jonathan s. blake - columbia university · ireland at queen’s university belfast, the columbia...

!!!!!!!!!!Ritual Contention in Divided Societies:

Participation in Loyalist Parades in Northern Ireland !!Jonathan S. Blake !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences !!!

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY !!2015 !

Abstract !Ritual Contention in Divided Societies:

Participation in Loyalist Parades in Northern Ireland !Jonathan S. Blake !!

Each year, Protestant organizations in Northern Ireland perform over 2,500 ritual parades to

celebrate and commemorate their culture. Many Catholics, however, see parades as triumphalist

and hateful. As a result, parades undermine the political peace process and grassroots peace-

building by raising interethnic tension and precipitating riots, including significant violence in

recent years. This dissertation asks: Why do people participate in these parades?

To answer this question, I consider loyalist parading as an example of contentious ritual

—symbolic action that makes contested political claims. To understand these parades as ritual

actions, I build on two central insights from religious studies, sociology, and anthropology. First,

as meaningful and shared practices, rituals provide participants with benefits that are intrinsic to

participating in the act itself and do not depend on the achievement of some external outcome.

Second, rituals are multi-vocal, meaning that interpretations of the action can vary across actors.

Participants need not share the interpretation of their actions held by organizers, rivals, or outside

observers. Participants, therefore, may not see the ritual as provocative, aggressive, or even

contentious. These arguments stand in contrast to traditional explanations for collective action

and ethnic conflict that theorize participation in ethnically polarizing events in terms of the

achievement of concrete outcomes, such as selective material benefits, provoking the out-group

into overreacting, or intimidating them into quiescence.

To test my argument, I conducted fieldwork in Belfast, Northern Ireland. I developed and

implemented a household survey to measure mass-level opinion, designed and ran an online

survey of all Protestant clergy and elected officials in Northern Ireland to measure elite-level

opinion, conducted over 80 semi-structured interviews with parade participants and

nonparticipants, and observed dozens of hours of parades and related events. I demonstrate that,

as expected by my argument, people approach participation in ritual parades as an end in and of

itself. The evidence demonstrates that participants do not view parades instrumentally. This

means that people make decisions to participate in contentious behavior without consideration of

their actions’ profoundly political consequences. The ritual nature of parades severs the expected

connection between means (participation) and ends (political consequences), thus creating the

environment for sustained conflict. Furthermore, the predictions of influential theories of ethnic

conflict—extreme in-group identification or out-group antipathy—and collective action—

selective material benefits or sanctions—are not supported by the data.

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Contents

!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !i

List of Figures ii

List of Tables iii

Acknowledgements iv

Dedication viii

1 Introduction 1

2 Identity on the March in Northern Ireland 16

3 The Politics of Provocation: Politicians, Pastors, Paramilitaries, and Parades 42

4 A Theory of Ritual Participation 76

5 Parading For Mainly Fun and Process 120

6 Culture, Politics, and the Paradox of Anti-Politics in Loyalist Parading 168

7 For God and Ulster or Private Payoff? Assessing the Role of Collective and Selective Incentives 209

8 Conclusion 260

Bibliography 272

Appendix 305

List of Figures

!

ii

2.1 Loyalist and Nationalist Parades, 1985-2013 26

2.2 Contentious Parades, 1999-2013 29

3.1 Parades with Disorder and Elections, 1990-2009 58

3.2 Histogram of Elite Opinions on Parades 70

3.3 Kernel Density Plot of Opinions on Parades by Elected Officials and Clergy 70

7.1 Example Small Area 218

7.2 Screenshot from the Land and Property Service’s Spatial NI Map 218

7.3 Histogram of the Age Participants Began Parading 221

7.4 Percentage of Respondents Marching, by Age 221

7.5 Percentage of Participants in Each Organization 224

7.6 Summary of Respondents’ Parading Behavior, 2012-2013 226

List of Tables

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iii

3.1 The Determinants of Elite Parade Attendance, Logit Models 68

3.2 Elite Opinions on Parade Routes (%) 69

3.3 Parade-Related Activities of Elected Officials and Clergy (%) 72

3.4 Parade Organization Membership among Elites (%) 73

5.1 Types of Purposes Attributed to Loyalist Parades 128

5.2 Purposes of Loyalist Parades Reported by Participants: Intrinsic vs. Instrumental 129

7.1 Information on the Neighborhoods Included in the Survey 215

7.2 Determinants of Current Parade Participation, Logit Models 229

7.3 Robustness Check: Rare Events Logit 254

7.4 Robustness Check: Multiple Imputations 255

A1 Robustness Check: Alternative Measures of Protestant Identification 305

A2 Robustness Check: Alternative Measures of Anti-Catholicism and Family Ties 306

A3 Interviewees Quoted in Dissertation 307

Acknowledgments

It is my great pleasure to thank all the people who helped me research and write this

dissertation. Jack Snyder has guided my thinking since day one. I thank him for trusting me to

research what I thought was important and providing criticism to make it sharper. Al Stepan

pushed me to think big and speak to debates that matter. Michael Doyle always provided moral

support and encouraged my exploration—and directed me to financial support to make it

possible. Jim Jasper provided detailed and thoughtful comments on my work that really took it to

the next level. And Tim Frye ensured that I was careful with my argument and didn’t step too far.

Two people not on my committee deserve special recognition: Ron Hassner, who has been a

teacher, mentor, and cheerleader for a decade; and Lucy Goodhart, whose dedicated guidance set

me on the right track as I launched this project. I thank all for them for their continued support.

In Northern Ireland, many people graciously gave me their time and views, not to

mention their tea. First and foremost, I want to thank all of the people who invited me into their

homes and offices or met me at restaurants, cafes, and pubs for interviews. I truly appreciate their

willingness to share their stories. Thanks also to the many people who provided much-needed

counsel on my research: John Barry, Jonny Byrne, Paula Devine, John Garry, Neil Jarman, Dave

Magee, Kieran McEvoy, Dirk Schubotz, Peter Shirlow, and Ben Walker. Gladys Ganiel kindly let

me use the database of clergy contact information that she and Therese Cullen compiled for the

‘Visioning 21st Century Ecumenism’ research project at the Irish School of Ecumenics. I

appreciate the hard work of my survey enumerators, especially Rachel, Brenda, Tracey, Allison,

and Julie. Finally, the good folks at Common Grounds Cafe and especially Black Bear Café kept

me well caffeinated and let me set up shop.

iv

A few people in Northern Ireland went above and beyond. In particular, I want to thank

Dominic Bryan, who taught me much of what I know about parades and who sponsored me as a

visitor at the School of History and Anthropology at Queen’s University Belfast; Mark

Hammond, who kindly lent me a bicycle on three of my trips (once before he had even met me!);

and Jon Evershed, who provided lots of good craic and was an keen companion in fieldwork.

My research in Northern Ireland was generously supported by a Doctoral Dissertation

Improvement Grant from the National Science Foundation (SES-1263772); the Endeavor

Foundation (formerly the Christian Johnson Endeavor Foundation); Columbia University’s

Department of Political Science and Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict, and

Complexity (at the Earth Institute); and APSA’s British Politics Group. Many thanks to Joe

Chartier for helping me deal with all the Endeavor grants. Earlier fieldwork in Jerusalem was

funded by Columbia’s Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion.

A number of people read drafts of chapters and provided instructive feedback. Kate

Cronin-Furman deserves some sort of medal for doing it more than anyone else. A heartfelt

thanks to her and to Hadas Aron, Jonathan Evershed, Lee Ann Fujii, Jeff Goodwin, John Krinsky,

Michele Margolis, Aidan McGarry, Tonya Putnam, Robert Shapiro, Nick Smith, Jon Tonge,

David Weinberg, Lauren Young, and Adam Ziegfeld for valuable comments and critiques. Along

the way, I had helpful conversations with Séverine Autesserre, Courtney Bender, David Buckley,

Al Fang, Nils Gilman, Kimuli Kasara, Isabela Mares, Yotam Margalit, Jeremy Menchik, Tonya

Putnam, Bob Scott, Lee Smithey, Paul Staniland, Alissa Stollwerk, and Dorian Warren. Finally, I

would like to thank the discussants, audiences, and organizers of the Politics and Protests

Workshop at CUNY Graduate Center, the Cooperative on Working Class Politics in Northern

v

Ireland at Queen’s University Belfast, the Columbia University International Politics Seminar,

the Political Science Graduate Student Conference at the University of Pennsylvania, and the

annual meetings of the American Political Science Association (2014), Association for the Study

of Nationalities (2014), International Studies Association (2014 and 2015), and Midwest Political

Science Association (2014).

I would not have made it through grad school without my friends in the trenches. Mike

Smith, Steven White, and I were forever bonded in the cauldron of our first few years. The

coffees, beers, pizzas, and outer borough ethnic food quests made grad school a lot more fun.

They, along with Erica Borghard, Kate Cronin-Furman, Simon Collard-Wexler, Jordan Kyle,

Sara Moller, Liz Sperber, and the rest of the Columbia crew, made grad school not so bad.

My in-laws-to-be, Arnie Eisen and Ace Leveen, provided me with food, shelter, and lots

of encouragement. In particular, Arnie’s reading of my theory chapter convinced me that I wasn’t

desecrating a century’s worth of thinking about ritual. Nathaniel Eisen bravely edited as much of

the manuscript as he could in the final hours before I sent it out. I thank them all for welcoming

me with open arms over the last years.

The love from my family has kept me going for so long. My parents, Mitch and Judy

Blake, have always encouraged my learning and exploring. Though I’m sure they would have

preferred I did my fieldwork around Los Angeles rather Belfast (not to mention my time in

Liberia and Sierra Leone), they provided nothing but enthusiastic support. This dissertation is

dedicated to them. Thanks also to my brothers, Aaron and Josh, for their benign neglect when it

comes to my work.

vi

Last but certainly not least is Shulie. She read much of this dissertation, listened

graciously to me yap about all of it, and compiled the bibliography for me—a task I’ll never be

finished thanking her for. She cheered me on when things went right and cheered me up when

things went wrong. I would not have finished this without her—though that is the least of the

reasons for my love.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!

vii

!!!

For my parents

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viii

!Chapter One Introduction !

Visit a Protestant neighborhood, town, or village in Northern Ireland during the spring or

summer and there is a good chance you will encounter crowds of people packed onto the

sidewalks, clutching cans of beer, bottles of Buckfast Tonic Wine, and Union Jacks—some might

even be wearing the flag as a cape. There will be food trucks grilling cheap hamburger patties

and deep-frying potatoes and battered fish. And there will be outdoor vendors selling posters, t-

shirts, hats, and other souvenirs, all bedecked with the icons of Ulster Protestants: the British

flag, the Northern Irish flag, King Billy—William III, the Prince of Orange—riding a white

horse into battle. It’s the marching season and everyone is gathered for a parade.

Each year, Protestant organizations perform over 2,500 parades across Northern Ireland.

In these parades, all-male Protestant loyal orders, most famously the Orange Order, join with

Protestant marching bands to march through the streets to display and celebrate their shared

culture, history, faith, and politics. Through bodies, banners, flags, and music, loyalist parades

represent the Protestant nation and its aspirations.

Loyalist parades are an aural and visual riot. Even from a distance, you can hear the sharp

cracks of snare drums, high-pitched blasts of flutes, and thunderous thwacks of bass drums. Once

the parade appears, it is visually just as loud. First in line is a marching band’s color party,

carrying flags (British, Northern Irish, Scottish, Orange Order, 1912 Ulster Volunteer Force,

Royal Irish Rifles, and more) with military precision. Then come the drummers, with side drums

slung over their right shoulders and resting on their left hips. Behind marches the bass drummer,

!1

slamming on the large drum attached to his chest with great force. Finally come the rows and

rows of fluters, instruments raised high. The band, all in matching uniforms, march in unison,

playing crowd favorites: “The Sash My Father Wore,” “Derry Walls,” “No Pope in Rome.”

Following closely behind the band is the loyal order lodge. First comes the lodge’s

banner, hanging from long poles held by two members. The large banner presents the lodge’s

name along with a rich array of iconography: depictions of pivotal scenes in Irish Protestant

history, biblical scenes, or portraits of past kings, queens, and unionist political heroes. The lodge

members march behind their banner, dressed in dark suits topped by a collarette that denotes

their organization. Behind the lodge marches another band, and then another lodge, and so on.

Loyalist parades share two features with other similar public events around the world.

First, they display the nation. By gathering national emblems and bodies in a single space,

loyalist parades, like other nationalist rituals, make visible the “imagined community.” In so 1

doing, such performances lubricate the imagination, helping each member feel the “deep,

horizontal comradeship” of nationalism. As a result, rituals of the nation play a prominent role 2

in the culture and politics of modern life. Across varied forms—parade, rally, wreath laying,

anthem singing, flag raising, state funeral—nationalist rituals are ways for the nation and its

members to display itself and honor itself; mourn collective tragedies and celebrate collective

triumphs; declare its present and imagine its future. They are moments when “societies worship

themselves brazenly and openly.” 3

!2

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. 1

(London: Verso, 1991).

Ibid., p. 7.2

Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983), p. 56.3

Consequently, nationalist rituals can, at times, become hotly contested. For the history of

nationalism is a history of rival claims over territory, people, and power. Thus, in the absence of

politico-cultural homogeneity, any representation of the nation and its ambitions is a potential

object of dispute. This contestation is the second shared feature of loyalist parades. Loyalist

parades are not only national rituals, but contentious rituals, symbolic actions that make

contested political claims. The Protestant past, present, and future envisioned by parades

conflicts with the memory, experience, and aspirations of many Catholics. At particular times

and in particular places, loyalist parades trigger a cycle of angry protests and counter-protests,

further distancing Catholic from Protestant. On occasion, violence erupts and bricks crisscross

through skies darkened by the smoke of shattered petrol-bombs.

This feature places loyalist parades in the ignominious company of other divisive

symbolic performances: provocative Hindu processions in India, Confederate flag-flying in the

American south, pilgrimages to certain Shinto shrines in Japan, prayer in the disputed holy

places of Israel and Palestine, racialized commemorative ceremonies in South Africa, and others.

While the enactment of most contentious rituals does not produce violence or even protest most

of the time, it can still exacerbate group tensions, intensify an “us versus them” mentality, and

make conflicts more difficult to resolve.

National rituals, both in their banal and contentious forms, are typically thought of and

studied as elite phenomena. Indeed, a rich body of scholarship demonstrates the political power

of national rituals (and political rituals, more generally) for activists, movements, and rulers. In 4

part, this intuition is correct—typically, it is elites who erect monuments, compose national

!3

For example, David I. Kertzer, Rituals, Politics, and Power (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988).4

anthems, and proclaim holidays. But it is, at best, a partial account. The full story must also

include how and why ordinary people interact with monuments, sing national anthems, and

celebrate holidays—or not. Many national rites require mass participation, that in democracies,

at least, is voluntary. And, as Hobsbawm reminds us, while nationalism is “constructed 5

essentially from above, … [it] cannot be understood unless also analyzed from below, that is in

terms of the assumptions, hopes, needs, longings and interests of ordinary people, which are not

necessarily national and still less nationalist.” We cannot, therefore, impose theories of elite 6

motivations onto ordinary participants.

If the elite account is insufficient, how should we explain popular participation?

Magnifying the puzzle, nationalist rituals produce social and political outcomes that benefit the

nation as a whole, such as increased solidarity or intimidation of a rival ethnic group. Since these

benefits do not discriminate between participants and free-riders, there is no direct incentive to

participate. Peel away the colorful costumes, lively music, boisterous crowds, and other 7

elements of elaborate spectacle, and contentious rituals, at their most basic, are acts of collective

claim-making. In divided societies, they drive wedges between groups, fan the flames of

suspicion and hostility, and occasionally spark violence—all while facing the collective action

problem. Given all this, I ask: Why do people choose to take part?

!

!4

On non-democracies, see, for instance, Lisa Wedeen, Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols 5

in Contemporary Syria (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).

E. J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (New York: Cambridge 6

University Press, 1990), p. 10.

Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups (Cambridge: Harvard 7

University Press, 1965). For more general analyses of nationalism as a collective action problem, see Michael Hechter, Principles of Group Solidarity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987); and Russell Hardin, One for All: The Logic of Group Conflict (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995).

The Argument and Its Alternatives

The central claim of this dissertation is that to understand loyalist parades and other

contentious rituals, we must approach them as rituals—“symbolic behavior that is socially

standardized and repetitive.” Though describing an act as “ritual” is often a way to ignore it or 8

denigrate it as “merely symbolic,” I will argue that it is exactly the ritual character of these

contentious events that holds the key to their explanation. To better understand the features and

dynamics of ritual, I draw on research from sociology, anthropology, and religious studies. I

integrate their findings with research on ethnic conflict and contentious politics to provide an

explanation that accounts for the anomalous features of contentious rituals. Two central

arguments emerge. First, rituals present “process-oriented motivations” to participants in the 9

form of benefits that are intrinsic to participation itself. This insight explains how participants

overcome the dilemma of collective action. Second, rituals are multi-vocal and their meaning is

ambiguous. Symbolic ambiguity suggests that interpretations of a ritual can vary across actors so

participants need not share the interpretation of their action held by organizers, rivals, or outside

observers. Participants, therefore, may not see the ritual as provocative, aggressive, or even

contentious—consequences that may turn them off from taking part. This insight explains how

participants overcome the dilemma of divisiveness.

Three prominent existing arguments also provide plausible explanations for participation

in contentious rituals. First, theories of elite manipulation suggest that people participate because

it is in the interest of group elites. But, as mentioned above, this is an insufficient account for

!5

Kertzer, Rituals, Politics, and Power, p. 9.8

Jon Elster, The Cement of Society: A Study of Social Order (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 9

44-46.

voluntary mass action. We cannot assume that just because a contentious ritual is in the interests

of elites, mass action will simply appear. Second, the logic of ethnic rivalry theories of conflict 10

suggest that contentious national rituals are ways for a group to assert its dominance and

denigrate the ethnic other. The implication is that individuals are motivated to participate by 11

ethnic pride and solidarity or grievances against the out-group. But, as I will show in Chapter 7,

loyalist parade participants are not distinguishable from nonparticipants by their ethnic attitudes.

I find that participants are not ethnic extremists either in terms of pro-Protestant patriotism or

anti-Catholic bigotry. Third, the logic of collective action suggests that people participate in

contentious rituals when the private benefits outweigh the private costs. Factors found to 12

increase benefits and lower costs include selective incentives, social sanctions for

noncooperation, and social ties to participants. Once again, the evidence does not support the

prominent theory. Chapter 7 shows that participants do not receive selective material rewards and

do not have more preexisting social ties than comparable nonparticipants. The evidence on social

sanctioning is less clear: some data suggest that participants do experience mild social

sanctioning, but other evidence suggests that they do not.

Thus, my argument and evidence challenge influential theories of ethnic conflict that are

based on the instrumental logics of ethnic rivalry and collective action. The ethnic rivalry

explanation of conflict assumes that individuals act to achieve an outcome oriented at a rival

ethnic group, such as provocation or humiliation. The collective action explanation of conflict

!6

For an example of this assumption, see Steven I. Wilkinson, Votes and Violence: Electoral Competition and 10

Ethnic Riots in India (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), esp. p. 24.

See, for instance, Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, 2nd. ed. (Berkeley: University of California 11

Press, 2000); and Roger D. Petersen, Understanding Ethnic Violence: Fear, Hatred, and Resentment in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

Olson, The Logic of Collective Action. 12

assumes that individuals act to maximize personal material gain. Both theories treat participation

in parades as means toward external ends. I, by contrast, show that people approach participation

in ritual parades as an end in and of itself. The evidence demonstrates that participants do not

view parades instrumentally. Though the ethnic rivalry and collective action approaches to ethnic

conflict have proven to be powerful explanatory tools in a wide range of contexts, by attributing

externally-oriented, instrumental motives to participants, they do not satisfactorily explain

variation among individuals in Northern Ireland.

The empirical claims I just previewed come from an abundance of original data on

individual-level participation in Protestant loyalist parades that I collected during eight months of

fieldwork in Northern Ireland. These data have three primary sources. First, I conducted semi-

structured interviews with 82 participants and nonparticipants. Second, I designed and

implemented a randomized household survey with 228 respondents in nine Protestant

neighborhoods in Belfast. Third, I recorded ethnographic observations at many parades, protests,

public meetings, marching band practices, and other related events. By collecting data from both

participants and nonparticipants, my research addresses shortcomings in existing studies of

loyalist parades and other “cultural forms of political expression,” which only sample 13 14

participants.

My analysis of Protestant elites in Chapter 3 relies on additional data sources. To measure

elite attitudes and behavior regarding parades, I conducted two online surveys: of all Protestant

elected officials (57 respondents) and of all Protestant clergy members (212 respondents).

!7

See James W. McAuley, Jonathan Tonge, and Andrew Mycock, Loyal to the Core?: Orangeism and Britishness in 13

Northern Ireland (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2011).

Verta Taylor, Leila J. Rupp, and Joshua Gamson, “Performing Protest: Drag Shows as Tactical Repertoires of the 14

Gay and Lesbian Movement,” Research in Social Movements, Conflicts, and Change, Vol. 25 (2004), p. 106.

Contributions to Understanding Ethnic Conflict

Studying participation in contentious rituals touches on fundamental questions about

ethnic conflict and collective action. First is the question of the origins of ethnic violence.

Despite the recent micro-level turn in the study of violence, only scant scholarly attention has 15

been paid to violence’s triggers. They are generally left untheorized and are presumed to appear 16

when conditions are ripe. But if a trigger requires the mobilization of participants, we cannot

assume that it will just appear. Mass participation in triggering events is especially puzzling

given that if the trigger succeeds, ordinary people are most likely to suffer in the ensuing

violence. So a full description of the dynamics of intergroup conflict must include an explanation

of the events that ignite violence. This dissertation provides a bottom-up account of a major 17

trigger of communal violence in post-conflict Northern Ireland.

A second contribution of this dissertation is asking the question, why do people

participate in ethnic conflict short of violence? The literature on ethnic conflict tends to conflate

conflict and violence, even though they are conceptually distinct. When “pursued within the

institutionalized channels of the polity,” ethnic conflict is a “regular feature of pluralistic

!8

See Stathis N. Kalyvas, “The Ontology of ‘Political Violence’: Action and Identity in Civil Wars,” Perspectives on 15

Politics, Vol. 1, No. 3 (September 2003), pp. 475-494.

Political science exceptions include Donald L. Horowitz, The Deadly Ethnic Riot (Berkeley: University of 16

California Press, 2001), ch. 8, “The Occasions for Violence”; and Marc Howard Ross, Cultural Contestation in Ethnic Conflict (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

For a theoretical approach to historical events, see William H. Sewell, “Political Events as Structural 17

Transformations: Inventing Revolution at the Bastille,” Theory and Society, Vol. 25, No. 6 (December 1996), pp. 841-881. See also, Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 18-20; Mark R. Beissinger, Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 11, 14-27; and Geneviève Zubrzycki, The Crosses of Auschwitz: Nationalism and Religion in Post-Communist Poland (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006). Though I do not answer Brubaker’s call for “eventful analyses of nationness and nationalism” (p. 19), this dissertation highlights the importance of specific triggering events in understanding intergroup violence.

democracies” that reflects differing political interests and preferences among ethnic groups. 18

Even when ethnic disagreements take “the form of strikes and non-violent demonstrations on the

streets, it is an expression of conflict to be sure, but it is not a form of ethnic violence.” 19

Political mobilization along ethnic lines, therefore, need not end in violence. As Horowitz

reminds us: “Even in the most severely divided society, ties of blood do not lead ineluctably to

rivers of blood.” 20

Studies of participation in ethnic conflict have focused almost exclusively on episodes of

violence, but participating in a rebel group, riot, or genocide is not the same as participating 21 22 23

an act of nonviolent conflict. Contentious rituals and other episodes of conflict may cause

offense, raise tensions, or even precipitate instability and violence, but participation does not

carry the high risks to the individual of an act of violence. Neither does participation in a

contentious ritual violate widely-held norms against committing harm to other people or their

property. On the benefits side, contentious rituals do not provide the opportunities for looting that

many have found to incentivize violence. Given these dissimilar incentive structures, we should 24

expect people choose to participate in conflict and violence for different reasons, and that the

!9

Ashutosh Varshney, “Ethnicity and Ethnic Conflict,” in Carles Boix and Susan Stokes, eds., The Oxford Handbook 18

of Comparative Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 279, 278.

Ibid., p. 279.19

Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, p. 684. See also James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, “Explaining 20

Interethnic Cooperation,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 90, No. 4 (December 1996), pp. 715-35.

Macartan Humphrey and Jeremy M. Weinstein, “Who Fights? The Determinants of Participation in Civil War,” 21

American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 52, No. 2 (April 2008), pp. 436-455.

Alexandra Scacco, “Who Riots? Explaining Individual Participation in Ethnic Violence,” Ph.D. dissertation, 22

Columbia University, 2010.

Scott Straus, The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006).23

For example, Edward C. Banfield, The Unheavenly City Revisited (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1974); 24

and Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, “Greed and Grievance in Civil War,” Oxford Economic Papers, Vol. 56 (2004), pp. 563-595.

findings from the study of violence may not necessarily apply to conflict in general.

The third contribution, then, is to offer an explanation for participation in acts of

nonviolent ethnic conflict and mobilization. In particular, by approaching participation through

the lens of ritual, I provide a proactive perspective on expressive motivation and behavior, which

are generally used as a residual explanation when instrumental accounts fail. One of the 25

circumstances where instrumental accounts have proven inadequate and arguments about

expressive benefits have been developed are violent situations. But the instability of such 26

circumstances is not conducive to the assumptions of rational choice theory. In contrast, the

stability and predictability of parades provide an easy test for instrumental rational choice

theories. Thus the failure of the instrumental accounts to explain participation in parades presents

a challenge to these theories’ universal applicability.

!Case Selection: Loyalist Parades in Northern Ireland

The empirical focus of this dissertation is loyalist parading in Northern Ireland. Why the

focus on something so seemingly narrow? First, parades are a major political problem and source

of disruption in Northern Ireland. Though conflicts over parades hopefully reached their nadir in

the mid-1990s, particularly around the Drumcree Church parade in Portadown, old disputes

linger and new ones have appeared in recent years. As I write, in April 2015, Protestants continue

to protest nightly in north Belfast over the decision to restrict the final leg of the Twelfth of July

parade in 2013. At the elite level, political leaders failed to reach an agreement over parades,

!10

Alexander A. Schuessler, A Logic of Expressive Choice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).25

For instance, Elisabeth Jean Wood, Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador (New York: 26

Cambridge University Press, 2003); and Rachel L. Einwohner, “Opportunity, Honor, and Action in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 109, No. 3 (November 2003), pp. 650-75.

flags, and dealing with the legacies of the Troubles during negotiations in late 2013, and though a

new round of talks began in late 2014, they appear slow-going and the outcome is uncertain.

Such disputes over parades regularly test the robustness of the Northern Irish peace

agreements, widely considered a model case of negotiated settlement to civil war. Parades 27

remain a key unresolved issue and point to the limitations of the peace process, particularly its

mismanagement of the politics of culture. As such, the study of parading in Northern Ireland is a

study of the continuation of conflict after war. In this dissertation, I study how and why ordinary

people choose to contest ethnic relations in the aftermath of ethnic violence and challenge the

resilience of peace. This is fundamental to understanding continuing conflict in Northern Ireland

and other “post-violence societies.” Correctly or not, Northern Ireland’s precarious peace often 28

appears at the mercy of a minority of men in dark suits and orange collarettes, marching up the

road to the sound of piercing flutes and booming drums.

