thi s strength does not lower the effects of the articles numerous weaknesses. First, the authors do not explicitly state their hypothesis. While exploratory studies such as this one can potentially reveal valuable information, the authors nowhere state the reasons behind the study. When questions such as identity formation are being explored, the readers need to go to bed the authors relationship to the issue.For example, are the authors somehow involved in this ethnopolitical conflict? Or, are they looking at it from the perspective of an outsider? If they are outsiders, does their perspective cast a bearing on how the respondents arrange their questions? Second, the authors explicitly state that they wish to demarginalize those voices that are not typically heard in the official peace process discourse. However, in selecting the respondents for the qualitative portion of the study, the authors chose community leaders, civil servants, and development officers.It would seem that th ese are precisely the voices that are heard in the official discourse. Readers are left to wonder why the authors did not include a more representative sample of the population of Northern Ireland for this portion of the study. Third, this does not seem to be a study that was designed specifically to answer certain questions. As noted, the authors nowhere state a hypothesis. For the reader, it appears that the quantitative and qualitative data seems to have been mixed together ad hoc. In otherwise words, the study does not seem to be designed to fit a specific question.Rather, the authors appear to have attempted to answer questions based on the information they had at hand. Fourth, as the basis for this study was largely to examine economic role of the peace process, it seems like a gross circumspection that the authors did not provide data on their respondents demographics. In the discussion section, the authors foreshadow that they collected background demographic information (political party, religious views, age, gender, socioeconomic status) on the respondents, but this information was not included in the results section and does not appear to have been considered in any significant way.Finally, the analysis of the qualitative data seems a bit lacking. It would perhaps have been stronger to indentify the common themes and subthemes of the responses, rather than using the responses as illustrative examples. Because of these specific weakness as hale as the authors failure to mention the limitations of their study and to provide specific recommendations for how their results can be used to generate future studies and/or to impact the peace process, this article is not convincing.