Second, loyalist parades are a clear example of a contentious ritual. Contentious rituals—

symbolic actions that make contested political claims—are theoretically and empirically

compelling. Theoretically, their ritual aspects—such as repetition and goal demotion—present

difficulties for prominent existing theories of collective action and conflict. To address these

anomalous features, I offer a novel theory of participation that builds on findings from the multi-

disciplinary study of rituals. Further, studying contentious rituals enriches our conception of

political participation and political activism. Political scientists tend to focus on a narrow range

of political activities, so we only see a slice of the contemporary repertoire of contention. This

!11

See John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary, The Northern Ireland Conflict: Consociational Engagements (New 27

York: Oxford University Press, 2004); and Timothy J. White, ed., Lessons from the Northern Ireland Peace Process (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2013).

John D. Brewer, Peace Processes: A Sociological Approach (Malden, Mass.: Polity, 2010), pp. 16-28.28

limited focus means that the bulk of research on participation focuses on certain tactics. 29

This limitation in the literature means that a vast array of political actions have gone

understudied. In particular, political scientists’ ritual-blindness has left us little systematic

research on political and politicized rituals. (To my knowledge, this dissertation is the first to

systematically study voluntary individual participation in a contentious ritual.) Across a range of

identity practices imbued with political meaning and engaging in political claim-making—from

Hindu religious processions through Muslim neighborhoods in India to open-air Papal masses in

communist Poland to Shias marking Ashura in Iraq and Lebanon—we have limited empirical

knowledge about who participates, why they participate, or how they view the political aspects

versus the cultural aspects of their action.

Through the in depth study of parading in Northern Ireland, I am able to answer these

questions for one case of contentious ritual. Comparative studies of contentious rituals in

multiple countries would be very welcome, but my interest in the individual participants

necessitated a single case. Whether my findings apply to other contexts is an open question. Even

within the case of Northern Ireland, I limit my research to the Protestant side and Catholic voices

are absent throughout the dissertation. If this research aimed to explain the dynamics of parades 30

and protests in Northern Ireland, the absence would be inexcusable. But my aim is to explain

participation in a contentious ritual, so a focus on the community that performs is justified. I

explore variation within one community rather than between the two. Catholics remain an

!12

See similar critiques by Fredrick C. Harris and Daniel Gillion, “Expanding the Possibilities: Reconceptualizing 29

Political Participation as a Toolbox,” in Jan Leighley, ed. The Oxford Handbook of American Elections and Political Behavior (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 144-61.

See the similar discussion in Lee A. Smithey, Unionists, Loyalists, and Conflict Transformation in Northern 30

Ireland (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 53.

important part of the story, but their role is largely filtered through the perceptions of Protestants.

The Route of the Dissertation

In the chapters that follow, I explain why people choose to take part in contentious, ritual

parades in Northern Ireland. I will draw on a range of social science literatures to craft my

argument and employ diverse types of data and social science methods to test and defend it. But

first, I provide the necessary background to the case. Chapter 2 introduces the historical and

political contexts of Protestant parading in Northern Ireland. I describe the relevant political

situation since the 1998 Belfast/Good Friday Agreement. Then I describe the current parading

scene, introducing the major players and the source of conflicts between Protestants and

Catholics. Finally, I trace the history of parades in the north of Ireland since the eighteenth

century. I highlight the long relationship between parades, power, and sectarian conflict.

In Chapter 3, I use loyalist parades to rethink the relationship between ethnic conflict and

ethnic elites. The leading explanation for contentious rituals is that they are the result of elite

planning and manipulation. I argue that this model rest on an inadequate conception of elites that

ignores many actors who hold considerable authority in an ethnic community. I present a more

inclusive model of elites and show that in the Northern Irish Protestant community it includes

political leaders, religious leaders, and ex-paramilitary combatants. Using original survey data, I

show that Protestant elites hold diverse opinions about parades, with politicians generally taking

more hardline positions and clergy taking more conciliatory positions. Given this split opinion

among elites, we need a more satisfying model of mass participation in parades.

I provide this explanation in Chapter 4. As summarized above, I draw on the multi-

!13

disciplinary study of ritual to argue, first, that rituals provide process-oriented, intrinsic benefits

to participants, and, second, that rituals are multi-vocal and are characterized by ambiguity of

meaning. Process benefits help explain why people participate at all; ritual ambiguity helps

explain why people participate in rituals with divisive consequences. This chapter also reviews

the role of rituals in politics generally and provides a sustained discussion of contentious rituals.

The next two chapters evaluate my argument empirically. Chapter 5 argues that parade

participants approach their actions non-instrumentally. In particular, I find evidence for five

process-oriented reasons for action: expressing collective identity, commemoration, tradition,

defiance, and the pleasures of participation. The benefits motivating these reasons are intrinsic to

the very process of participating collectively in parades. Using survey, ethnographic, and,

especially, interview data, I explore each reason in detail. I also find one significant instrumental

reason for parading: to send a message to in-group and out-group audiences. Some participants

do aim to communicate solidarity to fellow Protestants and opposition to Catholic nationalists,

but I show that they are secondary reasons to parade. The preponderance of the evidence

suggests that participants are most interested in the act of participation, not its outcomes.

Chapter 6 carries this argument forward by exploring how participants seem to ignore the

divisive consequences of their parades. I show that despite the widely recognized political causes

and consequences of parades, participants understand parades as anti-political—that they

transcend politics and exist outside of it. I call this position the paradox of anti-politics. Using

interview data, I first sketch the extent of the paradox among participants. I demonstrate their

belief that parades are about culture and therefore cannot be about politics. Second, I reveal the

political power of the claim of anti-politics. Being outside of politics is useful for participants as

!14

it lets them try to shift debates away from criticism and compromise. Third, I argue that the

paradox is sustained by the ritual character of parades. Intrinsic benefits mean that participants

need not have political motivations and symbolic ambiguity allows participants to maintain their

own interpretations of parades. If the parades lacked these features, the paradox might collapse.

Chapter 7 tests two prominent alternative explanations for parade participation: that

participation follows the instrumental logics of ethnic rivalry or collective action. I use survey

and interview data from participants and comparable nonparticipants to show that the differences

between the two groups predicted by the alternative explanations are not present. Where the

ethnic rivalry approach predicts participants to be more pro-Protestant and more anti-Catholic

than their non-parading neighbors, I find no systematic differences. Where the collective action

approach predicts participants to receive selective material benefits and have more pre-existing

social ties than nonparticipants, I find that participants actually pay to parade and that the two

groups have similar social networks. The evidence is mixed on collective action’s prediction of

social sanctioning, however. The survey data show some support it, but the qualitative data

suggest that people are not sanctioned to participate.

Chapter 8 concludes by summarizing the dissertation’s argument and main findings. I

then briefly consider the similar cases of contentious processions in India and Israel. Harnessing

these comparative cases, I end by offering some tentative thoughts about the general nature of

contentious rituals.

!15

Chapter Two Identity on the March in Northern Ireland !!

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings.

— W.B. Yeats 1!! In this chapter, I introduce the empirical setting of the dissertation. I first describe the

political context of Northern Ireland since the end of the Troubles, highlighting the ways in

which the conflict between Protestants and Catholics persists. I show that the years since the

1998 Belfast/Good Friday Agreement (“the Agreement”) have confirmed Yeats’s observation that

“peace comes dropping slow.” Second, I detail the landscape of contemporary parading. I 2

demonstrate the prominence of parading in the Protestant community, explain the sources of

sectarian parading disputes, and describe the significant players. Third, I review the history of

parading in Ireland from the eighteenth century to the present. This history shows how Protestant

parades have long been intertwined with sectarian and class politics in the north of Ireland. As a

result, sectarian conflict and violence has been a consistent feature of parades since their birth. It

is into this turbulent history and political dynamic that participants choose to parade.

Northern Ireland since the Agreement: “Peace without Reconciliation”

The Troubles, as Northern Ireland’s civil war is known, came to a formal end with the

!16

W.B. Yeats, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” in Richard J. Finneran, ed., The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats, 2nd ed. 1

(New York: Scribner, 1996), p. 39.

Even the name of the peace agreement is disputed: unionists tend toward Belfast, nationalists tend toward Good 2

Friday. Following Brendan O’Leary, “The Nature of the Agreement,” Fordham International Law Journal, Vol. 22, No. 4 (1998), p. 1629, I will call it simply the Agreement.

signing of the Agreement in April 1998. The thirty years of violence between and among

republican paramilitaries seeking a united Ireland, loyalist paramilitaries seeking to remain in the

United Kingdom, and British security forces killed over 3,700 people and injured at least

40,000. In the years since the Agreement, violence has declined dramatically, but conflict 3

between the two communities continues. “Post-conflict” Northern Ireland has been characterized

by “peace without reconciliation.” The vast majority of students are segregated in Protestant or 4

Catholics schools, with only 6.5 percent attending formally integrated schools. Housing 5

segregation remains high. Low-level violence and fear are endemic in interface communities, 6

the areas where Protestant and Catholic neighborhoods meet. As a result, the number of “peace 7

walls”—physical barriers separating neighborhoods—has increased since the Agreement. 8

Unsurprisingly, there is little contact across the walls. In a survey of residents of interface

communities in Belfast, Shirlow finds that under 10 percent work in the other community’s area;

78 percent avoid public facilities simply because they are in the other community’s territory; 88

percent would not go to the other community at night; and 48 percent would not go during the

!17

Marie Smyth and Jennifer Hamilton, “The Human Costs of the Troubles,” in Owen Hargie and David Dickson, 3

eds., Researching the Troubles: Social Science Perspectives on the Northern Ireland Conflict (Edinburgh: Mainstream, 2003), pp. 18-19.

Paul Nolan, Northern Ireland Peace Monitoring Report, Number 3 (Belfast: Community Relations Council, 2014), 4

p. 11.

Ibid., p. 120.5

Brendan Murtagh, The Politics of Territory: Policy and Segregation in Northern Ireland (London: Palgrave 6

Macmillan, 2002); Brendan Murtagh, “Ethno-Religious Segregation in Post-Conflict Belfast,” Built Environment, Vol. 37, No. 2 (June 2011), pp. 213-25; and Christopher D. Lloyd and Ian Shuttleworth, “Residential Segregation in Northern Ireland in 2001: Assessing the Value of Exploring Spatial Variations,” Environment and Planning A, Vol. 44 (2012), pp. 52-67.

Peter Shirlow and Brendan Murtagh, Belfast: Segregation, Violence, and City (London: Pluto, 2006).7

Nolan, Northern Ireland Peace Monitoring Report, Number 3, pp. 67-70; and Belfast Interface Project, Belfast 8

Interfaces: Security Barriers and Defensive Use of Space (Belfast: Belfast Interface Project, 2012).

day. This segregation is driven primarily by fear of the other community and is magnified among

young people. 9

Among working class Protestants, this reigning sense of fear, along with little opportunity

for economic advancement, has led to disenchantment with the peace process. The promised

peace dividend never appeared for many people and in fact many Protestants perceive that on

many dimensions, conditions have deteriorated since the violence ended. There is a general

feeling among Protestants that the peace process has benefited Catholics more than them—a

belief that has steadily increased since 1998. Through a zero-sum, sectarian prism, there is truth 10

to this. The peace process transformed Northern Ireland from a social, economic, and political

system designed to privilege Protestants over Catholics to one premised on equal opportunity.

On top of political, economic, and security reforms to redress anti-Catholic

discrimination, Protestants fear losing their demographic advantage. The borders of the province

were carved out of northeast Ireland in order to create a territory with a large Protestant majority.

However, the original two-thirds Protestant majority has now declined to near parity: 48.4

percent Protestant and 45.1 percent Catholic, according the 2011 census. Northern Ireland has 11

always been characterized by a “double-minority” situation—Catholics are a minority in

Northern Ireland, Protestant are a minority on the island of Ireland—but that is set to change in

!18

Peter Shirlow, “Ethno-Sectarianism and the Reproduction of Fear in Belfast,” Capital & Class, Vol. 27, No. 2 9

(Summer 2003), pp. 85-89.

Lee A. Smithey, Unionists, Loyalists, and Conflict Transformation in Northern Ireland (New York: Oxford 10

University Press, 2011), p. 68; and Henry Patterson, “Unionism after Good Friday and St Andrews,” The Political Quarterly, Vol. 83, No. 2 (April-June 2012), p. 249.

Eric Kaufmann, “Demographic Change and Conflict in Northern Ireland: Reconciling Qualitative and 11

Quantitative Evidence,” p. 371; and Nolan, Northern Ireland Peace Monitoring Report, Number 3, p. 21.

the coming years. 12

The shifting demographics matter because the ultimate answer to the sovereignty

question—the keystone political issue in the country—lies in the “principle of consent.” Under

the terms of the Agreement, a united Ireland “is subject to the… consent of a majority of the

people of Northern Ireland.” Historically, majority rule meant a Protestant veto over 13

unification, but with a coming Catholic majority this may change. Nevertheless, the union with

the United Kingdom currently appears firm—in large part because of growing Catholic

acceptance of the constitutional status quo. A 2013 survey shows that 52 percent of Catholics in

Northern Ireland wish to remain in the United Kingdom and only 28 percent desire a united

Ireland. Furthermore, a slim majority of Catholics now view themselves as having at least some

British identity, leaving only 48 percent identifying as exclusively Irish. Perhaps most 14

important to the recent stability is “the enthusiastic administration” of Northern Ireland by Sinn

Féin and others “who spent thirty years trying to destroy it.” 15

Despite this newfound security, many Protestants fear for their future. At present, these

anxieties are focused on a perceived “culture war” against Protestantism. Many believe that

Protestant culture and way of life is under threat from politically assertive republicanism. As a

recent report summarizes, “The focus of concern is no longer about Northern Ireland being taken

!19

John Whyte, Interpreting Northern Ireland (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), pp. 100-101.12

Agreement Reached in the Multi-Party Negotiations, April 10, 1998, Section 2, “Constitutional Issues,” I.ii. 13

Unionists only agreed to ratify the Agreement because of it enshrined majority consent. John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary, “Consociational Theory, Northern Ireland’s Conflict, and its Agreement. Part 1: What Consociationalists Can Learn from Northern Ireland,” Government and Opposition, Vol. 41, No. 1 (Winter 2006), p. 57.

ARK, Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey 2013 (Belfast: ARK, 2014). Distributed by ARK. Available at: 14

www.ark.ac.uk/nilt/2013. Accessed August 15, 2014.

Patterson, “Unionism After Good Friday and St Andrews,” p. 254.15

out of Britain, but of ‘Britishness’ being taken out of Northern Ireland.” For example, in 16

December 2012, the Belfast City Council voted to stop flying the Union Flag on the city hall

every day of the year and instead fly it on 18 designated days, in line with the policy for

government buildings in Britain. This move, supported by the nationalist parties and the

nonsectarian Alliance Party, was seen by many Protestants as an assault on their rights and values

and another example of Catholic concerns being privileged over theirs. The change in flag policy

sparked four months of protests, riots, and violent attacks by Protestants—including burning

down an Alliance Party office, attempts to burn others, and death threats to several Alliance

elected officials—which led to a “marked deterioration in community relations.” 17

There is also a long-standing historical dimension to the Protestant narrative of

marginalization and loss. Protestants have long seen their position in Ireland as precarious. Since

the sixteenth century plantation, Protestants have been a religious minority in an overwhelmingly

Catholic society. Sporadic episodes of sectarian violence, such as the massacres of Protestants by

Catholic rebels in 1641, confirmed the sense of Catholic threat and promoted a siege mentality

that has been held by many Protestants up until this day. An independent or autonomous 18

Ireland, Protestants feared, would curtail religious liberties and subject them to religious

persecution. Preventing such an outcome was paramount. The community’s security rested on

local Protestant political dominance and the union with the United Kingdom. Any gain by

!20

Nolan, Northern Ireland Peace Monitoring Report, Number 3, p. 12. Also, Patterson, “Unionism After Good 16

Friday and St Andrews,” p. 254.

Paul Nolan, Dominic Bryan, Clare Dwyer, Katy Hayward, Katy Radford, and Peter Shirlow, The Flag Dispute: 17

Anatomy of a Protest (Belfast: Queen’s University Belfast, 2014), p. 11.

Smithey, Unionists, Loyalists, and Conflict Transformation, p. 54. Historians debate the historical validity of the 18

massacres. Jonathan Bardon, A History of Ulster (Belfast: Blackstaff, 1992), pp. 137-139; and Sean Farrell, Rituals and Riots: Sectarian Violence and Political Culture in Ulster, 1784–1886 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2000), p. 195, note 26.

Catholics that could pose a threat to either position was therefore interpreted as a threat to the

community’s survival. As a result, Protestant politics, especially since the nineteenth century,

“has been primarily defensive and conservative.” The general tenor of modern Protestant 19

politics is summarized in oft-repeated slogans: “no surrender!” “not one inch!” “Ulster says no!”

!A Note on Terminology: Protestants and Catholics

As the previous discussion suggests, Northern Irish society is divided into two ethnic

groups: Protestants and Catholics. Though there are many divisions within each group, “it is 20

hard to deny the reality of two readily discernible blocs.” These two categories contain various 21

dimensions of difference which largely overlap and reinforce each other. Ruane and Todd argue

that dimensions of difference premised on religion (Protestant/Catholic), ethnicity (British/Irish),

and colonialism (settler/native) have produced two “ideological articulations”: an older

distinction between civility and barbarism and a modern distinction between unionism and

nationalism. The overlap of these cleavages is the root of the division. 22

Within each ethnic group today, there are two dominant political and ideological strands:

unionism and loyalism among Protestants and nationalism and republicanism among Catholics.

Unionism refers to the belief, held mainly by Protestants, that Northern Ireland should remain

!21

Smithey, Unionists, Loyalists, and Conflict Transformation, p. 60.19

I follow Horowitz’s “inclusive conception of ethnicity” where “groups are defined by ascriptive differences, 20

whether the indicium of group identity is color, appearance, language, religion, some other indicator of common origin, or some combination thereof.” Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, 2nd. ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), pp. 17-18.


Joseph Ruane and Jennifer Todd, The Dynamics of Conflict in Northern Ireland: Power, Conflict, and 22

Emancipation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 11.

part of the United Kingdom, while nationalism refers to the belief, held mainly by Catholics, that

Northern Ireland should unite with the Republic of Ireland. The Democratic Unionist Party

(DUP) and Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) are the primary political manifestations of unionism; the

Social Democratic and Labour Party is the primary political manifestation of nationalism.

Loyalism is the more hardline version of unionism. It is held mainly by the working class,

emphasizes Protestant culture and identity, and is often associated with support for paramilitary

violence. Organizationally, loyalism is represented by the Progressive Unionist Party and the

Ulster Defence Association (UDA) and Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) paramilitaries. Its

nationalist counterpart is republicanism, which is represented in Sinn Féin and the Provisional

Irish Republican Army (PIRA) paramilitary. 23

Throughout the dissertation, I use “Protestant” and “Catholic” to refer to the two main

ethnic communities in Northern Ireland. The terms do not imply religious beliefs or practices,

unless otherwise specified. Since I am writing primarily about ethnic relations, I use those terms

rather than unionist/loyalist or nationalist/republican, which are political designations, not

ascriptive identity groups.

!Parades in Northern Ireland

Each year in Northern Ireland, Protestant organizations perform over 2,500 parades to

display their allegiance to the Protestant faith, the Protestant people of Ulster, and the

constitutional union between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. During parades, participants

!22

Ibid., esp. pp. 84-115; John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary, Explaining Northern Ireland: Broken Images 23

(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1995), esp. pp. 13-61, 92-137; and Smithey, Unionists, Loyalists, and Conflict Transformation, pp. 23-24.

use their bodies, uniforms, flags, banners, and music to demonstrate their culture and their views

to the world. The parades are often festive events along routes lined with cheering fans waving

flags and happily singing along to the tunes. Most parades take place in the spring and summer,

with the pinnacle of the parading season on the Twelfth of July. On that day, tens of thousands of

members of the Orange Order and marching bands parade past throngs of supporters in cities and

towns around Northern Ireland to celebrate and commemorate the military victory of the

Protestant King William III (of Orange) over the Catholic King James II at the Battle of the

Boyne in 1690.

However, in Northern Ireland’s divided social landscape, not all citizens view the parades

favorably. Many, if not most Catholics, see parades as anti-Catholic triumphalism and

provocative “carnival[s] of hate.” They associate the loyal orders with Protestant domination 24

and the marching bands, particularly self-styled “blood and thunder,” or “fuck the Pope,” bands,

with loyalist paramilitaries. The Twelfth of July, to take the most well-known example, marks a

great victory for Protestants, but for Catholics, the battle marked the start of a long era of

subjugation to Protestant supremacy. The Twelfth’s content and form symbolize the subsequent

centuries of Protestant hegemony in Ireland.

Consequently, groups of Catholic residents often protest parades, causing the police to

occasionally block the marchers from entering certain streets. Disputes over parades increase

communal tension, harm the political peace process, and undermine grassroots peace-building on

a regular basis. These disputes occasionally precipitate violence, including significant riots in

2012 and 2013. The seemingly endless cycles of parades, protests, and violence embody what

!23

“A Carnival of Hate,” An Phoblacht/Republican News (Dublin), July 4, 1996, quoted in Martyn Frampton, The 24

Long March: The Political Strategy of Sinn Féin, 1981-2007 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), p. 126.

O’Leary and McGarry call Northern Ireland’s “politics of antagonism.” 25

Though very few parades each year are protested—and even fewer turn violent—all of

them are intimately political. Every parade makes a claim about the central question of politics:

who should rule? Their answer—the United Kingdom—clashes with the aspirations of many

Catholics who seek a united Ireland, free from British dominion. Though the claim is often made

obliquely through the use of flags, music, and other symbols, it touches on the question that has

dominated politics in Northern Ireland—and before that, all of Ireland—for over a century. 26

!Loyalist Parading Today

Parading remains a major communal activity among Protestants. From April 1, 2013 to

March 31, 2014, there were 4,665 parades in Northern Ireland, 59 percent of which were

organized by the “broad Unionist tradition” (2,766 parades). By contrast, only 3 percent were

organized by the nationalist community (119 parades). As Figure 2.1 demonstrates, the number 27

of Protestant parades, which have always been the vast majority, has steadily increased since the

mid-1980s, when systematic counting began.

Estimates of the number of participants are less exact, but it is a significant number of

people. There are 35,758 men in the Orange Order, 9,000 men in the Apprentice Boys of Derry,

!24

Brendan O’Leary and John McGarry, The Politics of Antagonism (London: Athlone, 1993).25

See, for instance, Richard Bourke, Peace in Ireland: The War of Ideas (London: Pimlico, 2003); and Alvin 26

Jackson, Home Rule: An Irish History, 1800-2000 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).

The remaining 38 percent were classified as “other,” which includes “charity, civic, rural and sporting events, as 27

well as church parades.” Parades Commission for Northern Ireland, Annual Report and Financial Statements for the Year Ended 31 March 2014 (Norwich, UK: The Stationary Office, 2014), pp. 7-8.

and 29,000 people in marching bands. Assuming no overlapping membership (which is not 28

true, and therefore these estimates are the upper bound), there are 73,758 parade participants. Out

of a population in Northern Ireland of 1,810,863, paraders represent 4 percent. Among 29

Protestants (875,717 total), the figure is 8 percent. And among Protestant men (424,768 total),

who make up the vast majority of parade participants, the figure is 17 percent. Even if we 30

assume that one-quarter of participants are members of two or more organizations (and were

therefore just double-counted), parade participants would still amount to 6 percent of all

Protestants and 13 percent of all Protestant men. 31

Compared with other forms of collective action in Northern Ireland, these participation

rates are notable. According to a 2005 survey, in the previous two or three years only 2 percent of

respondents took part in a strike, 5 percent attended a political meeting, 5 percent took part in a

“demonstration, picket or march,” and 32 percent signed a petition. In the Northern Irish 32

!25

James W. McAuley, Jonathan Tonge, and Andrew Mycock, Loyal to the Core?: Orangeism and Britishness in 28

Northern Ireland (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2011), p. 126; Interview with Apprentice Boys senior leader, Derry/Londonderry; Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure, Marching Bands in Northern Ireland (Belfast: Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure, 2012), p. 6. According to estimates in Northern Ireland Youth Forum, Sons of Ulster: Exploring Loyalist Band Members Attitudes Towards Culture, Identity, and Heritage (Belfast: NIYF, 2013), pp. 4-5, there are 30,000 band members. These figures may include international membership, but the vast majority are in Northern Ireland. Also there is some overlap in membership in the different groups.

All population statistics are from the 2011 Northern Ireland Census, Table DC2115NI: Religion or Religion 29

Brought Up in by Age by Sex, available at http://www.ninis2.nisra.gov.uk/Download/Census%202011_Excel/2011/DC2117NI.xls. Accessed October 29, 2013.

Women do participate in parades, but participants are predominantly male. On the role of women in Northern Irish 30

parades, see Linda Racioppi and Katherine O’Sullivan See, “Ulstermen and Loyalist Ladies on Parade: Gendering Unionism in Northern Ireland,” International Feminist Journal of Politics, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Spring 2000), pp. 1-29; and Katy Radford, “Drum Rolls and Gender Roles in Protestant Marching Bands in Belfast,” British Journal of Ethnomusicology, Vol. 10, No. 2 (2001), pp. 37-59.

In my survey, detailed in Chapter 7, nine percent of participants have been in both loyal orders and bands, but not 31

necessarily at the same time. Dominic Bryan, Orange Parades: The Politics of Ritual, Tradition, and Control (London: Pluto, 2000), p. 115, estimates that over half of Apprentice Boys members are also in the Orange Order. Assuming one-quarter overlapping membership is a reasonable compromise.

ARK, Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey 2005 (Belfast: ARK, 2006). Distributed by ARK. Available at: 32

www.ark.ac.uk/nilt/2005/Democratic_Participation. Accessed August 15, 2014.

context, therefore, parading is a significant public activity that involves a sizable portion of the

population. These figures resonate with Tonge, McAuley, and Mycock’s finding that despite a

loss in members in past decades, the Orange Order “still more than quadruples the combined

memberships of all Northern Ireland’s political parties.” 33

!Figure 2.1: Loyalist and Nationalist Parades, 1985-2013

!Contentious Parades

As already noted, disputes over parades are a major arena in which the conflict between

Protestants and Catholics persists. The annual parading season, which runs from March to

August, reignites debates over a host of parade-related topics. The most controversial parades are

known as “contentious parades” and are designated as such by the Parades Commission, the

!26

McAuley, Tonge, and Mycock, Loyal to the Core?, p. 1.33

1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015

0500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

Figure 2.1: Loyalist and Nationalist Parades, 1985-2013

Sources: Royal Ulster Constabulary and Police Service of Northern Ireland (1985-2000), Parades Commission (2001-2013)Year

Num

ber o

f par

ades

Loyalist ParadesNationalist Parades

independent statutory body charged with regulating parades. Thus the term is used in Northern 34

Ireland to describe a subset of parades that are disputed. Note that throughout the dissertation, I

use contentious to mean non-institutionalized claim-making that bears on the rights and interests

of others. By this usage, all parades, whether contested or not, are contentious performances. 35 36

To avoid confusion, what the Parades Commission calls a “contentious parade,” I will call a

“disputed parade,” “contested parade,” or “controversial parade.”

The most common dispute over a specific parade is the route it takes, since some pass by

or through Catholic neighborhoods or towns. The paraders insist that marching on their

traditional routes is a civil right, but many of the Catholic residents see parading by their homes

and churches as triumphalist, hateful, and transgressive. As anthropologist Allen Feldman argues,

it “transforms the adjacent community into an involuntary audience and an object of defilement

through the aggressive display of political symbols and music.” This sectarian divide is clearly 37

evident in public opinion: in a 2010 survey, 72 percent of Catholics and 8 percent of Protestants

stated that parades should not be allowed in Catholic neighborhoods, while .3 percent of

Catholics and 48 percent of Protestants stated that the parades should be allowed to march

!27

The Parades Commission defines contentious parades as “those that are considered as having the potential of 34

raising concerns and community tensions, and which consequently are considered in more detail by the Parades Commission.” Parades Commission for Northern Ireland, Annual Report and Financial Statements for the Year Ended 31 March 2012 (Norwich, UK: The Stationary Office, 2012), pp. 9. In the 2014 Annual Report, the Parades Commission changed the term to “sensitive parades” (p. 8).

Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly, Dynamics of Contention (New York: Cambridge University 35

Press, 2001), p. 5.

Charles Tilly, Contentious Performances (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008).36

Allen Feldman, The Formations of Violence: The Narrative of the Body and Political Terror in Northern Ireland 37

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), p. 29.

anywhere they like. 38

The most well-known parading dispute occurred in the mid-1990s over a route in the

small city of Portadown. Starting in 1995, Catholic residents organized to stop the Orange

Order’s annual parade to and from Drumcree Church, which passed through their neighborhood.

In 1996, the police sided with the residents and announced that the parade had to be re-routed

elsewhere. But after Protestants across the province responded with protests and violence, the

police reversed their decision. The Catholic residents finally won in 1998 and ever since the

police have blocked parades from entering the area.

A similar dynamic is ongoing in north Belfast. For years, Catholics from the Ardoyne

neighborhood protested and rioted in response to parades on a road adjacent their community.

Against the backdrop of increasingly severe riots following parades in recent years, the failure to

reach an agreement between the Orange Order and Ardoyne residents groups led the Parades

Commission to prohibit part of the route on July 12, 2013. The decision was followed by several

nights of rioting by Protestants.

Parades can also become disputed because of the behavior of paraders or supporters. For

example, parades on Belfast’s lower Ormeau Road became hotly disputed in the mid-1990s after

several people at a parade mocked the murder of five Catholics by the UDA as they passed the

site of their massacre. And parades passing St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Belfast became

contested after a band was videotaped marching in circles and playing a (plausibly) sectarian

song in front of the church during the 2012 Twelfth parade.

!28

My calculation from Jonathan Tonge, Bernadette C. Hayes, and Paul Mitchell, Northern Ireland General Election 38

Attitudes Survey, 2010 [computer file]. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Archive [distributor], August 2010. SN: 6553, http://dx.doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-6553-1.

In 2013-14, the Parades Commission designated 491 parades as disputed (11 percent of

the total). Almost all of these were organized by the unionist community (96 percent), and 39

nearly half were organized by two specific groups: the Orange Order in Portadown, who have

made a perfunctory effort to march each Sunday since 1998, and the nightly parades in north

Belfast to protest the 2013 decision. Though disputed parades are a minority of the total, they 40

dominate media coverage, public discussions, and, in many sectors, public perceptions.

Figure 2.2. Contentious Parades, 1999-2013

The most obvious negative consequence of disputed parades is the occurrence of

sectarian violence. Although only a small number of parades turn violent, there have been

!29

The Parades Commission placed restrictions on 88 percent of them, such changing the route or restrictions on 39

timing, music, size, or the number of supporters. Parades Commission, Annual Report 2014, p. 8.

These nightly parades began in 2013, which explains the large spike in Figure 2.2.40

2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012

0100

200

300

400

500

Figure 2.2: Contentious Parades, 1999-2013

Source: Parades CommissionYear

Con

tent

ious

par

ades

Total ParadesLoyalist ParadesNationalist Parades

instances of public disorder each year since the Agreement, including significant riots in 2005, 41

2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013. Between July 2012 and September 2013, for example, 682 police

officers were injured at parades and related protests and disorder. The general dynamic is that 42

Catholics riot against police after the parade has passed by with heavy police (and until 2006,

military) protection. But Protestants have rioted too, particularly in response to parade routes

being blocked by the police.

Even without outbreaks of street violence, there are serious social and political

repercussions to disputed parades. While these disputes might seem like a local affair, the

symbolism involved makes them a national political issue that impedes reconciliation between

Catholics and Protestants. In the halls of Stormont, the devolved provincial parliament, parties

are deadlocked over the issue. On the streets, communal tensions rise during the marching

season, with survey evidence showing that fear of the other community and avoidance of their

neighborhoods increase during that period. Paramilitary groups on both sides exploit the 43

marching season to mobilize new members and assert their strength. Further disruptions to 44

normal life are caused by the heavy security at disputed parades. Contested parades often include

the presence of police, many in full riot gear, and armored police Land Rovers barricading

streets. For residents, parades can mean their neighborhood is seemingly transformed into a

!30

There was an annual average of 18 instances of public disorder reported by the police from 1998 to 2009. Police 41

Service of Northern Ireland, “Parades with Disorder, 1990-2009,” spreadsheet in possession of author.

Nolan, Northern Ireland Peace Monitoring Report, Number 3, p. 159.42

Shirlow and Murtagh, Belfast.43

Paul Nolan, Northern Ireland Peace Monitoring Report, Number 1 (Belfast: Community Relations Council, 44

2012), pp. 45, 47, 73, 78; and Paul Nolan, Northern Ireland Peace Monitoring Report, Number 2 (Belfast: Community Relations Council, 2013), pp. 62, 168.

temporary battle zone.

!Loyal Orders and Marching Bands

Broadly, there are two types of parading organizations: the loyal orders and marching

bands. The loyal orders are all-male fraternal orders dedicated to the promotion of Protestant

culture and the maintenance of Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom. They are seen

by many Protestants as the embodiment of the community’s politics and values. The three main

orders are the Orange Order, the Royal Black Institution, and the Apprentice Boys of Derry. 45

The Orange Order is the largest and most prominent loyal order. Though its membership and

political power have declined since the mid-twentieth century, it still holds outsized influence

within unionist politics. A recent survey of members of the DUP, Northern Ireland’s largest

political party and the senior party in the power-sharing executive, shows that 35 percent are

Orangemen (the term for members of the Order). The proportion increases to 54 percent among

DUP elected officials. 46

The Orange Order is a hierarchical organization with four layers: Grand Orange Lodge of

Ireland, County Lodges, District Lodges, and private lodges. Most important to the lives of 47

members are the 1,400 private lodges. Each has its own name and number—for example, Pride

of Ballymacarrett Loyal Orange Lodge (LOL) 1075 or Ulster Defenders of the Realm LOL 710

!31

There are also smaller orders including the Royal Arch Purple, the Independent Orange Order, and the Orange 45

Order’s all-female sister organization, the Association of Loyal Orangewomen of Ireland.

Jonathan Tonge, Máire Braniff, Thomas Hennessey, James W. McAuley, and Sophie A. Whiting, The Democratic 46

Unionist Party: From Protest to Power (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 139, 149-152.

Though Grand Lodge is at the top, it only has limited power over the organization and its members. Bryan, 47

Orange Parades, pp. 97, 101-103. The organization as a whole has only a handful of paid employees and functions almost entirely on the basis of volunteers.

—bylaws, and budget. They also almost all have a banner that they carry on parade that

represents something of importance to the lodge. Popular images include King William III at the

Battle of the Boyne, the Crown and Bible, biblical scenes, churches and other places, and

portraits of deceased members. When Orangemen parade, they generally parade with their 48

lodge, unless they hold a leadership role at another level.

The Royal Black Institution is a higher “degree” of the Orange Order. Although it is a

separate organization, one must first be a member of the Orange Order to join. It is seen as more

focused on religion than politics. This is reflected in its banners, which focus on scenes and

images from the Bible. The Apprentice Boys of Derry is a separate organization that is 49

dedicated to commemorating the 1688-1689 siege of Derry. Thus their main parades take place 50

in the city to mark the beginning and end of the siege. The organization’s respect for the city of

Derry/Londonderry and the reality that the city is majority Catholic has lead the Apprentice Boys

toward a more pragmatic strategy dealing with opposition to their parades than the Orange Order.

The second type of parading organization is the marching band. While some of the 600

bands are quite musically talented, the majority are known as blood and thunder bands because 51

the bass drummer’s hands often bleed after hours of smashing the drum with all his might.

Needless to say, blood and thunder bands are noted more for their volume than skill. The general

trend in loyalist parading since the 1970s has been the rising prominence of bands, particularly

!32

Neil Jarman, Material Conflicts: Parades and Visual Displays in Northern Ireland (Oxford: Berg, 1997), pp. 48

172-184.

Ibid., pp. 184-187.49

Bryan, Orange Parades, pp. 114-115.50

Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure, Marching Bands in Northern Ireland, p. 12.51

blood and thunder bands. Many people associate bands with the loyalist paramilitaries, and 52

during the Troubles they were often closely linked. The extent of their current ties, however, is

debated. Today, although both the loyal orders and bands have a reputation for sectarianism in

many quarters, bands are seen as particularly hateful. Band members are viewed by many as

“thugs” out to offend Catholics by flying loyalist paramilitary flags, carrying banners

commemorating paramilitary members, and performing paramilitary or anti-Catholic tunes. 53

There are important differences between and among the loyal orders and bands, but they

share core features, values, and interests, so for the purposes of this dissertation I consider them 54

together. Throughout, I refer to parade participation as parading with either a loyal order or a

band, without distinction.

!The History of Parading in Ireland

The origins of political parading in Ireland date to the eighteenth century, when Anglican

landowners began commemorating the seventeenth century events that secured their ascendancy.

In 1688, King James II, a Catholic, was overthrown in the Glorious Revolution by his daughter,

Mary, and her husband King William III, a Protestant Dutch prince. After seeking refuge in

France, James tried to regain the throne, landing first in Ireland where his Jacobite supporters

were already fighting Williamites. Jacobite forces, for instance, besieged the city of Derry, a

!33

Bryan, Orange Parades, p. 145.52

Popular loyalist band tunes include “The Billy Boys,” with the lyrics “we’re up to our necks in Fenian blood / 53

surrender or you’ll die,” and “No Pope of Rome,” with the lyrics “Oh give me a home / Where there’s no Pope of Rome / Where there’s nothing but Protestants stay. … No chapels to sadden my eyes / No nuns and no priests and no Rosary beads / Every day is the Twelfth of July.” Available at: http://rangerspedia.org/index.php/ No_Pope_Of_Rome. Accessed July 7, 2014.


Williamite stronghold, from April to July 1689, when the Royal Navy arrived. William landed 55

in Ireland with a multinational European army in June 1690 and met James by the River Boyne

on the east coast of Ireland on July 1, 1690 (July 11 in today’s Gregorian calendar). At the Battle

of the Boyne, William defeated James, who retreated to France and abandoned his campaign for

the throne. William’s victory (along with his more decisive victory over remaining Jacobite

forces at Aughim one year later) assured Protestant dominance in Ireland. 56

For the eighteenth century Anglican gentry, major benefactors of the Williamite triumph,

the events of William’s victorious military campaign (Derry, Boyne, and Aughrim) needed to be

commemorated and celebrated. They created commemorative societies that marked the

Williamite victories with banquets, bonfires, fireworks, and parades throughout the eighteenth

century. But commemorations really rose to prominence in the century’s last years with the 57

formation of the Orange Order, or Orange Institution, in County Armagh in 1795. Formed by 58

members of the Protestant Peep O’Day Boys militia after a skirmish with their Catholic rivals,

the Defenders, the Order appeared as a Protestant self-defense movement in a period of severe

sectarian clashes in Armagh. However, the Orange Order sought to appear respectable—unlike 59

the rowdy Peep O’Day Boys—and took great interest in regalia, icons, and symbols. Inspired by

!34

Bardon, History of Ulster, pp. 154-158.55

Ibid., pp. 161-165.56

Jacqueline R. Hill, “National Festivals, the State and ‘Protestant Ascendancy’ in Ireland, 1790-1829,” Irish 57

Historical Studies, Vol. 24, No. 93 (May 1984), pp. 30-51; Bryan, Orange Parades, p. 31; and Martyn J. Powell, “Political Toasting in Eighteenth-Century Ireland,” History, Vol. 91, No. 304 (October 2006), p. 512.

As late as 1789 and 1790, the centenaries of Derry and the Boyne, respectively, were celebrated by Protestants and 58

Catholics alike as victories for liberty, not for Protestantism. Brian Walker, “1641, 1689, 1690 And All That: The Unionist Sense of History,” The Irish Review, No. 12 (Spring-Summer 1992), p. 57.

Peter Gibbon, The Origins of Ulster Unionism: The Formation of Popular Protestant Politics and Ideology in 59

Nineteenth-Century Ireland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1975), pp. 22-42; Farrell, Rituals and Riots, pp. 10-46; and Bardon, History of Ulster, pp. 223-227.

the reformist Volunteer movement of the late 1770s and 1780s, the Orange Order quickly

adopted the public commemorative parade as its principal form of mobilization and political

expression. Thus the Orange Order held its first Boyne commemorative parade in July 1796. 60

But even at this first parade, a sectarian clash erupted and one person was killed. 61

In their early years of existence, the combustable nature of Orange parades made the state

weary of them. But with the 1798 United Irishmen Rebellion, the government and the upper

classes warmed to the Orange Order, which was increasingly vocally pro-state and whose

members participated in the forces mustered to defeat the rebels. “The failed Rising,” 62

comments Dominic Bryan, “completed the process of turning the Orange Institution from a

small, geographically and political limited group into a large, nationwide influential

organization.” This influence would only increase as the Order entered the nineteenth century. 63

The years after the 1800 Acts of Union which united the Kingdoms of Great Britain and

Ireland were marked by continued sectarian unrest at parades, as the relationship between

parades and Protestant-Catholic violence grew. The rise in disorderly parades, however, was 64

not linear. Rather, violence and “the strength of the Orange Order throughout the nineteenth

!35


Ibid., p. 33.61

In a great irony of history, the United Irishmen, the first major Irish republican movement, was largely 62

Presbyterian. All of the founders of the Society of United Irishmen save one were Presbyterian. A.R. Holmes, “Covenanter Politics: Evangelicalism, Political Liberalism and Ulster Presbyterians, 1798-1914,” English Historical Review, Vol. 125, No. 513 (April 2010), p. 340. See also Ian R. McBride, Scripture Politics: Ulster Presbyterians and Irish Radicalism in Late Eighteenth-Century Ireland (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), pp. 165-206.

Bryan, Orange Parades, p. 35. See also J.G. Simms, “Remembering 1690,” Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, 63

Vol. 63, No. 251 (Autumn 1974), pp. 241-2.


century waxed and waned in direct proportion to the perceived urgency of the Catholic threat.” 65

In the first half of the century, this is exemplified by conflicts of the mid-1820s. As Daniel

O’Connell’s Catholic Association pushed for Catholic emancipation, parades increasingly

became “riotous assemblies.” In response to Catholic political mobilization, the Orange Order 66

paraded more often and parades were “particularly contentious and a significant marker of local

dominance.” For example, in 1829, just months after the passage of the emancipation law, 67

Twelfth parades in Ulster were larger and more widespread than ever before. This aggressive

parading sparked riots that killed at least forty people. The parades communicated Protestant 68

strength and continued resistance to Catholic rights to fellow Protestants, Catholics, and the

British Parliament. “The message was clear,” argues historian Sean Farrell, “ignorant politicians

[in Westminster] might have changed the law on the statute books, but things would not change

on the ground in Ulster.” 69

In what was to become a pattern in times of serious unrest, the upper class leadership

withdrew from parades as the rowdiness challenged their interest in an orderly society. The lower

class mass membership, however, continued parading, even after the Orange Order was outlawed

from 1825 to 1828 and parades in Ireland were banned from 1832 to 1844 and 1850 to 1872. 70

Orange elites continued to try to maintain control over parades in order to use them to

!36

David Hempton and Myrtle Hull, Evangelical Protestantism in Ulster Society 1740-1890 (London: Routledge, 65

1992), p. 21

Jarman, Material Conflicts, p. 53.66

Ibid.67

Farrell, Rituals and Riots, pp. 96-99.68

Ibid., 10869


promote cross-class Protestant unity and loyalty to the state. But this proved a struggle, as the

landed gentry abandoned the Orange Order due to the mid-century violence and membership

grew among the rising urban working class. Urban industrialization led to new levels of 71

sectarian conflict, and Belfast parades were marked by unrest in 1852, 1853, and 1855,

eventually exploding in the massive riots of July 1857. 72

The flip side of the urban violence was that parades became central sites of democratic

party politics. The huge crowds became an attractive resource for politicians starting in the 73

1860s. In the late 1860s, parades proliferated—despite still being proscribed by the Party

Processions Act of 1850 that was not repealed until 1872—and began to be considered

“respectable.” Parades became bigger events and were frequented by unionist politicians, who 74

used them as political rallies. The Orange Order’s political power grew. 75

This power was used in full to oppose the 1886 Home Rule Bill pushed by Irish

nationalists and supported by William Gladstone’s Liberal government. Senior unionist 76

politicians now flocked to the Orange Order and regularly appeared at parades. “The Twelfth,”

argues Bryan, “started to be used as a symbol of Protestant unity in the cause” of unionism. By 77

!37

Ibid., p. 38.71

Belfast riots in this era were so common and predictable, Gibbon, Origins of Ulster Unionism, p. 86, argues they 72

were “integrated into the local social order.” See his analysis in pp. 67-86; Bryan, Orange Parades, p. 40; Farrell, Rituals and Riots, pp. 143-150; and Frank Wright, Two Lands on One Soil: Ulster Politics before Home Rule (New York: St. Martin’s, 1996), pp. 250-254.

Gibbon, Origins of Ulster Unionism, pp. 94-104.73


See the extensive discussion of this period in Wright, Two Lands on One Soil, pp. 284-382.75

Ibid., p. 479.76


the century’s close, support for the Orange Order and its parades reached new heights among the

landed and industrial elites, whose economic interests were closely tied to the union and its

guaranteed access to the British Empire’s global markets. 78

The Orange Order again flexed its political muscle as it mobilized militant opposition to

the third Home Rule Bill in 1912. Many Orangemen were among 237,000 unionist men who

signed the Ulster’s Solemn League and Covenant, committing themselves to “all means which

may be found necessary to defeat the present conspiracy.” This commitment was a serious 79

threat, as several months earlier unionist leaders and prominent Orangemen Edward Carson and

James Craig formed the Ulster Volunteer Force paramilitary. Members of the Orange Order

enlisted en masse. Tensions mounted and the crisis only ended because of the outbreak of 80

World War I.

Irish nationalists took advantage of British occupation with the war to push for

independence in the failed 1916 Easter Rising and the establishment of a parliament, the Dáil

Eirean, in 1919. Protestants again responded to Catholic mobilization by parading more often

and with more vigor. When Ireland finally gained independence in 1922, the six northeastern-

most counties of Ulster, where Protestants were a majority, remained part of the United Kingdom

as Northern Ireland. 81

In the new Northern Ireland, unionist rule was hegemonic and the Orange Order was

!38

Ibid., p. 51.78

Bardon, History of Ulster, p. 437.79


Bardon, History of Ulster, pp. 476-479. The traditional province of Ulster contains nine counties. Northern Ireland 81

is made up of counties Antrim, Armagh, Down, Fermanagh, Londonderry, and Tyrone. The other three Ulster counties (Cavan, Donegal, and Monaghan) had significant Protestant minorities, but remained in Ireland.

closely tied to the ruling party. As a result, parades became “rituals of state” that “allowed the

full expression of a Protestant state.” Throughout the half-century of Ulster Unionist Party rule 82

(1921-1972), all but three government ministers were members of the Orange Order. In this 83

era, membership in the Order was sine qua non for advancement in unionist politics as well as a

major route to employment and political patronage. Unionist politicians used parades to

legitimize their rule, connect with voters, and call for Protestant unity. They understood their

economic, political, cultural, and religious interests to be protected by membership in the United

Kingdom. Maintaining the union, in turn, rested on the cross-class alliance of Protestants. Thus 84

throughout the history of Northern Ireland, parades have been used to demonstrate as well as

urge unity.

After World War II, parading entered a period of relative calm. Sectarian conflict was

largely dormant and the parades were populated by the middle class, who brought a sense of

respectability. Calls for Protestant unity continued as the powerful unionist government at

Stormont ruled Northern Ireland for the benefit of the Protestant majority—to the exclusion of

meaningful representation of the Catholic minority. The discriminatory regime came under

increasing pressure in the late 1960s as Catholics, inspired by the African-American movement,

started mobilizing for civil rights. Once again, Protestants used parades as a form of

countermobilization: disrupting civil rights marches, provoking sectarian violence, and

!39

Bryan, Orange Parades, pp. 60, 66.82

Ibid., p. 60.83

Paul Bew, Peter Gibbon, and Henry Patterson, Northern Ireland, 1921-1996: Political Forces and Social Classes 84

(London: Serif, 1996); and Mark McGovern and Peter Shirlow, “Counter-Insurgency, Deindustrialisation and the Political Economy of Ulster Loyalism,” in Peter Shirlow and Mark McGovern, eds., Who Are ‘The People?’: Unionism, Protestantism and Loyalism in Late Twentieth Century Ireland (London: Pluto, 1997), pp. 176-198.

preventing unionist leaders from making concessions to Catholics protesters. This rise of naked 85

sectarianism and disorder again led the middle and upper classes to abandon parading—a trend

that has never reversed. Through 1968 and 1969, protests, counter-protests, and sectarian 86

tension increased across Northern Ireland. Then, on August 12, 1969, rioting broke out at an

Apprentice Boys parade in Derry. The Battle of the Bogside, as the riot is known, escalated, 87

triggering violence around the country, and is widely considered the start of the Troubles.

The Troubles had three important effects on parading. The imposition of direct rule from

Westminster in 1972 meant that the Orange Order lost its connections to the levers of powers in

Northern Ireland. Parades were no longer a “ritual of state” and instead came to represent 88

communal defense. An indication of this shift is the rise of blood and thunder marching bands

associated with loyalist paramilitaries in working class neighborhoods. Parades became 89

rowdier and lost any remaining “respectability.” Finally, as Catholic families in Protestant

majority neighborhoods were intimidated from their homes, and vice-versa, the Troubles created

more firmly defined ethnic neighborhoods with recognizable boundaries. Parades thus came to

be seen as violations of those boundaries by Catholic residents, and opposition to them

!40

Bryan, Orange Parades, pp. 78-87; and Jarman, Material Conflicts, pp. 76-79.85

Bryan, Orange Parades, pp. 78, 93. For an analysis of recent trends in the Orange Order’s class composition, see 86

Eric P. Kaufmann, The Orange Order: A Contemporary Northern Irish History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 269-274.

Bourke, Peace in Ireland, pp. 99-102. Jarman, Material Conflicts, p. 78, argues that though “the cycle of parades 87

in 1968-70 did not cause the Troubles… they proved critical in opening up the fracture zones in Northern Irish life that had been obscured and ignored for so long.”


Ibid., p. 92.89

increased. Catholic opposition to parades to parades through their neighborhoods really took 90

off in the 1980s and 1990s, leading to the current conflicts described above.

!Conclusion

This chapter has provided an overview of parading politics in Northern Ireland. It laid out

social, historical, and political contexts through which parades pass. I showed that parading is a

source of long-standing conflict between Protestants and Catholics, which today takes place in a

country with a largely stable, but not yet consolidated, ethnic peace. Parades, in fact, are one of

the major strains on the peace process. By representing the pride and power of Protestants while

denigrating Catholics, parades frequently test the limits of compromise and reconciliation among

political leaders and in local communities.

Given these well-known consequences of parades, the rest of the dissertation seeks to

explain why people participate in them. The next chapter assess the most prominent explanation

in the literature on ethnic conflict: elites plan and promote contentious rituals to enhance their

own power. I will show that Protestant elites, when accurately categorized, are split over divisive

parades. Accordingly, the question of participation remains. In the chapters that follow, I develop

an argument for why people participate in contentious rituals and test it on original individual-

level data from paraders and non-participants.

!41

Ibid., p. 95.90

!Chapter Three

The Politics of Provocation: Politicians, Pastors, Paramilitaries, and Parades ! !This Parades Commission determination creates a serious situation for Northern Ireland. We know, having seen republican threats of violence being rewarded, the conclusion is swiftly drawn that violence pays. We have, for some time, been aware that such an absurd parades determination would bring with it a very real risk of widespread violence and disorder.

— Joint statement by unionist political leadership 1!We would encourage all who participate in public parades and protests to obey the law and avoid any behaviour which is not for the overall good of society and respectfully urge those parading organisations which espouse Christian values to uphold those values through behaviour in the public square which honours the Lord Jesus Christ and reflects the teaching of the Scripture.

— Statement by Dr. Michael Barry, Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Ireland 2!

The Twelfth really is the worst day of the year for me — because of all the trouble that happens on the way back from the field.

— Jackie McDonald, UDA South Belfast Brigadier 3!The afternoon of June 21, 2013, was, like many in Belfast, Northern Ireland, gray and

wet. But the intermittent rain did not stop the crowds who were out to watch the parade. It was

the annual Tour of the North parade, when the Orange Order and fifteen marching bands

marched from a Protestant neighborhood in north Belfast to a Protestant neighborhood in west

Belfast. A large crowd of cheering Protestant supporters lined the Crumlin Road as they marched

by. But there was a problem. Due to Belfast’s segregated ethnic geography, the parade also

!42

Joint statement by unionist political leaders announcing their response to the Parades Commission’s decision to 1

restrict the final leg of the 2014 Twelfth of July parade in north Belfast. Many people at the time read it as a veiled threat of violence. It was signed by the Democratic Unionist Party, Ulster Unionist Party, Traditional Unionist Voice, Progressive Unionist Party, and Ulster Political Research Group (West Belfast). “Unionist Parties Oppose ‘Unjust’ Twelfth Parade Decision: Leaders’ Joint Statement in Full,” Belfast Telegraph, July 3, 2014.

“Statement from the Presbyterian Moderator Re Bonfires and Parades,” Presbyterian Church in Ireland, July 7, 2

2014. Available at: https://www.presbyterianireland.org/News/Article/July-2014/Statement-from-the-Presbyterian-Moderator-re-bonfi. Accessed March 16, 2015.

Ivan Little, “Twelfth Is the Worst Day of My Year, Says Top UDA Boss,” Belfast Telegraph, July 9, 2012. 3

passed by a Catholic neighborhood, where residents view the parade as hateful bravado by

Protestant supremacist organizations. The Tour of the North was seen as especially problematic

because its route passed by St. Patrick’s Catholic Church, the newest parading flashpoint in

Northern Ireland. Parading past the church had been contested since the previous summer when a

marching band was caught on video playing a controversial song, known as “The Famine Song,”

outside the church. “The Famine Song” is the same tune as the Beach Boys’ classic “Sloop John

B,” but with modified lyrics, such as “the famine’s over, why don’t you go home?” The band, 4

the Young Conway Volunteers, maintained that they were playing the Beach Boys’ version, but

the Catholic community did not buy it. So Catholics also gathered on the street, but to protest the

parade as it passed by. Between the two crowds stood a heavy presence of police in riot gear,

using the sunken Westlink highway as a buffer zone. 5

There was a lot of build-up to the 2013 Tour of the North. The last time a major

Protestant parade had marched past St. Patrick’s Church it ended in a riot. So the police and 6

others were anxious about a repeat performance. Secondly, the Tour of the North marks the

beginning of the crescendo of the Protestant parading season which peaks each year several

weeks later on Twelfth of July. As a result, observers were concerned that trouble at this parade

!43

A Scottish court has ruled that the song, associated with the Glasgow Rangers Football Club supporters, is racist. 4

For more details on the controversy, see “Q&A: How St Patrick’s Became a Flashpoint,” BBC News Online, August 30, 2012. Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-19423910. Accessed February 21, 2014.

The Westlink was designed to serve such a purpose. Dominic Bryan, “Titanic Town: Living in a Landscape of 5

Conflict,” in S.J. Connolly, ed., Belfast 400: People, Place, and History (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2012), p. 336. For a general discussion and list of interfaces, including such “natural” barriers, see Belfast Interface Project, Belfast Interfaces: Security Barriers and Defensive Use of Space (Belfast: Belfast Interface Project, 2012).

“Police Attacked Amid Parade Trouble,” Belfast News Letter, August 25, 2012.6

might set a violent tone for the 2013 parading season. And on top of all of that, Ireland was 7

entering its “decade of centenaries” (2012-2022), when contentious events from the era of Irish

partition would be commemorated by one community or the other. Increased tension was

expected as each community celebrated centenaries “pregnant with menace.” 8

A predominant explanation for aggressive and confrontational acts such as this parade

points to the role of ethnic elites. Ethnic elites, a number of scholars argue, use provocative

events to spark conflict in order to enhance their political power. At first glance, the Tour of the

North supports this argument. At the head of the parade marched two senior unionist politicians,

William Humphrey and Nelson McCausland. Both are Democratic Unionist Party members of

the Northern Ireland Assembly (MLA), the province’s devolved legislature, from North Belfast,

and McCausland was also the Minister for Social Development. Along with rest of the paraders,

these two politicians marched past their cheering supporters, through the line of police officers

and land rovers, in front of the protesters, and then by the church. The protesters had their

political representatives as well. In the crowd stood two Sinn Féin MLAs from North Belfast,

Gerry Kelly and Carál Ní Chuilín, the Minster for Culture, Arts, and Leisure. Both Kelly and Ní

Chuilín are also former Provisional IRA prisoners. Thus, the unionist and nationalist politicians

both got to go home to their voters as defenders of their respective communities.

A second glance, however, reveals complications to the story. On the Protestant side, the

!44

Violence last erupted the Tour of the North parade only two years before, in 2011. Deborah McAleese, “Marchers 7

and Police Clash at Tour of North Parade in Belfast,” Belfast Telegraph, June 20, 2011.

Colin Kidd, “On the Window Ledge of the Union,” London Review of Books, February 7, 2014, p. 16. See 8

Jonathan Evershed, “Beyond What Actually Happened: Loyalist Spectral Politics and the Problematic Privileging of ‘History’ during Northern Ireland’s Decade of Centenaries,” Irish Journal of Anthropology, forthcoming; and Dominic Bryan, Mike Cronin, Tina O’Toole, and Catriona Pennell, “Ireland’s Decade of Commemorations: A Roundtable,” New Hibernia Review, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Autumn 2013), pp. 63-86.

focus here, the two MLAs were not the only ethnic elites present that day. If we return to the

cheering crowd of supporters, we would also find a highly regarded minister from a Presbyterian

church in north Belfast. I had met him before, so I immediately noticed that, unlike our previous

meeting, he was dressed like a pastor. With his baby blue shirt and white clerical collar, he could

be instantly identified as a man of God. His choice of dress was deliberate: he was at the parade

to use his ecclesiastical authority to help deescalate the situation if it turned violent. Not too far

away, at the very front of the crowd, stood several ex-loyalist paramilitary members, including

senior leaders of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) and the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF).

They were also there to help with crowd control and also to serve as community representatives,

at one point parleying with police officers in the middle of the street to discuss something out of

earshot. Like the pastor, these local bosses were at the parade to keep things calm.

The presence of clergymen and ex-paramilitaries was no coincidence—they always

attend contentious parades as marshals, negotiators, representatives, and peacekeepers.

Whenever there is a possibility for conflict, they gather nearest to the potential flashpoint so that

they are in position to stop it. The Reverend Jack, a Methodist minister I interviewed, describes it

as “trying to be a presence.” Tommy, a former UDA commander, calls it “managing” the parade.

In fact, many clergy members and ex-paramilitaries view deescalatory work as part of their job.

The presence of these other Protestant elites with missions of conflict prevention,

however, raises a question for a dominant model of ethnic conflict. According to this elite-driven

model, these elites should not be trying to discourage conflict—indeed, in some versions of the

argument these types of elites would not even exist. In this chapter, I use the case of Northern

Ireland to rethink the relationship between ethnic elites and ethnic conflict. Relying on micro-

!45

data collect during extensive fieldwork among Protestant communities in Northern Ireland, I

show that the dominant model ignores important dynamics and is insufficient to fully explain

ethnic conflict and ethnic peace at the local level.

I begin by assessing dominant approaches to ethnic elites and conflict as well as “rituals

of provocation,” symbolic events designed to trigger conflict. I argue that existing models cannot

explain the local dynamics of peace and conflict because they rest on a insufficient conception of

elites. To correct this deficiency, I present a more expansive and intuitive definition of ethnic

elites premised on the amount of authority a person holds within a ethnic community. In the

fourth section, I identify the relevant elites in the Protestant community: politicians, clergy, and

ex-paramilitary prisoners. The fifth section introduces data drawn from original surveys sent to

all Protestant clergy and elected official in Northern Ireland. The sixth section demonstrates the

diversity in elite opinion on parades. I show that politicians take a consistently more aggressive

position while clergy take a more conciliatory position. In the final section, I highlight the failure

of elite-based models to explain mass participation, setting the stage for the rest of the

dissertation.

!Ethnic Elites, Provocation, and Ethnic Conflict

One of the most prominent explanations for ethnic conflict looks to the role of ethnic

elites. In part a response to the popularity of “ancient hatred” explanations proffered by observers

and participants of the civil wars that followed the Cold War, many scholars pointed to the ways

in which violence was caused by rational and self-interested leaders rather than fanatical masses.

The general conclusion from this research is that “ethnic violence is provoked by elites seeking

!46

to gain, maintain, or increase their hold on political power.” 9

There are numerous ways elites could go about sparking conflict, but in this chapter I

focus on one: rituals of provocation. A form of contentious ritual, rituals of provocation are 10

deliberately offensive and transgressive public, symbolic actions designed to increase tension,

and potentially instigate violence, between groups. Anthropologist Marc Gaborieau, who coined

the term in a study of Hindu-Muslim violence in South Asia, views them as “well defined” and

“codified procedures to start… hostilities.” Such rituals have “two main ingredients”: “the 11

selection of key symbols representing each community” and then “the selection of the means by

which such symbols may be most effectively desecrated.” “Purposefully desecrating one of 12

those symbols, or threatening to do so, or spreading rumours that it has been done,” he finds, “is

enough to spark off violence.” 13

Rituals of provocation often appear insignificant, trivial, or even pass unnoticed to

outsiders and therefore “the popular response frequently appears out of proportion to the

!47

James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, “Violence and the Social Construction of Ethnic Identity,” International 9

Organization, Vol. 54, No. 4 (Autumn 2000), p. 846. Examples include: Jack Snyder and Karen Ballentine, “Nationalism and the Marketplace of Ideas,” International Security, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Fall 1996), pp. 5-40; Rui J.P. de Figueiredo, Jr., and Barry R. Weingast, “The Rationality of Fear: Political Opportunism and Ethnic Conflict,” in Barbara F. Walter and Jack Snyder, eds., Civil Wars, Insecurity, and Intervention (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), pp. 261-302; Jack Snyder, From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict (New York: Norton, 2000); V.P. Gagnon, The Myth of Ethnic War: Serbia and Croatia in the 1990’s (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004); and Benjamin A. Valentino, Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the 20th Century (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004).

For a general discussion of the precipitants of ethnic violence, including rituals of provocation, see Donald L. 10

Horowitz, The Deadly Ethnic Riot (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), chap. 8, “The Occasions for Violence.” He argues that to successfully trigger violence an event “must be anger producing. It must be threatening or transgressive. By transgressive, I mean that the precipitant constitutes a blatant display of what ethnic strangers are not to be allowed to do with impunity” (p. 268).

Marc Gaborieau, “From Al-Beruni to Jinnah: Idiom, Ritual and Ideology of the Hindu-Muslim Confrontation in 11

South Asia,” Anthropology Today, Vol. 1, No. 3 (June 1985), p. 9

Ibid.12

Ibid., p. 10.13

seemingly meaningless stakes of the triggering events. However,” writes Mark Beissinger, “these

events obviously have great meaning for those swept up by them.” This is because conflict over 14

cultural expressions in divided societies cut to the core of group identity and belonging. As 15

Edward Linenthal notes, “Desecration registers as a threat to cherished identities.” 16

Processions, the specific form of ritual that I focus on, are a particularly potent way to

provoke a violent reaction because their “content frequently goes to the heart of the conflict and

because [they are] already on the edge of violence.” Donald Horowitz estimates that 17

“processions, demonstrations, and mass meetings precipitate violence in perhaps one-third to

one-half of all ethnic riots.” This deadly pattern is found in divided societies across time and 18

space, with examples spanning from Protestant-Catholic violence in sixteenth-century France to

violence among Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, and others in contemporary South Asia. 19

The literature on rituals of provocation tends to follow the logic of elite-driven conflict.

Though the rituals themselves are generally mass events teeming with frenzied crowds, most

scholars argue that they are best explained by ethnic elites plotting from the shadows. Divisive

!48

Mark R. Beissinger, “Nationalist Violence and the State: Political Authority and Contentious Repertoires in the 14

Former USSR,” Comparative Politics, Vol. 30, No. 4 (July 1998), p. 402; also, Horowitz, Deadly Ethnic Riot, p. 270; and Marc Howard Ross, “Preface,” in Ross, ed., Culture and Belonging in Divided Societies: Contestation and Symbolic Landscapes (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), p. ix.

Marc Howard Ross, Cultural Contestation in Ethnic Conflict (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007).15

Edward T. Linenthal, “Epilogue,” in Ross, ed., Culture and Belonging in Divided Societies, p. 283.16

Horowitz, Deadly Ethnic Riot, p. 275.17

Ibid., p. 272.18

On France, see Natalie Zemon Davis, “Rites of Violence: Religious Riot in Sixteenth-Century France,” Past & 19

Present, Vol. 59 (May 1973), pp. 72-74; and Barbara B. Diefendorf, Beneath the Cross: Catholics and Huguenots in Sixteenth-Century Paris (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 59, 63. On Sri Lanka, see Stanley J. Tambiah, Leveling Crowds: Ethnonationalist Conflicts and Collective Violence in South Asia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996).

events, such as rituals of provocation, are useful to ethnic elites in several ways. They can be

used to assert group status and dominance and thereby intimidate a rival group into submission. 20

Alternatively, they can be used to provoke reaction (or better yet, overreaction) from the other

group. A violent response from the other group can polarize society; reinforce ethnic boundaries;

promote fear, distrust, and suspicion; and generate a negative image of the other group in

domestic and international courts of opinion. The result of these processes can include in-group

mobilization, rallying around a leader, strengthening a political organization, and discrediting

moderate leaders and policies. 21

This dynamic has been studied most extensively in India. In particular, scholars of Indian

politics show that Hindu nationalist politicians use religious processions through Muslim

neighborhoods to spark polarizing ethnic riots which are electorally advantageous. Steven 22

Wilkinson explains the logic:

Parties that represent elites within ethnic groups will often… use polarizing antiminority events in an effort to encourage members of their wider ethnic

!49

Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, 2nd. ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000); Roger 20

D. Petersen, Understanding Ethnic Violence: Fear, Hatred, and Resentment in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002); and Roger D. Petersen, Western Intervention in the Balkans: The Strategic Use of Emotions in Conflict (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

Rogers Brubaker and David D. Laitin, “Ethnic and Nationalist Violence,” Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 24 21

(1998), p. 433; Ron Aminzade and Doug McAdam, “Emotions and Contentious Politics,” in Ronald R. Aminzade, Jack A. Goldstone, Doug McAdam, Elizabeth J. Perry, William H. Sewell, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly, eds., Silence and Voice in the Study of Contentious Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 43-4; Steven I. Wilkinson, Votes and Violence: Electoral Competition and Ethnic Riots in India (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004); and Adrienne LeBas, “Polarization as Craft: Party Formation and State Violence in Zimbabwe,” Comparative Politics, Vol. 38, No. 4 (July 2006), pp. 419-38. Scholars of terrorism have argued that acts of terror can be used for similar purposes. See Andrew Kydd and Barbara F. Walter, “Sabotaging the Peace: The Politics of Extremist Violence,” International Organization, Vol. 56, No. 2 (Spring 2002), pp. 263-296; Andrew Kydd and Barbara F. Walter, “The Strategies of Terrorism.” International Security, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Summer 2006), pp. 49-80; and Ethan Bueno de Mesquita and Eric S. Dickson, “The Propaganda of the Deed: Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Mobilization,” American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 51 (April 2007), pp. 364-81.

Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996); 22

Paul R. Brass, Theft of an Idol: Text and Context in the Representation of Collective Violence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997); Wilkinson, Votes and Violence; also, Tambiah, Leveling Crowds, p. 241.

category to identify with their party and the ‘majority’ identity rather than a party that is identified with economic redistribution or some ideological agenda. These antiminority events… are designed to spark a minority countermobilization (preferably a violent countermobilization that can be portrayed as threatening to the majority) that will polarize the majority ethnic group behind the political party that has the strongest antiminority identity. 23

!In India, this means that upper-caste Hindu politicians and parties must increase the salience of a

Hindu political identity in the minds’ of middle- and lower-caste voters before elections. “They

meet this challenge by highlighting the threat posed by Muslims,” Wilkinson writes:

A favorite strategy of Hindu party leaders who calculate that they will gain electorally from polarization around a Hindu identity is to organize unusually large religious processions that take new routes through minority neighborhoods, to hoist the national flag over a disputed site, or to sponsor processions to celebrate national anniversary. 24

! In a general review of the literature on ethnic conflict, Brubaker and Laitin conclude that

“instigative and provocative actions are ordinarily undertaken by vulnerable incumbents seeking

to deflect within-group challenges to their position by redefining the fundamental lines of

conflict as inter- rather than (as challengers would have it) intragroup; but they may also be

undertaken by challengers seeking to discredit incumbents.” The hypothesis is clear: elites are 25

behind rituals of provocation.

!A New View of Elites

The problem with political elitist theories is that their view of elites is at once too macro

!50

Wilkinson, Votes and Violence, p. 4.23

Ibid., pp. 23-24.24

Brubaker and Laitin, “Ethnic and Nationalist Violence,” p. 433.25

and too narrow to study rituals of provocation. They are too macro in that they focus 26

exclusively on national-level elites. This is not necessarily a problem for their own purposes 27

which is to explain large-scale war, violence, or mobilization. But when applied to rituals of

provocation, which are generally enacted on a very local stage, the argument can be misleading

in at least two ways. First, the emphasis on national leaders may be misplaced since, as recent

micro-level conflict research has demonstrated, national-level politics are often less important on

the ground than local elites, rivalries, networks, and events. Second, once we are investigating 28

the local level, the focus on political elites seems overly narrow and restrictive. In local ethnic

affairs, the landscape of ethnic elites is far more diverse. Some models of elite-led conflict factor

in mild diversity by distinguishing between moderates and hardliners or “old elites” and “rising

counter-elites,” but the reality is much messier. At the local level, there can be numerous 29 30

leaders with varying interests and preferences that range from convergent to contradictory—to

say nothing about varying influence and resources. Additionally, unlike large-scale collective

actions, such as war, rituals of provocation do not require many people or resources. As a result,

they do not need to be organized by the state or institutions with state-like capabilities (such as

!51

For a general critique of elite theories of ethnic conflict, see Petersen, Understanding Ethnic Violence, pp. 34-6.26

Sherrill Stroschein, “Politics is Local: Ethnoreligious Dynamics under the Microscope,” Ethnopolitics, Vol. 6, No. 27

2 (June 2007), p. 174.

Stathis N. Kalyvas, “The Ontology of ‘Political Violence’: Action and Identity in Civil Wars,” Perspectives on 28

Politics, Vol. 1, No. 3 (September 2003), pp. 475-94; Stathis N. Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006); and Scott Straus, The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006).

Snyder and Ballentine, “Nationalism and the Marketplace of Ideas,” p. 16.29

Related is the bigger problem that many studies of ethnic politics and conflict model each group as a unitary actor; 30

for example, Barry R. Posen, “The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict,” Survival, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Spring 1993), pp. 27-47. For a critique, see Kanchan Chandra, “Introduction,” in Kanchan Chandra, ed., Constructivist Theories of Ethnic Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 1-47. For a broader critique of studies that rely on “groupism,” see Rogers Brubaker, Ethnicity without Groups (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006).

militias). The most necessary resource is some knowledge about what the other group holds

sacred and how best to defile them. So while they may be mass events, rituals of provocation 31

can also be executed by a small cadre. Our existing theories leave us ill-equipped to make sense

of such a situation. They lead us to expect that a single and essentially unified “Elite” plans,

promotes, and executes rituals of provocation in order to polarize society for political gain.

In a recent study of ethnic mobilization by minority Hungarian communities in Romania

and Slovakia, Sherrill Stroschein modifies existing elite-led theories of conflict in two important

ways. First, she demonstrates that elites in her cases actually moderated nationalist 32

mobilization, rather than promoted it. Second, she explicitly defines ethnic elites and carefully

theorizes their relations with elites of other groups and with their co-ethnic masses—a task most

prior works do vaguely at best. Building on the logic of the elite-led mobilization argument, she

defines elites as “individuals who have incentives to pursue political goals, i.e. officeholders and

party leaders.” She then identifies a third group of actors who sit between elites and masses: 33

“mid-range elites such as intellectuals, journalists and religious leaders.” She carves out a new 34

category for them because “these ‘opinion-making persons’ are not formally elites, but neither

are they merely ordinary people.” For Stroschein, it is inappropriate to call this class of people 35

!52

Gaborieau, “From Al-Beruni to Jinnah,” p. 9.31

Sherrill Stroschein, “Microdynamics of Bilateral Ethnic Mobilization,” Ethnopolitics, Vol. 10, No. 1 (March 32

2011), pp. 1-34; and Sherrill Stroschein, Ethnic Struggle, Coexistence, and Democratization in Eastern Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

Stroschein, “Microdynamics,” p. 5; also, Stroschein, Ethnic Struggle, p. 20.33

Stroschein, “Microdynamics,” p. 8; also, Stroschein, Ethnic Struggle, p. 20.34

Stroschein, Ethnic Struggle, p. 20. See also Arend Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative 35

Exploration (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), p. 53, who refers to “the middle-level group that can be described as subelite political activists.”

“elites” since they sit outside of formal political institutions, arguing that this “is consistent with

the elite manipulation view, which posits elites as having political incentives to engage in

manipulation.” 36

This is an inadequate conception of ethnic elites. By inserting “political incentives to

engage in manipulation” into the definition of elite actors, we veer towards tautology. Of course

elites cause conflict when elites are defined as actors who are incentivized to start conflicts.

Second, this stacks the deck in favor of political elites over other potential elites before the

research has begun. How can we expect the preferences of “mid-range elites” to ever triumph

when they are competing against full-blown elites? Third, individuals who are not officeholders

and party leaders still have “incentives to pursue political goals” since they have preferences

over and interests in political outcomes defined both narrowly (the processes of government) and

broadly (power generally). Fourth, why should political motives take pride of place over 37

economic, ideological, or moral ones? Again we are stacking the deck in favor of a particular

argument.

So why create the new category “mid-range elites” just to put all the non-governmental

elites in? A better approach, I argue, is to use a more inclusive and intuitive definition of ethnic

elites. Therefore, I define ethnic elites as individuals who hold authority, either institutionalized

or non-institutionalized, within an ethnic community. This eliminates the need to create

additional categories—now we can conceptualize all elites on a continuum with a single

variable: authority. Categorizing elites becomes an empirical matter, rather than definitional.

!53

Stroschein, “Microdynamics,” p. 8.36

See Andrew Mason, “Politics and the State,” Political Studies, Vol. 38 (1990), pp. 575-87.37

Now it becomes clear that political elites are simply one type of the broader class of ethnic elites.

Authority is measured as being seen by at least a significant segment of the ethnic group

as a legitimate representative for the community and/or someone who people in the community

turn to for help (for example, to solve disputes, to pay for school fees, or to help find a job). As

noted, authority can be institutionalized in a formal hierarchical position, such as a regional

governor or bishop, or non-institutionalized and reside with the person by means of wealth, birth

into a prominent family, or personal charisma. Many elites have both. Additionally, authority 38

and, therefore, elite status can exist on the national, regional, or local level. For example, a tribal

chief might have strong authority in a region but little authority at the national level. Conversely,

a national leader may have very little authority in a particular region where power resides with a

local tribal chief. Using authority as the measure also allows us see that in fact some

officeholders may have very little power at any level, where as a pastor with a large and devoted

following has a lot. Thus, it makes little sense to call this officeholder a full elite and the pastor a

mid-range elite. When debating the role of elites in ethnic mobilization and conflict, we are

better off studying the powerful cleric than the pitiful public official. Other definitions would

send us looking in wrong place.

This definition is both more inclusive and more intuitive than most existing approaches

(many of which do not even define who elites are). It is more inclusive because it covers

!54

The general relationship between formal and informal political power, rules, and institutions is theorized in 38

Gretchen Helmke and Steven Levitsky, “Informal Institutions and Comparative Politics: A Research Agenda,” Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 2, No. 4 (December 2004), pp. 725-39; and Gretchen Helmke and Steven Levitsky, eds., Informal Institutions and Democracy: Lessons from Latin America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006). Max Weber famously described three types of authority. My institutionalized authority aligns with Weber’s “legal” authority, while my non-institutionalized authority aligns with his “traditional” and “charismatic” authorities. He introduces the concepts in Max Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” in H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, trans. and eds., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), pp. 78-9, and elaborates them in “The Sociology of Charismatic Authority,” pp. 245-52 and “The Social Psychology of the World Religions,” pp. 295-301.

politicians, who are generally what is meant by elites, but also individuals whose authority rests

outside of political institutions. It is more intuitive because it looks at who people actually turn to

to speak for the community (including defining the community’s interests) and when they need

something. In these matters, the government is often quite peripheral to people’s daily life. The

head of an ethnic political party would likely be counted as an ethnic elite, but she may not be

the person that ordinary people turn to when they are in need. The people they turn to may only

hold authority on the local level, but in the daily lives of many people in the ethnic group these

local authorities are more important and should therefore be counted as ethnic elites. They are

the ones that people might turn to in times of crisis for instructions on how to proceed, and not

proceed. The real logic behind the elite manipulation argument is the logic of power. It is about

elites getting people to do something that they would not otherwise do. So elites should be

defined as individuals with this power in an ethnic group.

With a more expansive understanding of ethnic elites, we can now begin to explore how

elites deal with rituals of provocation. I will do so in the case of Northern Ireland, where parades

by Protestant groups are an archetypical ritual of provocation. In the following sections, I use 39

my definition of elites to identify the relevant actors in Northern Ireland.

!Parades, Conflict, and Protestant Elites in Northern Ireland

Given the divisive consequences of parades catalogued in previous chapter, the elite

model of ethnic conflict leads us to expect that loyalist parades are planned and promoted by

!55

For example, Brubaker and Laitin, “Ethnic and Nationalist Violence,” p. 445; Aminzade and McAdam, “Emotions 39

and Contentious Politics,” p. 44; and Andreas Wimmer and Conrad Schetter, “Ethnic Violence,” in Wilhelm Heitmeyer and John Hagan, eds., International Handbook of Violence Research (Dordecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003), p. 256.

Protestant ethnic elites looking to gain political advantage. And in fact, many observers of

parades explain them in these terms. A number of scholars argue that unionist political elites

have used parades as a political tool to generate cross-class and cross-denomination Protestant

unity. Indeed, Paul Arthur argues that Orangeism is specifically “designed to overcome

interdenominational conflict and the social [class] tensions prevalent among Protestants.” 40

Steven Wilkinson argues that in nineteenth-century Ulster, unionist politicians used provocative

parades before elections in order solidify the Protestant vote. He uses this brief case study as

evidence that his electoral theory of ethnic violence theory works outside of India. 41

In the twentieth century, parades were a particularly important tool at moments when

sectarian peace opened the door for labor agitation and class-based political organizing. For

example, the early years of Northern Ireland’s existence, the ruling Ulster Unionist Party (UUP)

was concerned that if the union appeared solid, working class Protestants would vote on class

interests rather than ethnic interests. Party leaders specifically worried that if working class

Protestants viewed the constitutional question as resolved, they would vote for the Labour Party

and break the cross-class coalition which kept the UUP in power. Therefore, the UUP’s priority

was “to keep the Union as the one burning issue.” Parades are an effective way to do so, 42

because they “offer occasions where political and cultural differences are emphasized and the

!56

Paul Arthur, Government and Politics of Northern Ireland, 2nd ed. (London: Longman, 1984), p. 40.40

Wilkinson, Votes and Violence, pp. 212-18.41

Marc Mulholland, The Longest War: Northern Ireland’s Troubled History (New York: Oxford University Press, 42

2002), pp. 28-45; the quote is from p. 45. This dynamic was also a concern to UUP leadership in the decade after World War II. Henry Patterson and Eric Kaufmann, Unionism and Orangeism in Northern Ireland since 1945: The Decline of the Loyal Family (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), p. 29; and Henry Patterson, Ireland Since 1939 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 144.

tensions and anger produced mobilize loyalties along sectarian lines.” Unionist political elites 43

also used parades to grab and hold the attention of Westminster. 44

Nationalist and republican elites have also used parades as a tool to enhance their own

power. In fact, as I will demonstrate in Chapter 6, it is widely believed among Protestants that the

entire controversy around parades was engineered by republicans to further their political

agenda. For example, the Rev. Mervyn Gibson, a prominent Belfast Presbyterian minister and

senior Orange Order chaplain, articulated this sentiment when he said that parades “are only

contentious when republicans want them to be so.” Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams helped to 45

fuel this belief at a party meeting in 1997 when he asked rhetorically, “Do you think Drumcree

happened by accident?” Despite the conspiratorial view pushed by Gibson and the self-46

aggrandizing view pushed by Adams, there is evidence that the republican movement has used

parading disputes as a political tactic. Historian Martyn Frampton identifies “clear political and 47

strategic benefits that the republican movement could seek to gain by its actions” opposing

parades. For example, “the issue could easily be used to show Sinn Féin as the stridden voice of

the northern nationalist community, standing in the face of apparent Unionist aggression.” 48

!57

Marc Howard Ross, “Psychocultural Interpretations and Dramas: Identity Dynamics in Ethnic Conflict,” Political 43

Psychology, Vol. 22, No. 1 (2001), p. 158.


Philip Bradfield, “Parade Tensions Are Created, Claims Orange Order Cleric,” Belfast News Letter, July 2, 2013.45

Malachi O’Doherty, The Trouble with Guns: Republican Strategy and the Provisional IRA (Belfast: Blackstaff, 46

1998), p. 176.

Ibid., 173-76 and 183; and James Dingley, “Marching Down the Garvaghy Road: Republican Tactics and State 47

Response to the Orangemen’s Claim to March their Traditional Route Home after the Drumcree Church Service,” Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Autumn 2002), pp. 42-79.

Martyn Frampton, The Long March: The Political Strategy of Sinn Féin, 1981-2007 (London: Palgrave 48

Macmillan, 2000), p. 126.

Loyalist parading seems very much like an elite-driven ritual of provocation. Certainly

the logic of political elites using parades to promote conflict is an important element of the

dynamics of parades and parading disputes. This chapter does not aim to overturn this logic.

Rather, I hope to show that it is not the only elite strategy. As a first cut of evidence that a

political elite electoral logic does not drive everything take Figure 3.1. If the argument made by

Wilkinson—that political elites use rituals of provocation to spark conflict before elections in

order to motivate voters to vote on ethnic lines—holds true in contemporary Northern Ireland,

we should expect to see parade-related violence concentrated before elections. But as we see in

the graph, that is not the case. Figure 3.1 plots the number of parades with disorder (as reported

by the Police Service of Northern Ireland ) each month from 1990 through 2009 along with 49

every election held in Northern Ireland (the lighter vertical dashed lines in 1995 and 2000

indicate by-elections held in just one constituency; all the rest are nationwide elections). Rather

than clustering before elections, if anything there is a stronger pattern of disorderly parades

clustering in the months after elections. This does not mean that political elites are not using

parades strategically, but it suggests that we need to look further to fully understand the situation.

!Figure 3.1. Parades with Disorder and Elections, 1990-2009

!58

Police Service of Northern Ireland, “Parades with Disorder, 1990-2009,” spreadsheet in possession of author. 49

1990 1995 2000 2005 2010

04

812

Figure 3.1: Parades with Disorder and Elections, by Month

Black line indicates parades, dashed lines indicate elections(Source: PSNI)

# of

par

ades

with

dis

orde

r

My argument is that looking at parades just from the perspective of political elites alone

provides a limited view. It ignores other relevant ethnic elites and therefore circumscribes

important questions. Indeed by defining elites in this restricted way, we select on the dependent

variable. We are more likely to see a connection between elites and conflict when we only

investigate political leaders, the elites most likely to find conflict advantageous. Pulling the lens

back to reveal the full scope of elites forces us to ask why some elites seem to instigate conflict

while others do not and why some elite voices are listened to over others.

!Ulster’s Protestant Elite

So who are the elites of the Protestant ethnic community? Based on extensive fieldwork 50

in Northern Ireland in 2012-2014, I identify three primary classes of Protestant ethnic elites:

unionist politicians, Protestant clergy, and loyalist paramilitary ex-prisoners. These three groups

hold authority in the community, are seen as legitimate representatives of the community, and

members of the community turn to them for help. In this section, I briefly describe the 51

characteristics of each group of elites.

!UNIONIST POLITICIANS

Political leaders are widely understood as ethnic elites. This holds true in Northern

!59

Following most scholars, I believe that the Protestant community is best describe as an ethnic group, and not a 50

religious group, though religion plays an important role, as I will discuss. See, for example, John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary, Explaining Northern Ireland: Broken Images (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1995).

This does not mean that any individual, or even an entire class of elites, are seen as legitimate representatives by 51

the whole community. The reality of politics at any level anywhere makes this nearly impossible. As long as some significant portion of a community sees them as legitimate is enough to make them legitimate. Contestation, of course, is part of politics.

Ireland, where the Protestant community is represented by two major political parties and several

smaller ones. The political stance of the Protestant community is broadly understood as

unionism, meaning support for the continued position of Northern Ireland in the United

Kingdom. The two main unionist parties are the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and the Ulster

Unionist Party (UUP). The UUP was the ruling party of Northern Ireland from its founding in

1921 until direct rule from Westminster in 1972, and remained powerful through the transition to

peace. In recent years, however, the DUP’s power has risen dramatically and it has nearly driven

the UUP into obscurity. Smaller parties include the hardline Traditional Unionist Party (TUV)

and the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP), a left-leaning party affiliated with the Ulster Volunteer

Force paramilitary. There are unionists elected to all four levels of government in Northern

Ireland. Currently, unionist parties hold two of three Northern Irish seats in the European

Parliament; eight of eighteen seats in the British Parliament (44 percent); fifty-four of 108 seats

in the devolved Northern Ireland Assembly (50 percent); and 282 of 582 seats of the twenty-six

local government districts (48 percent). 52

As elected officials, they clearly have authority vested in their institutional positions.

Though that authority, and therefore influence, varies from national level to local level. MPs,

MEPs, and prominent MLAs are accepted to speak for the Protestant community at large. Less

prominent MLAs and local councilors tend to speak for a narrower segment of the community,

namely the constituency they represent. Likewise people might seek an MP for help with a

nation-wide project, but seek a councilor for help navigating the public housing system. In

interviews I conducted with ordinary Protestant citizens, they often spoke highly of their local

!60

In 2015, the twenty-six council districts will be consolidated into eleven.52

councilors and suggested that they were grateful for the work they do.

!PROTESTANT CLERGY

As noted above, the Protestants of Northern Ireland are best considered an ethnic or

national community, rather than a religious one, but, members of the clergy are ethnic elites of

the community. There are at least two reasons why this appropriate. One, the boundaries of 53

ethnicity and the boundaries of religion are largely the same in Northern Ireland. That is to say,

Protestant as an ethnic group and Protestant as a religious group are largely coterminous. Two,

Northern Ireland remains a religiously active society. Though secularization has affected the

province, it is much more religious than other advanced industrial democracies, in terms of

church attendance, identification, and beliefs. Clergy, then, have the (literal) power of the 54

pulpit. And they let their political and social views be known, both from the pulpit and in

conversations with congregants.

The clergy also meet my criteria of being people of authority in the ethnic community.

Clergy members often represent the community and its views in the media and official

government commissions. For example, the Protestant community’s witness to the Provisional

IRA’s weapons decommissioning and its representative to the Independent Review on Parades

!61

Clergy have played an important role in ethnic mobilization in other cases as well. For example, see Aldon D. 53

Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Free Press, 1984) and Doug McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), pp. 132-36, on African American ministers and the civil rights movement; and Guillermo Trejo, Popular Movements in Autocracies: Religion, Repression, and Indigenous Collective Action in Mexico (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012) on Roman Catholic bishops and priests and indigenous mobilization in Mexico. Of course, clergy can oppose and even suppress mobilization as well. On the conditions that favor a socially quiescent religion versus a socially oppositional religion, see Dwight B. Billings, “Religion as Opposition: A Gramscian Analysis,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 96, No. 1 (July 1990), pp. 1-31.

Claire Mitchell, Religion, Identity and Politics in Northern Ireland: Boundaries of Belonging and Belief 54

(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), esp. pp. 22-28.

and Marches in Northern Ireland were both clergymen. Some have even directly entered 55

electoral politics, most famously Rev. Ian Paisley, the founder and long-time leader of the DUP

and First Minister in 2007 and 2008. Though Paisley is generally associated with zealous 56

opposition to compromise, recent research highlights the pivotal role that the Protestant and

Catholic clergies played in the peace process. Additionally, people come to clergy for advice 57

and guidance on matters spiritual and otherwise. Like elected officials, their authority varies in

scope. Some clergy have a national audience due to personal popularity or syndication or due to

their institutional position in a church; others are a voice of authority only in their congregation.

!LOYALIST PARAMILITARIES AND EX-PARAMILITARY PRISONERS

The third category is local “big men,” primarily ex-loyalist paramilitary prisoners.

Approximately 8,000 loyalist paramilitary members served time in prison during the Troubles,

and nearly all were released as part of the peace process. Many ex-prisoners have had trouble 58

readjusting to society: rates of unemployment and substance abuse are high. But some have

managed to become forces for positive change within their communities. 59

!62

The Methodist minister Rev. Harold Good and the Presbyterian minister Dr. Rev. John Dunlop, respectively. Their 55

Catholic counterparts were both priests.

According to Steve Bruce, Paisley: Religion and Politics in Northern Ireland (New York: Oxford University 56

Press, 2007), p. 1, Paisley is the only person in modern Europe who founded both a church and a political party.

John D. Brewer, Gareth I. Higgins, and Francis Teeney, Religion, Civil Society, and Peace in Northern Ireland 57

(New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).

James W. McAuley, Jonathan Tonge, and Peter Shirlow, “Conflict, Transformation, and Former Paramilitary 58

Prisoners in Northern Ireland,” Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 22, No. 1 (2009), p. 25.

See Peter Shirlow, The End of Ulster Loyalism? (Manchester: Manchester Unviersty Press, 2012); Kieran 59

McEvoy and Peter Shirlow, “Re-imaging DDR: Ex-Combatants, Leadership and Moral Agency in Conflict Transformation,” Theoretical Criminology, Vol. 13, No. 1 (2009), pp. 31-59; McAuley, Tonge, and Shirlow, “Conflict, Transformation, and Former Paramilitary Prisoners in Northern Ireland”; and Claire Mitchell, “The Limits of Legitimacy: Former Loyalist Combatants and Peace-Building in Northern Ireland,” Irish Political Studies, Vol. 23, No. 1 (February 2008), pp. 1-19.

There are two primary ways in which they promote positive change. First, many are

formally employed at peace and reconciliation organizations, often working with at-risk youth to

steer them away from crime and violence. Second, they act as informal local security providers 60

in their communities: many of the men who fought in the Troubles now work to actively

suppress violence. Residents alert ex-combatants when local youths are throwing bricks and

bottles at Catholic houses and they head to the scene and break it up. As one told me, if a pastor

or peace worker showed up to a riot, the rioters would tell them to leave (in less polite language);

but when he arrives, they scatter immediately. As part of this work, they coordinate with former

republican paramilitary members via cell phone; warning them, for instance, that a gang of

Protestant teens is heading towards a Catholic neighborhood, so the ex-IRA man should keep the

Catholic youth inside. Former belligerents now collaborate to keep their neighborhoods calm. 61

In both their work as reconciliation advocates and security providers, ex-prisoners draw

on the legitimacy they hold for having served time for the cause. This legitimacy and influence,

however, is almost entirely confined to working class neighborhoods where they live and where

they fought. Middle-class Protestants were never comfortable with the loyalist paramilitaries,

and still do not want to be associated with them.

!Survey Data

To study the preferences of ethnic elites in the Protestant community of Northern Ireland,

!63

Organizations include Northern Ireland Alternatives, EPIC, Prisoners in Partnership, Intercomm, and many others.60

Mitchell, “The Limits of Legitimacy,” p. 8; Michael Hamilton, Working Relationships: An Evaluation of the 61

Community Mobile Phone Networks in Northern Ireland (Belfast: Community Relations Council, 2001); and Michael Hall, ed., ‘It’s Good To Talk’: The Experiences of the Springfield Mobile Phone Network (Newtownabbey, UK: Island Publications, 2003).

I conducted two online surveys: one of members of the clergy and one of elected officials. Since

generating a systematic sample of ex-paramilitary members would be next to impossible, they

were not surveyed. This section describes the data collection process. The survey was

administered using Qualtrics, a survey website. The email invitations to take part in the survey

were sent out on March 6, 2013, with reminders on March 12 and April 5. To increase response

rates, invitations were personalized and each email was sent on a different day of the week. 62

The choice of an online survey was based on time and budget constraints. Three problems

with internet surveys are that people without known email addresses are excluded from the

sample; there is a potential for low response rates; and, as with all self-administered surveys, the

sample is likely to be biased toward people interested in the topic. Administering a postal 63

survey, or a postal component for people without email addresses, could have helped with the

first issue, but as I explain below, I actually have an email address for nearly all members of the

study population. Using mailed questionnaires could have helped raised the response rate, but I

deemed it not worth the tradeoff. And regarding the sample’s representativeness, recent research

suggests that Internet surveys of political elites produce samples nearly as representative as

postal surveys. I will now explain each sample in more depth. 64

!!

!64

Dirk Heerwegh and Geert Loosveldt, “Personalizing E-mail Contacts: Its Influence on Web Survey Response Rate 62

and Social Desirability Response Bias,” International Journal of Public Opinion Research, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Summer 2007), pp. 258-68.

Floyd J. Fowler, Jr., Survey Research Methods, 4th ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2009), p. 72.63

Samuel H. Fisher III and Rebekah Herrick, “Old versus New: The Comparative Efficiency of Mail and Internet 64

Surveys of State Legislators,” State Politics and Policy Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 2 (June 2013), pp. 147-63. See also Michael D. Kaplowitz, Timothy D. Hadlock, and Ralph Levine, “A Comparison of Web and Mail Survey Response Rates,” Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 68, No. 1 (2004), pp. 94-101.

Protestant Clergy Sample

Email invitations with links to the survey were sent to all members of the clergy of the

Protestant denominations with a presence in Northern Ireland. The starting point for the list of 65

clergy members comes from a comprehensive database created in 2009 by Gladys Ganiel and

Therese Cullen as part of the “Visioning 21st Century Ecumenism” research project at the Irish

School of Ecumenics of Trinity College, Dublin. I updated the database with the most recent 66

information available, adding new clergy members; removing members who are deceased,

retired, or currently living outside of Northern Ireland; and updating email addresses. For the

three main Protestant denominations (Presbyterianism, Church of Ireland, and Methodism), I

used church publications to check the list of clergy members. Between the three of them, I have

email addresses for 759 of 819 clergy (92.7 percent). These three denominations jointly 67

comprise 86 percent of non-Roman Catholic Christians in Northern Ireland. For the smaller 68

denominations, I primarily relied on the Ganiel and Cullen database and supplemented from

!65

However, since the focus of the study is on ethnic elites, rather religious elites, clergy working at congregations 65

that cater to immigrant communities were excluded. Exclusion was based on the 2009 “Directory of Migrant-Led Churches” published by the All-Ireland Churches Consultative Meeting on Racism, or else having a distinctive nationally-based church name, for example, the Belfast Chinese Christian Church. Available at http://ireland.anglican.org/archive/hardgospel/cmsfiles/files/migrantledchurches_09.pdf. Accessed 11 February 2014.

“Cullen compiled a database of email and postal addresses of clergy, pastors, ministers and faith leaders, gathering 66

this information from Denominational Directories, websites, and telephone directories.” Gladys Ganiel, 21st Century Faith – Results of the Survey of Clergy, Pastors, Ministers and Faith Leaders (Belfast: Irish School of Ecumenics, n.d.), p. 9, available at: http://www.ecumenics.ie/wp-content/uploads/Clergy-Survey-Report.pdf. Accessed February 14, 2013. See also Gladys Ganiel, “Surveying Religion’s Public Role: Perspectives on Reconciliation, Diversity and Ecumenicism in Northern Ireland,” Shared Space, Vol. 9 (March 2010), pp. 53-68.

For the Presbyterian church, see “Ministers Email Addresses,” available at: http://www.presbyterianireland.org/67

ministers/mina.html. Accessed February 6, 2013; and “Presbyterian Church Online Directory,” available at: http://presbyterianireland.org/congregations/index.html. Accessed February 6, 2013. For the Church of Ireland: Susan Hood, ed., The Church of Ireland Directory 2013 (Belfast: DCG Publications Ireland, 2012), pp. 27-97. For the Methodist church: Methodist Church in Ireland, Minutes of the Conference: Enniskillen 2012 (Belfast: Edenderry, 2012), “Appendix 6: Minister and Probationers,” pp. 133-52.

According to the 2011 Census, there are 752,555 non-Roman Catholic Christians, of which 345,101 are 68

Presbyterian, 248,821 are Church of Ireland, and 54,253 are Methodist.

online sources when I could. In all, I sent invitations to take the survey to 844 email address 69

and received 212 valid responses (25.2 percent response rate). 70

!Elected Officials Sample

The list of elected officials comes from the websites of the Northern Ireland Assembly

and the 26 Local Government Councils; I did not sample members of the British or European

Parliaments. Usually, each member’s email address was provided. When it was not, I deduced an

email address from the pattern of available email addresses. The list includes all members of the

unionist political parties (DUP, UUP, PUP, and TUV), as well as members of the Alliance Party

and independents. If I could find online that these people were not Protestant, I excluded them

from the list. I sent the invitation to the survey to all 397 elected officials who met those criteria

(65 members of the Northern Ireland Assembly and 332 members of Local Government

Councils), and received 72 valid responses (18.1 percent response rate). For the analysis, I 71

exclude several Catholic respondents and representatives of the Alliance party since the study is

interested in the views of Protestant ethnic elites and Alliance is a non-sectarian party. This

leaves 57 elected officials in the sample.

!66

There are available online directories of the Free Presbyterian Church, Elim Pentecostal Church, Reformed 69

Presbyterian Church, Association of Baptist Churches in Ireland, and Christian Brethren, but many of these websites are missing most information or state that they are incomplete. For instance, I only have email address for 22 of 62 Free Presbyterian ministers. For all other denominations, I relied entirely on the database. See, respectively, “Free Presbyterian Church Information Page,” www.freepres.org/churchlist.asp?loc=ni; “The Elim Churches in Northern Ireland,” http://elimireland.org/component/option,com_magazine/func,show_edition/id,4/Itemid,96/; “Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland – Congregations,” http://rpc.org/directory; “Association of Baptist Churches in Ireland – Churches,” www.baptistsinireland.org/churches.php; “Gospel Halls – Northern Ireland,” www.gospelhall.org.uk/lists/nireland.html. All accessed February 14, 2013.

Two people responded saying that they no longer live in Northern Ireland and 8 people started the survey but did 70

not complete it. In her survey, Ganiel had a 16.9 percent response rate in Northern Ireland. Ganiel, 21st Century Faith, p. 9.

Nine others started the survey but did not complete it.71

http://www.freepres.org/churchlist.asp?loc=ni

http://elimireland.org/component/option,com_magazine/func,show_edition/id,4/itemid,96/

http://www.baptistsinireland.org/churches.php

The Diversity of Elite Opinion

In this section, I use original surveys of Protestant elected officials and clergy in Northern

Ireland to show that the two groups hold different opinions regarding parades. In particular,

members of the clergy care less about parades and hold more conciliatory opinions about them.

First, clergy are far less likely to express that parades are personally important to them. 72

Among clergy, 58 percent of respondents said that parades are not at all important, while 7

percent said that parades were very or extremely important. In contrast, only 14 percent of

elected officials said that parades were not at important personally, while 53 percent said they

were very or extremely important. The mean responses for each group are significantly different

from each other (p=0.00).

This personal interest is reflected in their parade attendance. Respondents were asked

how many parades they have attended as a spectator or supporter on average over the past five

years. Only 30 percent of clergy members attended even one parade per year, whereas 75 percent

of elected officials had. This could be a reflection of appealing to voters, but, as Table 3.1 shows,

how important elites think parades are to their constituents/congregants is not associated with

attendance. This logit regression examines the determinants of attending any parades versus no 73

parades. Both the measure of the personal importance of parades and a dummy indicator of being

an elected official (as opposed to clergy) are positively and significantly associated to parade

attendance, while the measure of importance to their constituents/congregants is not.

!67

“Are loyalist parades important to you personally?” Response options ranged on a five point scale from extremely 72

important to not at all important.

“Are loyalist parades important to your [constituents/congregants]?” Response options ranged on a five point 73

scale from extremely important to not at all important.

Beyond finding parades less important than politicians, the clergy hold more conciliatory

and more critical views on parades. One question asked whether the respondent believes that the

loyal orders should be able to march wherever they want, without restrictions; be able to march

through mainly Catholic areas only if there is prior agreement with local residents; or should not

be allowed to march through mainly Catholic areas. The responses range from most to least

hardline. Table 3.2 shows that the hardline view is far more prevalent among elected officials

than the clergy: 41 percent of elected officials compared to only 7 percent of clergy members. In

contrast, two-thirds of clerics take the position that parades should only take place after

negotiations and compromise with the local residents. One-quarter of the clergy also take the

position that parades simply should not pass through Nationalist communities, while only 17

percent of elected officials feel the same. 74

!68

Table 3.1. The Determinants of Elite Parade Attendance, Logit Models

Personal importance of parades 0.95*** (0.22)

Importance of parades to constituents/congregants 0.13 (0.20)

Elected official 1.08* (0.53)

Constant -1.64*** (0.41)

Observations 196

Standard errors in parentheses * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001

This same question was asked in the Northern Ireland 2010 General Election Survey. Among Protestants in the 74

poll 48 percent said they should march wherever they want, 44 percent said there should be prior agreement, and 8 percent said parades should not march in Nationalist areas.

What is more, clergy are more likely to believe that parades are provocative. Only 4 75

percent of clergy took the most hardline position that no parades are provocative, while 36

percent of elected officials expressed the same opinion. The majority of each group said that a

few parades are provocative (64 percent of clergy and 56 percent of politicians), but far more

clergy than elected officials said that more than a few are provocative (32 percent versus 8

percent; p=0.00).

The difference in opinions between the clergy and politicians is perhaps most evident

using an index of polarizing questions on parades. Respondents were asked to mark on a five-

point scale if they agreed or disagreed with 14 statements about parades. Examples include: “I

am proud of loyalist parades in Northern Ireland”; “the loyal orders and marching bands have

done everything that they can to prevent conflict”; “a purpose of loyalist parades is to intimidate

the communities they pass”; and “as a whole, loyalist parades are harmful to Northern Irish

society.” I transformed each question so the responses increased in pro-parade sentiment, and

then summed them to create a 57-point index where 0 is least supportive of parades and 56 is

!69

Table 3.2. Elite Opinions on Parade Routes (%)

Elected Officials

Clergy P-value (Two-Tailed)

Total % (N)

March wherever they want 41 7 0.00*** 14% (33)

March only with prior agreement 41 68 0.00*** 63% (148)

Should not march in Nationalist areas 17 25 0.29 23% (55)

Observations 46 190

* p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001

“In your opinion, how many parades are provocative?” The responses were none, a few, many, most, or all 75

parades are provocative.

most supportive (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.9481). Looking at all responses together, the index has a

fairly normal, mean-centered distribution, giving me confidence that it effectively measured

opinions on parades (Figure 3.2). But when we break the histogram into elected officials and

clergy, we see that the bell curve masks significant difference in groups (Figure 3.3). In line with

my other findings, clergy on average hold opinions that are far more critical of parades, while

elected officials tend to be much more supportive. The median score for elected officials is 24,

while for the clergy it is 40.5. The different in means is statistically significant (p=0.00).

Figure 3.2. Histogram of Elite Opinions on Parades

Figure 3.3. Kernel Density Plot of Opinions on Parades by Elected Official and Clergy

!70

The differences in personal importance of parades and opinions about parades manifest in

the public actions that elites take regarding parades. Elected officials and clergy were asked if

they had ever done a series of parade-related actions during their time in office or the ministry.

The results are displayed in Table 3.3, where we see wide differences in the actions taken by

each group in nearly every category. Nearly half of elected officials (48 percent) have given a

public address about parades, either for or against. But only one-fifth of clergy members (22

percent) have given a similar sermon (p=0.00). The differences are starker for giving a speech or

sermon that takes a position favorable to parades or opposed to anti-parade protesters. Forty-

three percent of elected official have done so, while only 11 percent of clergy have (p=0.00).

Notably, the most common speech given by a politician is in support of parades, while the most

common sermon given by clergy is critical of parades.

Interestingly, despite the clergy’s general avoidance of parades and the issue of parading,

nearly three-quarters have delivered a sermon or led a prayer at a loyal order church service. This

suggests that parades and parading organizations are so embedded in Protestant communities that

it is hard for elites to avoid entirely. However, there is also evidence that they may not be entirely

happy with the arrangement. Forty-three percent of clergy say that a loyal order has used their

church for a ceremony or function in the past year. But of those clerics, over one-quarter say that

they are not comfortable with the fact that their church was used in this way. We can speculate

that the figure might be even higher among clergy whose churches were not used by a loyal order

in the last year. So while 72 percent of clergy have participated in a loyal order religious service,

a significant portion may have been uncomfortable with the situation.

One reason why elected officials may care more about parades and hold views that are

!71

more supportive of parades compared to the clergy is that elected officials are more likely to be a

member of a parading organization (Table 3.4). Among elected officials, 37 percent are currently

members and 46 percent have been a member at some point. Among clergy, in contrast, only 7

percent are currently members and only 18 percent have ever been members. This is a striking

given that historically membership in the Orange Order was a practical requirement for election

to political office, and high rates of clergy were members as well. 76

Table 3.3. Parade-Related Activities of Elected Officials and Clergy (%)

!Action

Elected Officials

!Clergy

P-score (Two-Tailed)

Speech/Sermon supporting parades 37 5 0.00***

Speech/Sermon critical of parades 15 17 0.74

Speech/Sermon supporting protesters 11 1 0.00***

Speech/Sermon critical of protesters 6 5 0.81

Any Parade Related Speech/Sermon 48 21 0.00***

Participated in Parade 52 11 0.00***

Lobbied Parades Commission 54 13 0.00***

Met with Nationalists to discuss parades 26 9 0.00***

Attended community meeting about parades 65 15 0.00***

Helped lodge or band with grant application 43 3 0.00***

Introduced legislation about parades 2 - -

Mentioned parades in campaign material 22 (N=51) - -

Gave sermon/prayer at loyal order church service - 72 -

Observations 46 179

* p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001

!72

The number of clergy in the Orange Order has been declining since the mid-twentieth century. A 1988 survey of 76

clergy in Northern Ireland found that 12 percent were Orangemen. Eric P. Kaufmann, The Orange Order: A Contemporary Northern Irish History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 285.

This section has shown that Protestant elites are not unified when it comes to parades,

and therefore we should not characterize them as one unitary Elite. I found that unionist

politicians do strongly support parades and take a hardline position on contentious parades, but

clergy have a different view. The clergy are a more diverse group, but as a whole they do not

support parades as vigorously and many are outright opposed to the controversial parading. 77

These findings present a more nuanced picture of the ethnic elites of the Protestant community.

Conclusion

The argument that elites manipulate ethnic conflict to further their political agenda is

compelling and often useful. The problem with it is that by assuming that elites are a unitary

class (or at best an elite divided into moderates and hardliners along a single issue dimension),

the theory of elite-led conflict obscures important diversity among ethnic elites. And by

homogenizing the various elite groups and interests, this approach buries important questions

about ethnic elites and their relationship to conflict. For example, why are political elites often

more successful at mobilizing people than other types of elites? Why do elite voices favoring

!73

Table 3.4. Parade Organization Membership among Elites (%)

Elected Officials

!Clergy

P-Value (Two-Tailed)

Never member 54 82 0.00***

Past member 10 12 0.69

Current member 37 7 0.00***

Observations 52 198

* p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001

Even among Orange Order chaplains, there are important hardliners, but the majority are moderates. Ibid., 285-6. 77

conflict drown out elite voices opposing it? As it stands now, the theory of elite-driven conflict

cannot explain why certain elite voices are heard over others. Future research should interrogate

why this is the case. To do so requires careful micro-level research that identifies the relevant

elites; their sources of power; and their interests, ideologies, and preferences. In this chapter, I

provided a preliminary analysis along these lines.

A further problem with the elite-led model is that it does not answer the “insistent

question of why the followers follow.” We cannot explain individual level participation solely 78

with reference to the interests of elites. And mass participation matters, since without it, most 79

rituals of provocation would not occur. My findings in this chapter make this general problem

even more pronounced. Even if elite interests were a sufficient explanation, Northern Irish

Protestants are divided over parades. There is not a single “elite preference” to guide mass

behavior. Moreover, the elites who are more supportive of parades—politicians—are strongly

disliked in Northern Ireland. Protestants are especially disenchanted with their elected

representatives. In a 2009 poll, 87 percent of Protestants stated that they did not trust

politicians. In a 2003 poll, 75 percent agreed that “those we elect lose touch with people pretty 80

quickly” and 77 percent agreed that “parties are only interested in people’s votes, not in their

!74

Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, p. 140.78

See Kalyvas, “The Ontology of ‘Political Violence.’”79

ARK, Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey, 2009, distributed by ARK, 2009, available at: http://80

www.ark.ac.uk/nilt/2009/Political_Attitudes/POLTRUST.html. Accessed March 6, 2015. The question is: “How much would you say you trust politicians generally? A great deal, a fair amount, not very much, or not at all.”

opinions.” And most of the people I interviewed were thoroughly upset with unionist 81

politicians, particular at the national level (local officials were often rated more highly). A

question about whether there were political leaders they admired frequently prompted sighs or

laughter.

So elite-based accounts, at least on their own, do not account for the 2,500 annual loyalist

parades which feature tens of thousands of voluntary participants. How, then, do we explain

participation? The remainder of this dissertation presents an answer. In the next chapter, I

provide an argument that explains participation in loyalist parades by exploring these actions as

rituals. Chapters 5 and 6 use interviews along with survey and ethnographic data to support the

ritual approach to participation. Then Chapter 7 demonstrates that plausible alternative

explanations—ethnic rivalry and rational collective action—not do fit the data.

!75

ARK, Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey, 2003, distributed by ARK, 2003, available at: http://81

www.ark.ac.uk/nilt/2003/Political_Attitudes/LOSETCH.html and http://www.ark.ac.uk/nilt/2003/Political_Attitudes/VOTEINTR.html. Accessed March 6, 2015. The questions are: “Generally speaking those we elect lose touch with people pretty quickly” and “Parties are only interested in people’s votes, not in their opinions.” Agree strongly, agree, neither agree nor disagree, disagree, or disagree strongly.

Chapter Four A Theory of Ritual Participation !

The man who complained, “They’re just going through a ritual” had the analysis right, but he should not have regretted it. Rituals matter.

— James M. Jasper 1!! This chapter introduces a theory to explain participation in contentious rituals: symbolic

actions that make contested political claims. It seeks to understand why people participate in

events which provide limited private rewards and have socially harmful consequences. I suggest

that two insights from the study of ritual help us arrive at an explanation. First, rituals provide

intrinsic benefits to participants. This insight explains why people voluntarily participate despite

the option to free-ride. And, second, they are multi-vocal and their meaning is ambiguous. The

ambiguity of ritual helps us to understand that participants may not share the interpretation of

their action held by opponents or other outsiders. In fact, the multi-vocality allows participants to

dispute the legitimacy of opponents’ interpretation. I integrate these findings with research on

collective action and contentious politics to provide an explanation that accounts for the

anomalous features of contentious rituals. From this general argument, I produce specific

implications that I will test on data from parades in Northern Ireland in future chapters.

This chapter proceeds as follows. First, I define ritual as a distinct class of human action.

Second, I review the role of rituals in politics, introducing a specific type of political ritual that I

call contentious rituals. In contrast to existing models of ritual and conflict, I suggest that

contentious rituals are episodes of political conflict, not merely substitutes or descriptions of the

conflict’s repetitive nature. Third, I argue that rituals are a form of collective action and, then

!76

James M. Jasper, The Art of Moral Protest: Culture, Biography, and Creativity in Social Movements (Chicago: 1

University of Chicago Press, 1997), p. 207.

fourth, build on Mancur Olson’s framework to show that participation in ritual is a puzzle.

Specifically, given that contentious rituals produce a public good, why does anybody voluntarily

participate? Fifth, I present my explanation: people participate because of the process benefits

intrinsic to taking part in a collective ritual. Further, the symbolic ambiguity of ritual explains

why people are not dissuaded from participating by the divisive consequences of their actions.

Sixth, I outline four alternative explanations from the literatures on rationalist explanations for

ritual, elite-led conflict, ethnic rivalry, and collective action. Finally, I conclude with a preview of

the coming chapters.

!Defining Ritual

Edward Leach noted that already nearly fifty years ago “[there was] the widest possible

disagreement as to how the word ritual should be understood.” Since then, the number of 2

definitions has only increased. Some scholars define ritual as an exclusively religious 3

phenomenon. By this definition, acts with secular concerns as their object do not qualify. But as 4

critics of the restrictive definition illustrate, the concept becomes overly narrow and obscures a

!77

Edmund R. Leach, “Ritual,” in David L. Sills, ed., The International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, vol. 13, 2

(New York: Macmillan, 1968), p. 526.

The most comprehensive analyses of the concept of ritual are Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (New 3

York: Oxford University Press, 1992); and Catherine Bell, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions, rev. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

See, e.g., Jack Goody, “Religion and Ritual: The Definitional Problem,” British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 12, No. 4

2 (June 1961), p. 159; Max Gluckman, “Les Rites de Passage,” in Max Gluckman, ed., Essays on the Ritual of Social Relations (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1962), pp. 22-23; and Max Gluckman, Politics, Law and Ritual in Tribal Society (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1965), p. 251; Victor W. Turner, The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967), p. 19; and Evan M. Zuesse, “Ritual,” in Lindsay Jones, ed., Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd ed. (Detroit: Macmillan Reference, 2005), p. 7834.

more general understanding of ritualized behavior. Other scholars define ritual very broadly, 5

identifying it as an aspect of all social action or calling any repeated action a ritual. But as 6

critics of the expansive definition point out, the term loses its analytic bite when stretched so

thin. Following anthropologist David Kertzer, I define rituals as “symbolic behavior that is 7

socially standardized and repetitive.” This definition is broad enough to include both religious 8

and secular symbolic acts, but narrow enough to exclude certain actions and make the concept

theoretically useful. Additionally, I restrict my analysis to rituals that are public and collective

since these are most politically salient. Rituals that are conducted individually or in private,

while important, are beyond the scope of my research.

A further point that follows from this definition is that rituals are not only a feature of

pre-modern societies and polities. They did not fade away with rationalization, economic

development, or the “disenchantment of the world”: modern societies and states continue to

practice rituals. In fact, many contemporary rituals which appear ancient—royal coronations, for 9

!78

“These theological residues in the notion of ‘ritual’ get in the way of understanding—and especially of evaluating5

—political rituals,” writes Robert E. Goodin, “Rites of Rulers,” British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 29, No. 3 (September 1978), p. 281. See also the critiques in Sally F. Moore and Barbara G. Myerhoff, eds., Secular Ritual (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1977).

See, e.g., Edmund Leach, Political Systems of Highland Burma: A Study of Kachin Social Structure, 2nd. ed. 6

(London: Bell and Sons, 1964), p. 13. In a somewhat different sense, see Erving Goffman, Interaction Rituals: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior (New York: Pantheon, 1967). See the useful discussion in Andrew L. Roth, “‘Men Wearing Masks’: Issues of Description in the Analysis of Ritual,” Sociological Theory, Vol. 13, No. 3 (November 1995), pp. 315-20.

I agree with philosopher John Skorupski’s view: “What use does a term have which brings together a man shaking 7

hands, a man praying to his god, a man refusing to walk under a ladder, a man clapping at the end of a concert, a man placing medicine on his crops? None at all.” John Skorupski, Symbol and Theory: A Philosophical Study of the Theories of Religion in Social Anthropology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), p. 171, quoted in Caroline Humphrey and James Laidlaw, The Archetypal Actions of Ritual: A Theory of Ritual Illustrated by Jain Rite of Worship (Oxford: Claredon Press, 1994), p. 66. See also, Robert Bocock, Ritual in Industrial Society: A Sociological Analysis of Ritualism in Modern England (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1974), p. 15.

David I. Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), p. 9.8

See Bocock, Ritual in Industrial Society; Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power. 9

instance—originated in the modern era. 10

!Rituals and Politics

A central reason why rituals remain prominent in modern politics is that they can be

valuable resources for political actors. They can legitimate the status quo (or challenges to it),

build solidarity, define a political reality, generate strong emotions, gather a crowd of people,

represent a group, create common knowledge, or make political claims. Rituals can thus 11

mobilize political action or constitute political action. All the while, rituals have the advantages 12

of being seen as legitimate forms of action, which makes them difficult for states to regulate, and

of being symbolically ambiguous, which provides cover for performing otherwise unacceptable

!79

Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 10

1983).

Goodin, “Rites of Rulers”; Clifford Geertz, Negara: The Theatre State in 19th Century Bali (Princeton: Princeton 11

University Press, 1980); Hobsbawm and Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition; Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power; Mona Ozouf, Festivals and the French Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988); Mabel Berezin, Making the Fascist Self: The Political Culture of Interwar Italy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997); Lisa Wedeen, Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999); Sean Wilentz, ed., Rites of Power: Symbolism, Ritual, and Politics since the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999); Amitai Etzioni, “Toward a Theory of Public Ritual,” Sociological Theory, Vol. 18, No. 1 (March 2000), pp. 44-59; Michael Suk-Young Chwe, Rational Ritual: Culture, Coordination, and Common Knowledge (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); Steven Pfaff and Guobin Yang, “Double-Edged Rituals and the Symbolic Resources of Collective Action: Political Commemorations and the Mobilization of Protest in 1989,” Theory and Society, Vol. 30, No. 4 (August 2001), pp. 539-589; Amitai Etzioni and Jared Bloom, eds., We Are What We Celebrate: Understanding Holidays and Rituals (New York: NYU Press, 2004); and Ziad W. Munson, The Making of Pro-Life Activists: How Social Movement Mobilization Works (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), esp. pp. 171-177.

For examples of the causal model of political ritual, see Francesca Polletta, “Can You Celebrate Dissent?” in 12

Etzioni and Bloom, eds., We Are What We Celebrate, pp. 151-177; and Pfaff and Yang, “Double-Edged Rituals and the Symbolic Resources of Collective Action”; of the constitutive model of political ritual, see Geertz, Negara. I elaborate this typology further in Jonathan S. Blake, “The Variety of Political Rituals: A Typological Analysis,” paper presented at the Association for the Study of Nationalities World Convention, New York, April 24-26, 2014.

actions. These advantages make them attractive to political actors—and simultaneously 13

troublesome for their political rivals. Therefore, rituals often become central objects of political

contestation. I call these contentious rituals.

The sources of a dispute over a ritual are varied. Here I propose three. First, actors and 14

groups might contest the insertion of political rhetoric and claim-making into a ritual that is

typically understood as apolitical. For example, when partisan political speeches were delivered

at the memorial for US Senator Paul Wellstone, the mourning ritual became “perhaps the most

politically contentious event” of the year. People might also dispute specific symbols used in 15

the ritual that give it a particular interpretation. Second, opponents may dispute where the ritual 16

takes place. Muslims in Jerusalem, for instance, dispute Jewish prayer atop the Temple Mount/

Haram al-Sharif. The third source of contestation is the ritual’s very performance. In this case, 17

opponents dispute any and all performances of the ritual. For example, many Chinese and

Korean citizens protest any visits by Japanese officials to the Yasukuni Shrine, which

commemorates war criminals. In all of these cases, the ritual’s contestation can be intended by its

!80

Charles Tilly, Contention and Democracy in Europe, 1650-2000 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 13

p. 31; Steven I. Wilkinson, Votes and Violence: Electoral Competition and Ethnic Riots in India (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 23-24; Pfaff and Yang, “Double-Edged Rituals and the Symbolic Resources of Collective Action.” For a more general argument on the power of “ritualization,” see Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice.

I ignore disputes over ritual performance within communities that do not have explicitly political ramifications, 14

for example, changing the text of a prayer. Of course, the line between what is political and what is not is fine and shifting.

Alyssa Samek and Karrin Vasby Anderson, “The Day the Campaign Died: The Wellstone Memorial, Civic Piety, 15

and Political Propriety,” Communication Quarterly, Vol. 59, No. 2 (April-June 2011), p. 156.

Peter Stamatov, “Interpretive Activism and the Political Uses of Verdi’s Operas in the 1840s,” American 16

Sociological Review, Vol. 67, No. 3 (June 2002), pp. 345-366, argues that the political meaning of cultural objects is the result of deliberate work by “interpretive activists,” rather than any inherent property of the object.

As do many, if not most, rabbinic authorities. See Ron E. Hassner, War on Sacred Grounds (Ithaca: Cornell 17

University Press, 2009), pp. 113-34; and Gershom Gorenberg, The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount (New York: Free Press, 2000).

performers and/or organizers or can be a surprise to them.

Once a ritual becomes disputed, the effects can be anything but symbolic. The

contestation and performance of a contentious ritual can cause significant political consequences,

including increased polarization, heightened tension, and violence. As Marc Howard Ross

argues, “Cultural expressions are not just surface phenomena. They are reflectors of groups’

worldviews and on-going conflicts… [They] play a causal role in conflict… [And they] serve as

exacerbaters or inhibitors of conflict.” At their most dangerous, contentious rituals can trigger 18

the onset of violent ethnic clashes. Anthropologist Stanley Tambiah finds that the calendar of

communal festivals and religious rites in India “can at sensitive times actually channel and direct

the shape, expression, timing, and spatial location of ethnic violence.” Although this 19

relationship appears to be particularly strong in modern India, it can be found in divided 20

!81

Marc Howard Ross, Cultural Contestation in Ethnic Conflict (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 18

3. Emphasis in the original.

Stanley Tambiah, Leveling Crowds: Ethnonationalist Conflicts and Collective Violence in South Asia (Berkeley: 19

University of California Press, 1996), p. 240.

On India, see Wilkinson, Votes and Violence; Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India 20

(New York: Columbia University Press, 1996); Sudhir Kakar, The Colors of Violence: Cultural Identities, Religion, and Conflict (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), pp. 44-51; Peter van der Veer, “Riots and Rituals: The Construction of Violence and Public Space in Hindu Nationalism,” in Paul R. Brass, ed., Riots and Pogroms (New York: New York University Press, 1996), pp. 154-76; Paul R. Brass, Theft of an Idol: Text and Context in the Representation of Collective Violence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997); Christophe Jaffrelot, “The Politics of Processions and Hindu-Muslim Riots,” in Amrita Basu and Atul Kohli, eds., Community Conflict and the State in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 58-92; Paul R. Brass, The Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence in Contemporary India (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005); and Arafaat A. Valiani, “Processions as Publics: Religious Ceremonials and Modes of Public Sphere Intervention in Western India,” unpublished manuscript, Williams College, 2011.

societies around the globe, historically and today. In fact, in his comparative study of ethnic 21

riots, Donald Horowitz concludes that contentious rituals are one of the most significant

precipitants of ethnic riots around the world. But, contentious rituals can also have profound 22

political effects short of violence. Even when they do not spark violent clashes, cultural practices

such as flying flags, ritual animal slaughter, celebrating nationalist holidays, erecting

monuments, pilgrimages to sacred sites, visits to cemeteries, and mass worship can exacerbate

tensions between groups and make conflicts more difficult to resolve.

My concept of contentious rituals, and the relationship between rituals and conflict that it

implies, differs from two prominent views of rituals and conflict: the channeling of conflict

thesis and the ritualization of conflict thesis. The “channeling of conflict” thesis suggests that in

conflictual environments, social tension can be channeled into rituals so that the rituals replace

violent conflict. The ritual represents the conflict and allows participants to blow off steam, thus

managing tension and preventing violence. Anthropologists call these events “rites of rebellion”

or “rituals of reversal” and argue that they “provide an important safety valve for political

!82

For general and comparative work, see Donald L. Horowitz, The Deadly Ethnic Riot (Berkeley: University of 21

California Press, 2001), esp. pp. 272-277; Ross, Cultural Contestation in Ethnic Conflict; and Ron E. Hassner, “Sacred Time and Conflict Initiation,” Security Studies, Vol. 20, No. 4 (November 2011), pp. 491-520. For other cases, see, for example, Natalie Zemon Davis, “Rites of Violence: Religious Riot in Sixteenth-Century France,” Past & Present, Vol. 59 (May 1973), pp. 51-91; Bernard Wasserstein, “Patterns of Communal Conflict in Palestine,” in Ada Rapoport-Albert and Steven J. Zipperstein, eds., Jewish History: Essays in Honour of Chimen Abramsky (London: Peter Halban, 1988), pp. 611-628; Barbara B. Diefendorf, Beneath the Cross: Catholics and Huguenots in Sixteenth-Century Paris (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 59, 63; Lori A. Allen, “The Polyvalent Politics of Martyr Commemorations in the Palestinian Intifada,” History & Memory Vol. 18, No. 2 (Fall/Winter 2006), pp. 107-38; Vali Nasr, The Shia Revival: How Conflicts Within Islam will Shape the Future (New York: W.W. Norton, 2006); Elliott Horowitz, Reckless Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), pp. 5-8, 10-12.

Horowitz, The Deadly Ethnic Riot, pp. 272-277.22

tensions.” For French theorist René Girard, such rituals are the keystone of society. By 23

presenting a scapegoat for sacrifice, rituals prevent cycles of reciprocal violence, and, thereby,

society maintains order. Historian David Nirenberg offers a rich example of the “channeling of 24

conflict” thesis at work in medieval Spain. In his assessment, the anti-Jewish violence in Girona

during Holy Week 1331 “was not as violent as at first appeared”:

All the participants showed their intention to act violently: weapons were displayed, insults were shouted, people took up aggressive stances. These were action sequences that if carried through seriously would have resulted in severe injury to the officials. In fact, the actions were restrained, punches were pulled, and only minor injuries or humiliations resulted. The participants seem to have been following informal protocols, or rules of engagement, that prevented excessively brutal violence. 25

!Nirenberg concludes that by reading the Holy Week violence as a “ritual sacrifice,” we see that

the events actually displaced serious brutality. “By alluding to and containing the original act of

vengeance at the foundation of Christian-Jewish relations in the diaspora,” he notes, “Holy Week

attacks flirted with but ultimately avoided the repetition of that violence in contemporary

society.” 26

Whereas the “channeling of conflict” thesis views rituals as conflict, the “ritualization of

!83

Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power, p. 131. Central here is Max Gluckman, Rituals of Rebellion in South-East 23

Africa (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1954); but see also Robert Dirks, “Annual Rituals of Conflict,” American Anthropologist, Vol. 90, No. 4 (December 1988), pp. 856-70; Bell, Ritual Theory, pp. 172-3; and Etzioni, “Toward a Theory of Public Ritual.” For a lively contemporary example, view videos of the daily ceremony of the closing the India-Pakistan border at Wagah widely available on YouTube.com. For a contrasting view, see James Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), p. 298, who argues of “rituals of reversal”—“a brief period [when] the normal social order is suspended or reversed”: “Far from being mere safety valves serving harmlessly to release tension, the better to impose hierarchy the rest of the year, these ritual sites have always been zones of struggle, threatening to spill over into actual revolt.”

René Girard, Violence and the Sacred, trans. Patrick Gregory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977).24

David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton, 1996), p. 25

210.

Ibid. p. 218.26

conflict” thesis views conflict as ritual. The “ritualization of conflict” thesis is interested in

explaining the recurrent features and patterns in violence. Tambiah calls this the “routinization

and ritualization of collective violence,” arguing that these concepts “may help us to perceive

some of the organized, anticipated, programmed, and recurring features and phases of seemingly

spontaneous, chaotic, and orgiastic actions of the mob.” Violence, in this view, is understood as 27

a performance with actors following a pre-written script. For example, anthropologist Marc

Gaborieau argues that “hostile relations [between Indian Hindus and Muslims]… are… acted out

in stereotyped behaviors with an intense religious content, which can only be described as

rituals.” These “rituals of provocation,” are “performed according to well defined procedures,” 28

such as desecrating sacred symbols and sites belonging to the other group. The violence is so

scripted that Gaborieau describes it as a “monotonous scenario… acted upon again and again.” 29

In some societies, warfare is so highly standardized and symbolic that there is even a “special

permanent site for the hostilities,” i.e., a stage. “In many of these cases,” notes Kertzer, “as soon

as an individual is seriously wounded, hostilities cease and a round of post-battle ritual begins.” 30

These two perspectives offer important insights on the causes and nature of violence, but

they are distinct from the approach taken here. Rituals, in the the first view, are a substitute for 31

!84

Tambiah, Leveling Crowds, p. 230. Also Davis, “Rites of Violence”; and Rogers Brubaker and David D. Laitin, 27

“Ethnic and Nationalist Violence,” Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 24 (1998), pp. 444-6.

Marc Gaborieau, “From Al-Beruni to Jinnah: Idiom, Ritual and Ideology of the Hindu-Muslim Confrontation in 28

South Asia,” Anthropology Today, Vol. 1, No. 3 (June 1985), p. 9

Ibid., p. 10. For a recent political science approach to the performative aspects of violence, see Lee Ann Fujii, 29

“The Puzzle of Extra-Lethal Violence,” Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 11, No. 2 (June 2013), pp. 410-26.

Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power, p. 130. See also the discussion of dueling and other forms of limited, staged 30

violence in Randall Collins, Violence: A Micro-Sociological Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), chap. 5, “Staging Fair Fights.”

This is not to argue that my view is incompatible with the existing views.31

conflict and, in the second view, conflict becomes a standardized and repetitive (i.e., ritual-like),

but in my view, contentious rituals are a form of conflict. They are a way in which groups

express their rights and interests and make claims that bear on the rights and interests of others.

The modifier in contentious ritual thus has a double meaning. First is the plain meaning of

“controversial” or “likely to cause an argument.” Second is the meaning given by the contentious

politics research program associated with McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly, where contentious politics

is defined as “interactions in which actors make claims bearing on someone else’s interest.” 32

The performance, or attempted performance, of a contentious ritual thus in and of itself is an

episode of political conflict, not a substitute for conflict or a description of the form that conflict

takes.

Contentious rituals can exacerbate conflict or trigger violence, but the the ritual itself is

not an act of violence. Maintaining this distinction requires that we distinguish between

precipitants of violence and violence—or “sparks and fires” —and between conflict and 33

violence. This is important for our coming task of explaining participation, because contentious

rituals do not carry the high risks to the individual of violence nor do they violate widely-held

!85

Charles Tilly, Contentious Performances (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 5; see also Doug 32

McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly, Dynamics of Contention (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 5. The DOC approach limits contentious politics to claim-making where the “governments appear either as targets, initiators of claims, or third parties” (Ibid.), but Snow and others have usefully criticized this as overly narrow. David A. Snow, “Social Movements as Challenges to Authority: Resistance to an Emerging Conceptual Hegemony,” Research in Social Movements, Conflicts, and Change, Vol. 25 (2004), pp. 3-25.

The metaphor is elaborated in Ashutosh Varshney and Joshua Gubler, “The State and Civil Society in Communal 33

Violence: Sparks and Fires,” in Atul Kohli and Prerna Singh, eds., Routledge Handbook of Indian Politics (London: Routledge, 2013), pp. 155-166.

norms against committing property damage or bodily harm. As a result, contentious rituals, 34

along with some other precipitants of violence, are instances of conflict without being instances

of violence. In general, the literature overlooks ethnic conflict short of violence, but, as Varshney

points out, distinguishing between ethnic violence and ethnic conflict is necessary since they are

conceptually different and may require different explanations. Beyond emphasizing the 35

conceptual distinction, focusing on non-violent forms of ethnic conflict, such as contentious

rituals, is important to our understanding of the dynamics of ethnic relations in times of peace as

in times of war. Given the immense ethnic diversity in the world, ethnic violence is remarkably

low, and therefore explaining events that result in tension, but not necessarily violence, is crucial

to our general understanding of conflict. 36

!Ritual as Collective Action

As the previous section on ritual and politics made clear, rituals can have a significant

impact on the material world. Their impact is not limited to the symbolic or supernatural realms,

but spans a diverse range of social and political outcomes: from individuals’ emotions and

allegiances to relations between groups to the power of states. A characteristic common to many

!86

On high-risk collective action, see Doug McAdam, “Recruitment to High-Risk Activism: The Case of Freedom 34

Summer,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 92, No. 1 (July 1986), pp. 64-90; Mara Loveman, “High-Risk Collective Action: Defending Human Rights in Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 104 No. 2 (September 1998), pp. 477-525; Jeff Goodwin and Steven Pfaff, “Emotion Work in High-Risk Social Movements: Managing Fear in the U.S. and East German Civil Rights Movements,” in Jeff Goodwin, James M. Jasper, and Francesca Polletta, eds., Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), pp. 282-302.

Ashutosh Varshney, “Ethnicity and Ethnic Conflict,” in Carles Boix and Susan Stokes, eds., The Oxford Handbook 35

of Comparative Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 278-9; see also, Charles King, “The Micropolitics of Social Violence,” World Politics, Vol. 56, No. 3 (April 2004), p. 448; and Brubaker and Laitin, “Ethnic and Nationalist Violence.”

James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, “Explaining Interethnic Cooperation,” American Political Science Review, 36

Vol. 90, No. 4 (December 1996), pp. 715-35.

of these outcomes is that they produce a public benefit. A ritual that produces such a benefit, or

good, is thus a collective action.

Rituals are not often discussed in the language of political economy, but in some ways

many of them are usefully classed as collective action according to Olson’s definition. This is 37

because many rituals involve multiple people working together to produce a non-excludable

public good. Indeed, rituals tend to require participants being physically together, acting in 38

physical synchrony—what historian William McNeill calls “muscular bonding.” The product of 39

this action can be non-excludable collective, or public, goods. I find four collective goods that a

ritual can provide: instrumental efficacy, an integrative social function, group representation, and

inherent value.

First, many rituals are performed instrumentally in order to achieve an outcome desired

by the community. Anthropologist Mary Douglas calls this “instrumental efficacy,” writing: “Of

course Dinka hope that their rites will suspend the natural course of events. Of course they hope

that rain rituals will cause rain, healing rituals avert death, harvest rituals produce crops.” 40

Instrumental efficacy can thus provide a non-excludable good. To take one of Douglas’s

!87


University Press, 1965). For a political-economic analysis of ritual, see Chwe, Rational Ritual.

See Randall Collins, Interaction Ritual Chains (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), esp. pp. 53-64, 38

where he provides an affirmative answer to the question, “Is bodily presence necessary?” Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, trans. Karen E. Fields (New York: Free Press, 1995), p. 216, for example, describes that during the ritual phase of Australian life “the population comes together, concentrating itself at specified places for a period.”

William H. McNeill, Keeping Together in Time: Dance and Drill in Human History (Cambridge: Harvard 39

University Press, 1995), chap. 1, “Muscular Bonding.” Recent psychology research studies ritual in the laboratory by enforcing physical synchrony for their subjects. See, e.g., Scott S. Wiltermuth and Chip Heath, “Synchrony and Cooperation,” Psychological Science, Vol. 20, No. 1 (January 2009), pp. 1-5; and Piercarlo Valdesolo and David DeSteno, “Synchrony and the Social Tuning of Compassion,” Emotion, Vol. 11, No. 2 (April 2011), pp. 262-6.

Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge, 40

1996), p. 69.

examples, rain is a public good. It falls on the entire community, not just those members who

participated in the rain ritual. Since rain is non-excludable, rituals performed to provide it are 41

archetypical collective actions.

Second, many rituals provide a social function for the community that enacts it. The most

prominent function attributed to rituals is social solidarity. The solidarity-building function of

ritual is associated with Émile Durkheim and his followers. Durkheim argued that rituals

counteract the push toward individualism created by participation in profane, economic

activities. By bringing members of society together to take part in shared practices oriented at

shared beliefs and symbols, rituals recreate society and generate strong bonds of solidarity

among members. Only with such shared solidarity can social order be maintained. Amitai 42

Etzioni summarizes this position, arguing that rituals “serve to socialize members of a society as

well as to reaffirm their commitments to values, and as such serve to sustain the integration of

society.” Even rituals which appear to upend social norms in fact “contribute to reinforcement of

shared beliefs and institutions indirectly, by releasing tension that results from conformity to

societal beliefs and the behavioral prescriptions they entail.” 43

Alfred Radcliffe-Brown provides a well-known functional account in his analysis of

funeral rites among the Andaman Islanders. “For the society,” notes the anthropologist, “a death

!88

That rain rituals may not in fact cause rain does not matter if the participants act with the belief and intention that 41

they do.

Durkheim, Elementary Forms of Religious Life; as well as important elaborations, interpretations, and critiques, 42

such as Robert N. Bellah, “Civil Religion in America,” Dædalus, Vol. 96, No. 1 (Winter 1967), pp. 1-21; Steven Lukes, Emile Durkheim: His Life and Work: A Historical and Critical Study (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1973); Steven Lukes, “Political Ritual and Social Integration,” Sociology, Vol. 9 (1975), pp. 289-308; Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power, esp. pp. 61-67; Roth “‘Men with Masks’”; Etzioni, “Toward a Theory of Public Ritual”; Robert N. Bellah, “The Ritual Roots of Society and Culture,” in Michelle Dillon, ed., Handbook of the Sociology of Religion (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 31-44; and Collins, Interaction Ritual Chains.

Etzioni, “Toward a Theory of Public Ritual,” p. 47.43

is the loss of one of its members, one of its constituent parts…. [A person’s] death constitutes a

partial destruction of the social cohesion, the normal social life is disorganized, the social

equilibrium is disturbed.” The funeral is the way in which Andaman society “organise[s] itself

anew and reach[es] a new condition of equilibrium.” The elaborate symbols and practices of the

burial process are not for the dead; they are for the living community to reintegrate itself after

suffering a collective trauma. In this way, the ritual provides a communally valued social 44

function.

Third, rituals can represent a community to the outside world. As public and purposeful

behavior, rituals, deliberately or not, often come to represent the community that performs them.

This is because rituals—like flags, monuments, and other tangible, visible symbols—are realized

manifestations of the “imagined community.” Like these other totems, rituals portray the 45

community as it wishes to be seen. One effect of this group representation is that rituals can help

define the boundaries of the group. By representing who the group is, rituals also clarify who 46

the group is not. Thus rituals help police the edges of the community, declaring who is in and

who is out. The flip side of representing itself to the outside world is that ritual also represent the

community to itself. As Douglas notes, “rituals enact the form of social relations and in giving

these relations visible expression they enable people to know their own society.” Or as Lukes 47

!89

Alfred R. Radcliffe-Brown, The Andaman Islanders: A Study in Social Anthropology (Cambridge: Cambridge 44


Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. 45

(London: Verso, 1991). Compare Hassner’s (War on Sacred Grounds, pp. 62-4) discussion of “sacred space as a social symbol,” where he notes that since sacred sites represent “a religious movement at its most splendorous,” they often come to serve “as the visual representation of a community” and are therefore often targeted for attack.

Anthony P. Cohen, The Symbolic Construction of Community (London: Routledge, 1985), pp. 50-63.46

Douglas, Purity and Danger, p. 129.47

argues, rituals “define as authoritative certain ways of seeing society.” By directing attention of 48

both in-group and out-group members toward a particular vision of the group, rituals are

powerful ways for representing a community.

Fourth, rituals can be communally valued not for what they do or provide, but simply for

what they are. That is, rituals are often valued for their own sake, as meaningful moments in the

life of the community and its members. People value the preservation of tradition, which has 49

the capacity to bind each to their own personal past and the past, present, and future they share

with the collective. What is more, rituals are often valued for being public celebrations, which 50

are often fun and exciting. Rituals are community gatherings and a break from mundane and

profane daily life. People enjoy the colors, music, song, dance, and other festive elements. The 51

ritual, as a carnivalesque experience, is enjoyable and enriching in its own right. The inherent

meaning and pleasure of rituals are thus a fourth collective good they provide.

!The Puzzle of Ritual Participation

If we conceptualize ritual as a form of collective action, we cannot take participation in

ritual for granted. As Olson famously argued, rational individuals will not contribute to the

!90

Lukes, “Political Rituals and Social Integration,” p. 301.48

Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 45.49

For a strong versions of this claim, see Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, trans. Rosemary Sheed 50

(New York: Sheed & Ward, 1958), pp. 392-393; and Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), pp. 236-237.

For a vivid example, see Durkheim, Elementary Forms, pp. 216-17; see also the evocative descriptions of crowd 51

gatherings in Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power, trans. Carol Stewart (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1984), e.g., p. 18.

provision of public goods; they will free-ride. Framing rituals in this way highlights the 52

dilemma of individual participation in a way left unquestioned by sociological, anthropological,

and popular theories. It forces us to account for individual choice. 53

In his foundational account of religious rituals, Durkheim disregards choice, describing

rituals as if they somehow compel participation. For example, in The Elementary Forms of

Religious Life, he claims that “when a native is asked why he follows his rites, he replies that

ancestors have always done so and that he must follow their example.” Building on Durkheim, 54

cultural sociologist Jeffrey Alexander writes that in early societies “participation in ritual

performance is not contingent, either for the actors or the observers. Participation is determined

by the established and accepted hierarchies of gender and age, not by individual choices that

respond to the sanctions and rewards of social powers or segmented social groups. Every

relevant party in the band or tribe must attend to ritual performances.” And cognitive and 55

evolutionary anthropologists Pierre Liénard and Pascal Boyer argue that ritual is characterized by

feelings of “compulsion”: “given certain circumstances,” they claim, “people just feel that they

!91

Olson, Logic of Collective Action.52

Not all rituals face Olson’s collective action problem. For some rituals, even if they occur in public, the primary 53

purpose is the production of a private good. For example, rites of passage are rituals designed to transition individuals from one stage of life or social role to another (Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, trans. Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960]). These rituals may involve a number of people acting together, but the central benefit is excludable and reserved for the participants. While such a ritual may provide public enjoyment, demarcate symbolic boundaries, or social integration—as the Radcliffe-Brown showed for Andaman funerals—the primary actors act out their roles for a private, selective benefit and the public benefit is secondary. Thus the dilemma of collective action is not a concern.

Durkheim, Elementary Forms, p. 192. Emphasis added.54

Jeffrey C. Alexander, “Cultural Pragmatics: Social Performance Between Ritual and Strategy,” Sociological 55

Theory, Vol. 22, No. 4 (December 2004), p. 535. Emphases added.

must perform a specific ritual, that it would be dangerous, unsafe, or improper not to do it.” 56

These arguments mirror popular perceptions of rituals and their participants. The dominant

image is that of mindless automatons worshipping their gods or saluting their leader—picture,

for instance, the sea of Nazis at Nuremberg in Leni Riefenstahl’s 1935 film Triumph of the Will. 57

But, rituals do not necessarily compel participation or brainwash. As religion scholar

Catherine Bell argues, “Ritual is never simply or solely a matter of routine, habit, or ‘the dead

weight of tradition.’” Even when faced with a ritual, humans retain agency and individuals still 58

confront the choice to participate or not. We, therefore, cannot treat participation in rituals as

unthinking compliance. Olson’s free-rider problem means that participation in ritual is an

outcome that must be explained.

The puzzle of ritual participation is compounded by characteristics of ritual that

distinguish it from other collective action, and, in the process, complicate existing theories.

Rituals differ from canonical collective actions, such as labor strikes and peasant rebellions, in at

least three critical ways: repetition, goal demotion, and participant perception.

Rituals are characterized by repetition. This alone is not unique: many collective actions

are repeated. Unlike repeated contentious performances, however, rituals are repeated out of

adherence to rules, not to achieve some extrinsic goal. Workers strike until wages rise and anti-

!92

Pierre Liénard and Pascal Boyer, “Whence Collective Rituals? A Cultural Selection Model of Ritualized 56

Behavior,” American Anthropologist, Vol. 108, No. 4 (December 2006), p. 816. Emphasis added.

As Mary Douglas, Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology (London: Routledge, 1970), p. 1, bemoans, 57

“Ritual is become [sic] a bad word signifying empty conformity…. Many sociologists, following [Robert K.] Merton, use the term ritualistic for one who performs external gestures without inner commitment to the ideas and values being expressed.” Religion scholar Jonathan Z. Smith, To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), p. 102, attributes the general denigration of ritual in Western scholarship to the “Protestant insistence on the ‘emptiness’ of ritual.”

Bell, Ritual Theory, p. 92.58

nuclear activists will protest until nuclear weapons are banned—i.e., it is an element of strategy.

For rituals, repetition is not strategic, it is the rule. 59

This leads to the second distinction, “goal demotion,” meaning that “the actions are

divorced from their usual goals.” As Liénard and Boyer explain, “Frequent repetition bolsters 60

this intuition that [ritual] actions are disconnected from their ordinary goals.” Summarizing 61

anthropologist Roy Rappaport, they place goal demotion first in their list of the “‘obvious’ (i.e.,

obvious to all anthropologists) aspects of ritual.” Elsewhere, they write that “the description of 62

ritual action in terms of goals is either not available or in any case irrelevant.” Conversely, 63

scholars normally understand collective action as goal-oriented. The goal may be internal or

external, short-term or long-term, strategic or misguided, central or peripheral, but achieving it is

a purpose of the action. In ritual, this is not necessarily the case. Philosopher Frits Staal 64

famously argues this point in its extreme: “Ritual is pure activity, without meaning or goal,” he

writes. “Things are either for their own sake, or for the sake of something else.… [M]y view is

that ritual is for its own sake.” 65

And third, ritual actors and observers view rituals as a distinct type of action. This

!93

For an overview of rituals as rule-governed activity, see Bell, Ritual, pp. 153-5.59

Liénard and Boyer, “Whence Collective Rituals?,” p. 815. Also Humprey and Laidlaw, The Archetypal Actions of 60

Ritual.

Liénard and Boyer, “Whence Collective Rituals?,” p. 816.61

Ibid., referencing Roy A. Rappaport, Ecology, Meaning and Religion (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1979)62

Pascal Boyer and Pierre Liénard, “Why Ritualized Behavior? Precaution Systems and Action Parsing in 63

Developmental, Pathological and Cultural Rituals,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Vol. 29, No. 6 (2006), p. 11.

“Social movement scholars generally agree that protest is undertaken for the purpose of achieving some goal,” 64

writes Rachel L. Einwohner, “Identity Work and Collective Action in a Repressive Context: Jewish Resistance on the ‘Aryan Side’ of the Warsaw Ghetto,” Social Problems, Vol. 53, No. 1 (February 2006), p. 40.

Frits Staal, “The Meaninglessness of Ritual,” Numen, Vol. 26, No. 1 (1979), p. 9. 65

element of perceived distinction is central to many theories of ritual. For instance, Durkheim

distinguishes between the “two different phases” of Australian life not only in terms of their

purposes—the economic phase and the religious phase—but in terms of their mood: the former is

“monotonous, slack, and humdrum,” the latter is a period of wild, unbridled excitement. Victor 66

Turner argues that rituals are characterized by liminality and the production of communitas, an

intense sense of community not felt during normal life. The deliberate repetition and goal 67

demotion already discussed—along with other elements such as formalism, invariance, and

symbolism—play a part in facilitating the experience of this distinction. As Humphrey and

Laidlaw remark, “the participants [of an ordinary meal and a ritual meal]… think that something

distinguishes the two events; and… the observable differences often include rules and

practices.” Catherine Bell refers to this technique of emphasizing difference as “ritualization,” 68

“the way in which certain social actions strategically distinguish themselves in relation to other

actions.” It is “a way of acting that is designed and orchestrated to distinguish and privilege what

is being done in comparison to other, usually more quotidian, activities.” Thus the perception 69

of difference may be a deliberate construct, but it is a powerful one nonetheless.

The power of successful ritualization is evident in the views of ordinary people, who

often recognize rituals as distinct. The beliefs of the people who organize, participate in, observe,

!94

Durkheim, Elementary Forms, pp. 216-17.66

Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1969).67

Humphrey and Laidlaw, The Archetypal Actions of Ritual, p. 73; also, p. 5. Also J. David Knottnerus, “Religion, 68

Ritual, and Collective Emotion,” in Christian von Scheve and Mikko Salmela, eds., Collective Emotions (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 313.

Bell, Ritual Theory, p. 74. Therefore, “formality, fixity, and repetition are not intrinsic qualities of ritual so much 69

as they are frequent, but not universal strategies for producing ritualized acts.” Ibid., p. 92. See also Smith, To Take Place, p. 109: “Ritual is, above all, an assertion of difference.”

and ignore rituals matter because these views may affect the decisions that people make

regarding rituals. And many people see rituals as a time apart, in some way different from normal

life. We see this when, for example, a pastor calls a worship service “different from every other

gathering” or when Jews ask annually during the Passover Seder, “Why is this night different

from all other nights?” Participants view ritual practices as distinct from how they live the rest 70

of their lives, including participating in non-ritual collective action. Onlookers, too, often see

rituals as unique. As Bell comments, “even a particularly dense foreigner dropped into the

middle of things would not mistake a Shī‘ī procession or a Korean kut for just another routine

event in the daily life in those communities.” For these three reasons—repetition, goal 71

demotion, and perceived difference—it is valuable to understand ritual as a distinct and

“particular type of social action” with “properties that distinguish [it] from other types of

action.” 72

Consequently, rituals cannot be fully explained with theories of participation developed

with other behaviors in mind. Prominent theoretical approaches in political science understand

most human actions through a narrowly rationalist and strategic lens that requires an analytic

distinction between desired ends (benefits) and the means used to achieve them (costs). But, as 73

the previous paragraph adumbrated, in ritual, means and ends are not always neatly separable. As

!95

The pastor’s quote is from Timothy J. Nelson, Every Time I Feel the Spirit: Religious Experience and Ritual in an 70

African-American Church (New York: NYU Press, 2005), p. 59.

Bell, Ritual, p. 138.71

Roth, “‘Men Wearing Masks,’” p. 320. Though note that there are other collective actions which approach 72

ritualization. Social and political actions which are often considered expressive, for example protest or voting, take on, to greater and lesser degrees, these three features of ritual.

Albert O. Hirschman, Shifting Involvements: Private Interest and Public Action (Princeton: Princeton University 73

Press, 1982), pp. 82-91, esp. pp. 85-6; and Jasper, The Art of Moral Protest, pp. 23-24, 26.

Liénard and Boyer suggest, “the standard connections between means and ends seem broken.” 74

Further, an implicit assumption of rational choice theory is that people approach all actions in the

same way. But, as noted above, people explicitly approach rituals differently. To fully explain 75

participation in rituals, we require a theory that can account for these peculiar features. In the

next section, I sketch such a theory.

!A Theory of Participation in Contentious Rituals

To generate a theory of participation in contentious ritual, I begin with two fundamental

insights from the sociology and anthropology of ritual and religious studies. The first insight is

that rituals are not “merely symbolic” reflections of reality; for participants, rituals do things.

Specifically, rituals provide benefits for participants such as collective effervescence, emotional

energy, a sense of belonging, and meaningful interpretations of the world. This helps us explain 76

ritual participation generally. The second insight is that rituals are multi-vocal and ambiguous.

They do not have a fixed meaning across time or individuals. This helps us explain participation

in contentious rituals specifically. Together these two observations suggest that rituals provide

valued experiences for participants and that these experiences are not necessarily the same for

every participant.

!96

Liénard and Boyer, “Whence Collective Rituals?,” p. 816.74

For example, Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper, 1957), pp. 7-8, states that 75

people approach “every situation with one eye on the gains to be had, the other eye on costs, a delicate ability to balance them, and a strong desire to follow wherever rationality leads” (emphasis added; quoted in Donald P. Green and Ian Shapiro, Pathologies of Rational Choice: A Critique of Applications in Political Science [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994], p. 35).

Additionally, some rituals, particularly religious ones, provide an array of empirically unverifiable outcomes for 76

participants: they cause rain, achieve healing, and so on.

The Benefits of Ritual

The insight that rituals provide benefits for participants originates in the earliest days of

the social scientific study of ritual. Since then, scholars have identified a range of effects that

rituals have. Some rituals have a social effect for the participant. For example, Arnold van

Gennep showed that rituals permit people to transition to a new social identity, such as from

childhood to adulthood. Rites of passage both signal this change and, more importantly, cause it,

thereby granting the person a new social role. Rituals can also have a cognitive effect. They 77

shape how participants understand the world. For instance, Kertzer states that rituals have a

“cognitive effect on people’s definition of political reality.” Steven Lukes elaborates this 78

position, arguing: “political ritual should be seen as reinforcing, recreating, and organizing

représentations collectives… In this sense, such ritual plays… a cognitive role, rendering

intelligible society and social relationships, serving to organize people’s knowledge of the past

and present and their capacity to imagine the future.” 79

Rituals also have an emotional effect on participants. Durkheim argues that collective

rituals produce the experience of “collective effervescence” in participants. Rituals cause

“passions… so torrential that nothing can hold them,” “an intense hyperexcitement of physical

and mental life,” and “a state of exaltation” that transport the participant to “a special world

inhabited by exceptionally intense forces that invade and transform him” and “excite him to the

!97

van Gennep, Rites of Passage.77

Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power, p. 14.78

Lukes, “Political Rituals and Social Integration,” p. 301.79

point of frenzy.” Building on Durkheim, Randall Collins elaborates the micro-situational 80

foundations of rituals’ effects. He writes:

The central mechanism of interaction ritual theory is that occasions that combine a high degree of mutual focus of attention… together with a high entrainment—through bodily synchronization, mutual stimulation/arousal of participants’ nervous systems—result in feelings of membership that are attached to cognitive symbols; and result also in the emotional energy of individual participants, giving them feelings of confidence, enthusiasm, and desire for action in what they consider a morally proper path. These moments of high degree of ritual intensity are high points of experience. 81

! These emotions, as Collins argues, come from being together, moving together, and

acting together—all elements that rituals combine. Emotions are further enhanced by music,

which is a common feature in ritual. As Jasper comments, “music has a strong emotional impact

on participants who sing, dance, and move together.” 82

Recent psychological research supports these sociological claims. Experiments that

simulate rituals through bodily synchrony have demonstrated a number of relevant effects. For

example, Valdesolo and DeSteno find that synchronized movement fosters feelings of social

connection and compassion. Studies by Valdesolo, Ouyang, and DeSteno and Wiltermuth and 83

!98

Durkheim, Elementary Forms, pp. 218 and 220.80

Collins, Interaction Ritual Chains, p. 42; also, Randall Collins, “Social Movements and the Focus of Emotional 81

Attention,” in Goodwin, Jasper, and Polletta, eds., Passionate Politics, pp. 27-43; and Randall Collins, “Interaction Ritual Chains and Collective Effervescence,” in von Scheve and Salmela, eds., Collective Emotions, pp. 299-311. See also Knottnerus’s “structural ritualization theory,” which builds on Collins, in Knottnerus, “Religion, Ritual, and Collective Emotion”; and J. David Knottnerus, “Collective Events, Rituals, and Emotions,” in Shane R. Thye and Edward J. Lawler, eds., Advances in Group Processes, Vol. 27 (Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2010), pp. 39-61.

James M. Jasper, “Emotions and Social Movements: Twenty Years of Theory and Research,” Annual Review of 82

Sociology, Vol. 37 (2011), p. 294. On music and collective action more generally, see Ron Eyerman and Andrew Jamison, Music and Social Movements: Mobilizing Traditions in the Twentieth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998); and William G. Roy, “How Social Movements Do Culture,” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, Vol. 23, Nos. 2-3 (September 2010), pp. 85-98.

Valdesolo and DeSteno, “Synchrony and the Social Tuning of Compassion.”83

Heath show that synchrony increases in-group cooperation. And Konvalinka et al. find that 84

high-risk rituals can even cause physiological arousal in some spectators. 85

What is more, rituals are meaningful experiences for participants. In particular, rituals

allow participants unmediated access to a cherished, often mythic, past. This can happen in two

ways. First, rituals, because of their repetition, imply “continuity with the past.” As a result, the 86

participant feels him or herself following the path of their ancestors, walking in their footsteps

and reproducing their actions. This is especially potent when the ritual has been passed down

within families or in commemorative rituals which “do not simply imply continuity with the past

but explicitly claim such continuity.” Second, rituals can make participants feel as if they are 87

walking alongside ancestors and participating with them. Scholar of religion Mircea Eliade

writes, “Every religious festival… represents the reactualization of a sacred event that took place

in a mythical past, ‘in the beginning.’ Religious participation in a festival implies emerging from

ordinary temporal duration and reintegration of the mythical time reactualized by the festival

itself.” Though Eliade is referring specifically to religion, the same can apply to secular rituals 88

as well. Ethnic, national, and political rituals also often celebrate a mythic past that is

!99

Piercarlo Valdesolo, Jennifer Ouyang, and David DeSteno, “The Rhythm of Joint Action: Synchrony Promotes 84

Cooperative Ability,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Vol. 46, No. 4 (July 2010), pp. 693-5; and Wiltermuth and Heath, “Synchrony and Cooperation.” This includes cooperation in aggressive and destructive behavior: Scott S. Wiltermuth, “Synchronous Activity Boosts Compliance with Requests to Aggress,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Vol. 48, No. 1 (January 2012), pp. 453-6; and Scott Wiltermuth, “Synchrony and Destructive Obedience,” Social Influence, Vol. 7, No. 2 (2012), pp. 78-89.

Ivana Konvalinka, Dimitris Xygalatas, Joseph Bulbulia, Uffe Schjødt, Else-Marie Jegindø, Sebastian Wallot, Guy 85

Van Orden, and Andreas Roepstorff, “Synchronized Arousal Between Performers and Related Spectators in a Fire-Walking Ritual,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Vol. 108, No. 20 (May 17, 2011), pp. 8514-9.

Connerton, How Societies Remember, p. 45.86

Ibid.87

Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, trans. Willard R. Trask (Orlando: Harcourt, 88

1959), pp. 68-9.

“reactualized” through the ritual’s performance. 89

The result of all these effects of ritual is that participation is often meaningful and

pleasurable. Connerton, for instance, argues, “Rites have capacity to give value and meaning to

the life of those who perform them.” And Kertzer, in his wide-ranging study of rituals and 90

politics, notes, “People derive a great deal of satisfaction from their participation in ritual.” The 91

crowds, sounds, movement, purpose, symbols, solidarity, attention, effervescence, and so on

come together in ritual, creating moments of great experience for participants.

All of the effects of rituals just identified share an important feature: they are “intrinsic to

the process of participation itself” and not reliant on the successful achievement of a particular

outcome. Therefore, participation is not motivated by expectations of outcome benefits—the 92

benefits to the individual that result from achieving the goal of the collective action—but by

expectations of process-regarding, or intrinsic, benefits which are internal and inherent to the

process of acting collectively. Whereas outcome benefits, whether collective or selective, are 93

determined by the outcome of the collective action, process benefits are the satisfactions gained

from participation in collective action itself and not in the action’s consequences. Process

!100

Connerton, How Societies Remember; Hobsbawm and Ranger, The Invention of Tradition; John R. Gillis, ed. 89

Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); Yael Zerubavel, Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986).


Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power, p. 14.91

Elisabeth Jean Wood, Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador (New York: Cambridge University 92

Press, 2003), p. 240.

See Jon Elster, The Cement of Society: A Study of Social Order (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 93

pp. 34-46; Kay Lehman Schlozman, Sidney Verba, and Henry E. Brady, “Participation’s Not a Paradox: The View from American Activists,” British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 25, No. 1 (January 1995), pp. 1-36; Jasper, Art of Moral Protest; Wood, Insurgent Collective Action, pp. 231-56.

benefits are still a type of instrumental motive and fit the future-oriented calculation of doing X

in order to achieve Y. However, the Y of process-regarding behavior is intrinsic to the action. So

to act on process-regarding motives is to act to obtain the benefits intrinsic in the collective

action, such as the excitement of collective effervescence and emotional energy or the

satisfaction of “express[ing] allegiance to moral visions.” My argument, therefore, is not that 94

participants are irrational; they are simply acting to receive a different type of benefit. The

benefit is participation, not its external consequences.

Importantly, process benefits are exclusively available to participants. Only participants

receive the social, cognitive, emotional, and other effects that rituals produce. Process-oriented

benefits thus share a characteristic of selective incentives. Yet they are not the same as nor are

they reducible to selective incentives. Selective incentives are a consequence of action. In other

words, participation is the means and selective incentives are the ends. Further, action can be

analytically distinguished from the incentives: action and reward are separate. Process benefits,

in contrast, emerge from the acting, they are of the action. With process benefits we cannot

distinguish means and ends: the action is the reward. And as Elisabeth Wood argues, “Reasons

that refer irreducibly to the process itself or to a non instrumental value and not to the outcomes

of action are problematic because they challenge the consequentialist framework of rational

choice.” Describing process benefits as a type of selective benefits (as classically conceived) is 95

not useful.

Intrinsic benefits are not unique to rituals. Scholars have found them to motivate a wide

!101

Jasper, Art of Moral Protest, p. 14.94

Wood, Insurgent Collective Action, p. 253.95

range of collective behavior, especially when the actions or their contexts lack the usual

conditions conducive to collective contention. For example, Wood finds that during the civil war

in El Salvador, both nonparticipants and participants received access to liberated land, but acts of

rebellion provided the pride and pleasure in agency only to campesinos who participated. 96

Rachel Einwohner finds that the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising took place under conditions of reduced

political opportunity, but resistance gave Warsaw Jews the occasion to assert their dignity and

honor in the face of certain death. A number of scholars have attributed the choice to vote to 97

“expressive motives,” since it is otherwise irrational to go to the polls. But in all of these cases, 98

there is no ex ante reason to suspect that process-oriented motives would trump outcome-

oriented, instrumental ones. Generally, scholars find expressive motives only when all else fails.

By pointing to specific features of ritual, my argument suggests an a priori justification of when

to expect intrinsic motives to matter.

Though process benefits can motivate many types of behaviors, they are especially

associated with rituals because rituals are a non-instrumental form of action. It is not the case 99

that rituals cannot have instrumental uses or be instrumentally effective. Rather, what

!102

Ibid., pp. 231-56; and Elisabeth Jean Wood, “The Emotional Benefits of Insurgency in El Salvador,” in Goodwin, 96

Jasper, and Polletta, eds., Passionate Politics, pp. 267-80.

Rachel L. Einwohner, “Opportunity, Honor, and Action in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943,” American 97

Journal of Sociology, Vol. 109, No. 3 (November 2003), pp. 650-75.

The claim originates in Downs, Economic Theory of Democracy, p. 48. A large literature has followed, e.g., 98

Geoffrey Brennan and Loren Lomasky, Democracy and Decision: The Pure Theory of Electoral Preference (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Alexander A. Schuessler, A Logic of Expressive Choice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); Alan Hamlin and Colin Jennings, “Expressive Political Behaviour: Foundations, Scope and Implications,” British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 41, No. 3 (July 2011), pp. 645-70. But see Amit Ahuja and Pradeep Chhibber, “Why the Poor Vote in India: ‘If I Don’t Vote, I Am Dead to the State,” Studies in Comparative International Development, Vol. 47, No. 4 (December 2012), pp. 389-410.

Some scholars view ritual not as a type of action, but as an aspect of all action. But even in this schema, ritual is 99

generally seen as the noninstrumental aspect of action and is contrasted with the instrumental aspects of action. See, for instance, Leach, Political Systems of Highland Burma, p. 13.

distinguishes ritual from “ordinary functional action” or “everyday action” is that ritual departs

from the “normal intentional character” of the latter. I draw here on the important theoretical 100

work of anthropologists Caroline Humphrey and James Laidlaw, developed in their study of the

Jain puja ritual in India. Though I differ with their argument that ritual is a quality of action,

rather than a class of action, I find their general theory illuminating.

Humphrey and Laidlaw “contrast ritualized action… with action which is not ritualized”

and conclude that “ritualization severs the link, present in everyday action, between the

‘intentional meaning’ of the agent and the identity of the act which he or she performs.” To 101

explain: non-ritualized action is defined by the actor’s intention. Thus, to use an example of

theirs, what makes my arm movement a beckon is that I intend to beckon my friend (i.e.,

beckoning is my intentional meaning when I move my arm). But for ritualized action, this is not

the case. For ritualized action, the normal relationship between the intention and the act is

deliberately transformed by the “adoption of a ritual stance.” The result of this stance is that 102

“intentions no longer play the immediate role which they normally do in determining the identity

of the acts performed.” This is because ritual is prescribed action. When someone performs a 103

ritual, they are following a set of prescribed rules; thus what matters is that the rules are

followed, not the intentions behind the performance. Note that this does not mean that the ritual

is unintentional or accidental. The actor does have the intention to carry out the ritual, but that

!103

Humphrey and Laidlaw, Archetypal Actions of Ritual, pp. 12, 13, 89. 100

Ibid., p. 2.101

Ibid., p. 94.102

Ibid.103

entails the dismissal of their own wants and desires. As a result, the acts which compose a ritual

“are constituted not by the intentions which the actor has in performing them, but by prior

stipulation. We thus have,” Humphrey and Laidlaw conclude, “a class of acts in which the

intentions which normally serve to identify acts… are discounted.” 104

The overall insight from Humphrey and Laidlaw is that ritual lacks the “normal

intentional character” of day-to-day action. An implication of this understanding of ritual is 105

that the rewards of taking part in a ritual are internal and intrinsic—the consequences of ritual are

inconsequential. As Staal argues, in “the applied activities of our ordinary, everyday life,” the

results, not the rules, are what matter. In ritual, conversely, “the rules count, but not the results.”

Thus, he states, “whatever value [ritual] has is intrinsic value.” 106

When an actor chooses to partake in ritual, she therefore does so on account of the

process-oriented benefits inherent in acting ritually. The appeals of ritual are not in the

consequences of ritual action; they are the ritual action.

!Ritual Ambiguity

Thus far, our theory addresses rituals in general; with insight is that rituals are multi-

vocal and therefore their meaning is ambiguous, we narrow our focus to contentious rituals. By

!104

Ibid., p. 97.104

Ibid., p. 89.105

Staal, “The Meaninglessness of Ritual,” p. 9.106

multi-vocality, I mean that “a single symbol may stand for many things.” Consider, for 107

instance, all the things that the American flag stands for: a state, a territory, a people, patriotism,

militarism, liberty, oppression, opportunity, inequality, and so on. This is particularly the case

because of the capacity of symbols to condense many meanings and represent many things in a

single form. The result is that even a “commonly accepted symbol” holds a “range of 108

meanings” and, therefore, different people can understand the exact same symbol in different 109

ways.

Since a ritual can represent so much, the meaning of ritual is ambiguous. This ambiguity

is, in fact, a key to their utility. “Symbols are effective because they are imprecise,” as Anthony

Cohen argues. The ambiguous character of symbols can also be politically useful, as shown by 110

Murray Edelman. It allows different groups and constituencies to see different things in the 111

symbol or ritual.

Contentious rituals, like all rituals, do not have a fixed or definitive meaning. This is

perhaps more obvious in contentious rituals than non-contentious ones, since differing

!105

Turner, Forest of Symbols, p. 50. He adds, “This property of individual symbols is true of ritual as a whole.” 107

Political scientists have recently gained interest in the multi-vocality of religion, and especially religious doctrine. See Alfred Stepan, “Religion, Democracy, and the ‘Twin Tolerations,’” Journal of Democracy, Vol. 11, No. 4 (October 2000), pp. 37-57; Alfred Stepan, Arguing Comparative Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), ch. 11, “The World’s Religious Systems and Democracy: Crafting the ‘Twin Tolerations,’” pp. 213-53; Daniel Philpott, “Explaining the Political Ambivalence of Religion,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 101, No. 3 (2007), pp. 505-25; Daniel Corstange, “Religion, Pluralism, and Iconography in the Public Sphere: Theory and Evidence From Lebanon,” World Politics, Vol. 64, No. 1 (January 2012), pp. 116-60.

Turner, Forest of Symbols, p. 28; Murray Edelman, The Symbolic Uses of Politics, rev. ed. (Champaign: 108

University of Illinois Press, 1985), p. 6.

Cohen, Symbolic Construction of Community, p. 15. Original emphasis.109

Ibid., p. 21.110

Edelman, Symbolic Uses of Politics, esp. pp. 206-8. Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power, pp. 69-75, explains the 111

“virtues of ambiguity.”

interpretations of a ritual is often the source of the dispute. Consider, for instance, the many

disputed commemorations of figures considered heroes by some and villains by others.

Yet this basic point about multi-vocality and ambiguity is often lost on observers trying to

explain the behavior of participants. Analysts often begin their analysis with an argument about

what the ritual means or is really about. They thus collapse the multiple meanings of the ritual 112

into a single interpretation—often one that the participants themselves would not recognize.

Contentious rituals, in such an analysis, are often viewed as intimidating demonstrations of

power or deliberately inflammatory acts. Since we further tend to assume that action is ends-

oriented, the conclusion is that participants act in order to intimidate or provoke. This double

assumption is problematic on both levels. As I argued earlier, we cannot conflate outcomes and

intentions. I now wish to highlight that we cannot project our interpretations of a ritual—no

matter how obvious it may appear—onto the participants. The meanings of a ritual are manifold,

and the one held by the analyst is just one of many possibilities.

Two people can observe the same ritual and believe completely different things about it.

For example, person A, a participant, may view ritual R as a celebration of national liberation

while person B, from a different ethnic group, may view R as a mean-spirited display of

chauvinism and a symbol of national oppression. This is particularly true in deeply divided

societies, where “value consensus is manifestly absent or minimal.” It is entirely logical that 113

people on different sides of an ethnic divide have different understandings of a symbolically

!106

Ziad W. Munson, “When a Funeral Isn't Just a Funeral: The Layered Meaning of Everyday Action,” in Nancy T. 112

Ammerman, ed., Everyday Religion: Observing Modern Religious Lives (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 122.

Lukes, “Political Ritual and Social Integration,” p. 300.113

ambiguous act.

There are three implications of multi-vocality and ambiguity for a theory of participation.

First, even if opposition to the contentious ritual is well known, it does not necessarily impact the

meaning it holds for participants or their intentions in acting. Ambiguity means that the

opponents’ interpretation is not universal or definitive. This is bolstered by the fact that in

divided societies, members of the different groups tend not to have cross-cutting social networks.

Thus, there is no risk in accidentally offending a friend or neighbor. 114

Second, amongst the participants themselves, individuals may hold differing

interpretations of the ritual and therefore act for different reasons. The ritual’s multi-vocality 115

means that participants can find their own meaning from the range of possibilities. There is no

one hegemonic interpretation of the ritual held by all participants.

Third, the ritual’s participants and it organizers or elites may not share interpretations or

intentions. It is plausible that organizers and political elites use contentious rituals to polarize

society as argued by Wilkinson and others. But that does not mean that ordinary participants 116

see it in the same way. Participants, thus, can have their own understanding that is independent

of in-group elites, out-group opponents, or even fellow participants.

!!

!107

For the opposite social situation, see Theodore Caplow, “Rule Enforcement Without Visible Means: Christmas 114

Gift Giving in Middletown,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 89, No. 6 (May 1984), p. 1321, and the discussion of Caplow in Ann Swidler, “Cultural Power and Social Movements,” in Hank Johnston and Bert Klandermans, eds., Social Movements and Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), pp. 32-33.

Cohen, Symbolic Construction of Community, p. 55.115

Wilkinson, Votes and Violence.116

Theorizing Loyalist Parades as Contentious Rituals

The theory I have just presented provides a general explanation for participation in

contentious rituals, the set of symbolic acts that make contested political claims. The empirical

portion of this dissertation focuses on a specific contentious ritual: loyalist parading in Northern

Ireland. In this section I will establish that loyalist parades are contentious rituals and collective

actions, highlighting why participation in them is puzzling.

The first crucial point is that loyalist parades are rituals. In fact, they are the most

important political or commemorative ritual in the Protestant community of Northern Ireland. 117

Recall that in Kertzer’s definition, rituals have three characteristics: they are “action wrapped in

a web of symbolism,” they “follow highly structured, standardized sequences,” and they are

repetitive. Parades meet all three criteria. They are highly symbolic behavior, with everything 118

from the clothing, regalia, and banners to the music, names of the organizations, and the parade

routes full of meaning and significance. Parades are socially standardized, following rules of

behavior that are well established in society. And parades, are repetitive: they occur year after

year, often on dates of historical significance.

Loyalist parades are also at the center of great political contestation in Northern Ireland,

making them quintessential contentious rituals. Parades are disputed by Catholic nationalists 119

who see them as provocative displays of Protestant chauvinism. In particular, nationalists protest

!108

Neil Jarman, Material Conflicts: Parades and Visual Displays in Northern Ireland (Oxford: Berg, 1997); and 117

Dominic Bryan, Orange Parades: The Politics of Ritual, Tradition, and Control (London: Pluto, 2000).

Kertzer, Rituals, Politics, and Power, p. 9.118

See Ross, Cultural Contestation in Ethnic Conflict; Brubaker and Laitin, “Ethnic and Nationalist Violence,” p. 119

445; and Andreas Wimmer and Conrad Schetter, “Ethnic Violence,” in Wilhelm Heitmeyer and John Hagan, eds., International Handbook of Violence Research (Dordecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003), p. 256.

parades that pass by their neighborhoods or cultural and religious institutions. This cycle of

parade and protest raises tensions and fear between groups and has an overall negative impact on

community relations and the consolidation of peace. Moreover, the confrontations between

protesters, parades, and the police occasionally become violent.

These political outcomes of parades suggest that they provide collective goods for the

Protestant community at large, not just participants. Therefore, they are collective actions. I

count at least eleven collective goods that parades are thought to produce. First, parades publicly

represent the Protestant community and its values. Second, parades are a tradition that is valued

by much of the Protestant community, whether they participate or not. Third, parades project

Protestant power. Fourth, parades mark territory as Protestant. Fifth, parades strengthen and

maintain Protestant culture. Sixth, parades perform a socially integrative function. Seventh,

parades maintain social memory and ethnic myths. Eighth, parades police the symbolic

boundaries of the group. Ninth, parades bolster Protestant unity. Tenth, parades are a festival for

anyone to enjoy. And eleventh, parades confront and antagonize Irish nationalists. Not all of

these are desired by the Protestant community or even necessarily by the participants, but, once

produced by parades, they can affect all members of the community.

As a result, the choice to participate in loyalist parades must be explained. Olson’s 120

theoretical challenge means that we cannot simply assume that anyone will participate in

!109

By “participate,” I mean marching in a parade as a member of a loyal order or marching band. Parades are large 120

heterogenous events composed of multiple actors and groups, all of which take part in their own way (including supporters, protestors, police, journalists, and passersby). But I focus on the people who actually parade through the streets. On the many actors involved in demonstrations, see Olivier Fillieule, “The Independent Psychological Effects of Participation in Demonstrations,” Mobilization, Vol. 17, No. 3 (September 2012), p. 236; also, Olivier Fillieule and Danielle Tartakowsky, Demonstrations, Phyllis Aronoff and Howard Scott, trans. (Halifax: Fernwood, 2013), pp. 16-17. For parades, it is especially important to clarify this distinction, since some scholars of ritual include audience members as participants. Berezin, Making the Fascist Self, p. 250; and Bocock, Ritual in Industrial Society, p. 59.

parades. Further, the fact that the action is contentious and holds the potential for socially

harmful consequences makes the puzzle more vexing. If conflict does break out, the ordinary

participants are among the most likely to be harmed. Why would anyone want to act in a way

that risks such conflict? In the previous section, I provided an explanation. In the next section, I

will draw out the observable implications of that explanation for Northern Irish parades.

!Observable Implications

Our argument provides several testable implications for parades in Northern Ireland. The

primary implication of the “ritual benefit” argument is that loyalist parade participants should

understand their behavior as non-instrumental. When participants discuss parades they should

not view them instrumentally as a means to an end—as expected by the ethnic rivalry and

collective action approaches I will discuss shortly. Instead, participants’ discussions should

center on the value of participation itself. Their descriptions of parades, therefore, should

minimize or even neglect the outcomes of parades (exciting the Protestant community,

intimidating the Catholic community, receiving a material benefit, etc.). Rather, they should

highlight the experience of participation: what it is like to march through the streets. Relatedly,

they should not view participation as a cost or burden, but as a benefit in and of itself—despite

the fact that it requires significant time and resources. If participants view their actions in

instrumental terms, the “ritual benefit” argument seems less plausible.

The implications of the “ritual ambiguity” argument are attitudinal. The multiple

available meanings imply that Protestants and Catholics can maintain firm and opposing

interpretations of parades, each valid. If, in fact, Protestants do not view parades as hostile

!110

attempts to offend and provoke Catholics, then there is no reason to expect that participants hold

any more ill will toward Catholics than nonparticipants. Therefore, an implication of ritual’s

ambiguity is that parade participants should express the same level of sectarian attitudes as

nonparticipants. Due to ritual ambiguity, the fact that Catholics view parades as hateful does not

mean that Protestants do too.

!Alternative Explanations

There are four bodies of scholarship which might explain participation in contentious

rituals. In this section, I describe them and suggest problems with each approach. I begin with a

review rationalist approaches to rituals, and then I address three explanations for ethnic conflict:

elite manipulation, ethnic rivalry, and collective action. I conclude that only the latter two

provide a plausible explanation for participation and then delineate the hypotheses each

argument generates.

!Rationalist Approaches to Ritual

Though ritual was long defined in opposition to rationality, several political scientists

have recently worked to explain rituals with a rationalist framework. In Rational Rituals,

Michael Chwe translates rituals into terms more familiar to the discipline. He argues that the

source of the political and social importance of rituals is their public format. This publicness

allows rituals to create common knowledge––knowledge of the form “we all know that we all

know”––which is essential to solving coordination problems. Applying these simple ideas from

game theory to an extensive range of examples, Chwe provides a convincing argument that the

!111

form of rituals is a key to their power. 121

Building on Chwe’s model, David Patel and Alfred Stepan explain the role of rituals in

the politics of Iraq and Senegal, respectively. Patel argues that the political importance of Islam

stems from the capacity of Islamic rituals to generate common knowledge and coordinate the

expectations of individual Muslims. In particular, he shows that Friday worship at mosque 122

played two coordinating functions: it allowed localities with only one mosque to maintain social

order and it facilitated the creation of a nation-wide Shiite identity and political agenda. Stepan

argues that public rituals of respect in Senegal have helped create a democratic and tolerant

polity. He first shows that horizontal rituals of respect between different religions foster 123

mutual tolerance between groups. Second, he shows that vertical rituals of respect between the

state and society have allowed for the creation and maintenance of the “twin tolerations”––

religion’s tolerance of the state and the state’s tolerance of religion––necessary for robust

democracy. 124

This research makes valuable contributions to our understandings of both rituals and

politics. Chwe, Patel, and Stepan present convincing arguments that the public form of rituals

affect political outcomes. But they do not address why people participate in the rituals they study.

!112

Chwe, Rational Ritual. For a strong critique of Chwe and the idea of culture as common knowledge, see Lisa 121

Wedeen, “Conceptualizing Culture: Possibilities for Political Science,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 96, No. 4. (December 2002), esp. pp. 718-19.

David Siddhartha Patel, “Islam, Information, and Social Order: The Strategic Role of Religion in Muslim 122

Societies,” Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 2007.

Alfred Stepan, “Rituals of Respect: Sufis and Secularists in Senegal in Comparative Perspective,” Comparative 123

Politics (July 2012), pp. 379-401. For an earlier analysis of the role of rituals in Senegalese politics, see Leonardo A. Villalón, “Sufi Rituals as Rallies: Religious Ceremonies in the Politics of Senegalese State-Society Relations,” Comparative Politics, Vol. 26, No. 4 (July 1994), pp. 415-37.

Stepan, “Religion, Democracy, and the ‘Twin Tolerations’”; and Stepan, Arguing Comparative Politics, pp. 124

213-53.

This is problematic because they demonstrate that rituals provide a communally valued function,

i.e., a public good. As I demonstrated earlier, rituals that produce a public good are collective

actions open to free-riding. Specifying the collective benefits of rituals is insufficient to explain

individual choices. Thus the rationalist framework these scholars use to explain macro-outcomes

lacks a plausible micro-foundation.

A second approach which fits seamlessly into political science thinking on rituals (though

thus far not adopted by political scientists) is the costly-signaling theory of rituals. This approach

directly addresses participation in rituals, particularly risky, costly, or time-consuming rituals.

These include rituals involving self-inflicted pain (e.g., self-flagellation on Ashura) or willful

destruction of personal property (e.g, the potlatch practiced by communities indigenous to the

Pacific Northwest). The argument is that partaking in a dangerous or painful ritual is a costly

signal of trustworthiness and commitment to the group which screens out free-riders. There are

two variants of the mechanism. Economists argue that this increases the payoffs provided by the

“club,” while evolutionary anthropologists argue that these mechanisms were necessary for the

survival of early humans. Both variations, however, rely on a functionalist logic that fails to 125

explain why any particular individual would participate. The economic argument places us back

in the realm of collective goods and free riders, while the evolutionary argument leaves no room

!113

For the economic argument, see, e.g., Laurence R. Iannacone, “Sacrifice and Stigma: Reducing Free-riding in 125

Cults, Communes, and Other Collectives,” Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 100, No. 2 (April 1992), pp. 271-91; Laurence R. Iannacone, “Why Strict Churches Are Strong,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 99, No. 5 (March 1994), pp. 1180-1211; and Eli Berman, “Sect, Subsidy, and Sacrifice: An Economist’s View of Ultra-Orthodox Jews,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 115, No. 3 (August 2000), pp. 905-53. For the anthropological approach, see e.g., William Irons, “Religion as a Hard-to-Fake Sign of Commitment,” in Randolph Nesse, ed., The Evolution of Commitment (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2001), pp. 292-309; Richard Sosis and Candace Alcorta, “Signaling, Solidarity, and the Sacred: The Evolution of Religious Behavior,” Evolutionary Anthropology, Vol. 12, No. 6 (2003), pp. 264-274; and Richard Sosis and Bradley J. Ruffle, “Religious Ritual and Cooperation: Testing for a Relationship on Israeli Religious and Secular Kibbutzim,” Current Anthropology, Vol. 44, No. 5 (December 2003), pp. 713-22.

to explain differences in behavior across individuals.

!Theories of Ethnic Conflict

In this section, I review three approaches to explaining ethnic conflict. The elite-led

conflict approach, discussed in the previous chapter, does not address mass participation, so I

only describe it briefly. The ethnic rivalry approach views contentious rituals as opportunities for

groups and individuals within the group to assert in-group pride and out-group animosity. Thus

we expect that participation is motivated by attitudes towards the in-group and out-group. The

collective action approach sees contentious rituals as subject to the free-rider problem. Thus we

expect that participation is motivated by variables which increase the private benefits or decrease

the private costs.

!ELITE-LED CONFLICT APPROACH

The political science research which addresses contentious rituals most directly focuses

on the role of strategic elites. As detailed in the previous chapter, the conclusion of this research

is that inflammatory acts, such as contentious rituals, are used strategically to polarize a society

by provoking the out-group into overreacting in order to promote distrust between communities,

create a negative image of the out-group in local or international courts of opinion, or discredit

in-group moderates. This approach provides an explanation for the incentives of elites to 126

design and promote contentious rituals, but it fails to account for why the masses would

participate in them. For instance, Wilkinson writes that Hindu party leaders in India “organize

!114

Wilkinson, Votes and Violence; and Brubaker and Laitin, “Ethnic and Nationalist Violence,” p. 433.126

unusually large religious processions” in order to provoke minorities. But who makes up these 127

“unusually large” crowds? And why did they turn out? Neither Wilkinson nor the other scholars

from this approach provide answers. Since we cannot explain mass participation with elite

interests, readers are left guessing why people participate in the (often risky) elite-promoted

contentious rituals. As a result, this argument does not suggest hypotheses about individual-level

participation. And, as I previously demonstrated, Protestant elites in Northern Ireland are divided

over loyalist parades. Some support parades, but others oppose them. So even without its silence

on the matter of participation, the elite-led approach does not explain the Northern Irish case.

!ETHNIC RIVALRY APPROACH

The ethnic rivalry explanation focuses on the role of ethnic difference and rivalry in

motivating conflict. This approach comes in primordial and constructivist flavors, but both

camps argue that conflict and contentious rituals stem from the existence of ethnic difference. 128

Through this lens, contentious rituals are seen as symbolic assertions of group dominance or 129

status as well as the out-group’s subordination. As mass public events, contentious rituals 130

!115

Wilkinson, Votes and Violence, p. 24. Emphasis is mine.127

On the social psychology of ethnic difference, see Henri Tajfel and John C. Turner, “An Integrative Theory of 128

Intergroup Conflict,” in W. G. Austin and S. Worchel, eds., The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations (Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole, 1979); and Henri Tajfel and John C. Turner,“The Social Identity Theory of Intergroup Behaviour,” in S. Worchel & W. G. Austin, eds., Psychology of Intergroup Relations (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1986).

Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); and Horowitz, 129

The Deadly Ethnic Riot.

Roger D. Petersen, Understanding Ethnic Violence: Fear, Hatred, and Resentment in Twentieth-Century Eastern 130

Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002); and Roger D. Petersen, Western Intervention in the Balkans: The Strategic Use of Emotions in Conflict (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

allow individuals to articulate their ethnic pride or ethnic grievances. Although grievances 131

have recently been dismissed by much of the empirical literature on conflict, there is a long 132

tradition of grievance-based explanations for ethnic conflict. Additionally, many studies that 133

find that grievances have no effect are looking at the emergence of conflict and contentious

political movements. Studies that look at individual participation, our interest here, are generally

much more favorable toward grievances. The logic of these arguments suggests that 134

individual-level participation is best explained by the attachments that people hold to the group.

Participation is a way for people to further the interests of their ethnic group and thus it is

expected that the more people identify with their ethnic group, the more likely they are to

participate. 135

However, these events do not just celebrate the ethnic in-group and help it achieve its

goals: they simultaneously denigrate and offend the ethnic out-group. Contentious rituals are a

!116

Roger Petersen, Western Intervention in the Balkans, p. 100, specifically predicts that one particular grievance, 131

resentment of ethnic status reversal, leads to “parades and demonstrations that highlight grievances about political status.”

Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, “Greed and Grievance in Civil War,” Oxford Economic Papers, Vol. 56 (2004), 132

pp. 563-595; James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 97, No. 1 (February 2003), pp. 75-90.

Most prominently, Ted Robert Gurr, Why Men Rebel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970). See also the 133

recent “meaning-laden approach to grievances” in Erica Simmons, “Grievances Do Matter in Mobilization,” Theory and Society, Vol. 43, No. 5 (September 2014), pp. 513-546.

Maurice Pinard, Motivational Dimensions in Social Movement and Contentious Collective Action (Montreal and 134

Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011), esp. pp. 40-44.

See Ashutosh Varshney, “Nationalism, Ethnic Conflict, and Rationality,” Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 1, No. 1 135

(March 2003), p. 93; and Amilcar Antonio Barretto, “Nationalism, Collective Action, and Rationality,” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, Vol. 18, No. 3 (2012), pp. 327-28. This hypothesis is also supported by studies of social movement mobilization such as Bert Klandermans, Jojanneke van der Toorn, and Jacquelien van Stekelenburg, “Embeddedness and Identity: How Immigrants Turn Grievances into Action,” American Sociological Review, Vol. 73 (December 2008), pp. 992-1012; Bernd Simon, Michael Loewy, Stefan Stürmer, Ulrike Weber, Peter Freytag, Corinna Habig, Claudia Kampmeier, and Peter Spahlinger, “Collective Identification and Social Movement Participation,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 74, No. 3 (March 1998), pp. 646-58.

way to express grievances against or hatred of the out-group. Therefore, it is expected that people

are more likely to participate the more they dislike the out-group. Overall, the ethnic rivalry

approach suggests that participants are distinguished from nonparticipants by their attitudes

towards the in-group and out-group.

!COLLECTIVE ACTION APPROACH

This approach to ethnic conflict builds on Olson’s logic of collective action. Given that 136

the private costs of ethnic conflict outweigh the private benefits, thereby creating incentives to

free-ride on the actions of others, collective action theorists ask: Why would anyone voluntarily

participate? One answer is that participants are provided selective material incentives. Thus, it 137

is expected that people are more likely to participate if they receive selective material benefits.

Some theorists of collective action have expanded their understanding of selective rewards to

include non-material benefits such as “fun” and “reputation,” but, as critics have shown, 138 139

these attempts to rescue the rationalist approach fail to provide a coherent explanation of

participation. So to have a clear test between the collective action theory and the ritual 140

!117

Olson, Logic of Collective Action.136

Ibid., p. 51; Samuel L. Popkin, The Rational Peasant: The Political Economy of Rural Society in Vietnam 137

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979); Mark I. Lichbach, “What Makes Rational Peasants Revolutionary?: Dilemma, Paradox, and Irony in Peasant Collective Action,” World Politics, Vol. 46, No. 3 (April 1994), pp. 383-418; Mark I. Lichbach, The Rebel’s Dilemma (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995).

Edward N. Muller and Karl-Dieter Opp, “Rational Choice and Rebellious Collective Action,” American Political 138

Science Review, Vol. 80, No. 2 (June 1986), pp. 471-87.

Dennis Chong, Collective Action and the Civil Rights Movement (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 139

esp. chap. 3.

Green and Shapiro, Pathologies of Rational Choice; Jasper, Art of Moral Protest, pp. 23-29; Petersen, 140

Understanding Ethnic Violence, pp. 32-33; and Wood, Insurgent Collective Action, pp. 253-54.

argument, we must clearly limit the selective benefits of collective action to material benefits.

A second answer to the collective action problem is that rational individuals will

participate to avoid social sanctions targeted at nonparticipants. Consequently, it is 141

hypothesized that people are more likely to participate if they expect social sanctions for not

taking part. Overall, the rationalist collective action approach suggests that participants are

distinguished from nonparticipants by their private rewards or punishments.

Finally, research on collective action finds that pre-existing social ties to other

participants are an important predictor of participation. Social ties can increase the likelihood 142

of mobilization by providing information, nurturing an activist identity and solidarity, or giving

social approval and encouragement. Therefore, it is expected that people are more likely to

participate if they have social ties to participants.

!Conclusion

This chapter introduced the concept of contentious ritual and proposed a theory of

individual participation in them. The theory builds off of two important conclusions from the

!118

Michael Taylor, “Rationality and Revolutionary Collective Action,” in Michael Taylor, ed., Rationality and 141

Revolution (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 63-97. See Pamela Oliver, “Rewards and Punishments as Selective Incentives for Collective Action: Theoretical Investigations,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 85, No. 6 (May 1980), esp. pp. 1368-71.

For reviews of this large literature, see James A. Kitts, “Mobilizing in Black Boxes: Social Networks and 142

Participation in Social Movement Organizations,” Mobilization, Vol. 5, No. 2 (October 2000), pp. 241-57; John Krinsky and Nick Crossley, “Social Movements and Social Networks: Introduction,” Social Movement Studies, Vol. 13, No. 1 (2014), pp. 1-21. Some selected research includes, Doug McAdam, “Recruitment to High-Risk Activism: The Case of Freedom Summer,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 92, No. 1 (July 1986), pp. 64-90; Doug McAdam, Freedom Summer (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); Sharon Erickson Nepstad and Christian Smith, “Rethinking Recruitment to High-Risk/High-Cost Activism: The Case of the Nicaragua Exchange,” Mobilization, Vol. 4, No. 1 (April 1999), pp. 25-40; Alan Schussman and Sarah A. Soule, “Process and Protest: Accounting for Individual Protest Participation,” Social Forces Vol. 84, No. 2 (December 2005), pp. 1083-1108; Alexandra Scacco, “Who Riots? Explaining Individual Participation in Ethnic Violence,” Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 2010; the articles in the recent special issue of Social Movement Studies (“Social Networks and Social Movements,” Vol. 13, No. 1 [2014]) introduced by the Krinsky and Crossley essay cited above.

multidisciplinary study of ritual: that rituals provide benefits for participants and that their

meaning is ambiguous. This suggests that participation in contentious rituals is fueled by

process-oriented motives. In addition to this theory of intrinsic motives, I proposed two plausible

alternative explanations for ritual participations premised on different motives. One alternative—

ethnic rivalry—is that people are motivated by ideational or ideological concerns about in-group/

out-group relations. The second alternative—collective action—suggests that people are

motivated by the external outcomes of their behavior.

In the following three chapters, I present evidence from participants and nonparticipants

in loyalist parades in Northern Ireland to assess each argument. Chapters 5 and 6 present

evidence to support the theory of ritual participation. Using primarily semi-structured interviews,

I show that participants understand their action non-instrumentally and are most interested in the

pleasures and meanings inherent in participation itself. I then demonstrate that participants do not

view their actions as political and explore the anti-political rhetoric of participation. In Chapter 7,

I provide evidence from the interviews and a survey of 228 randomly-selected Protestants in

Belfast that the alternative explanations do not help explain who participates or why.

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Chapter Five Parading Mainly for Fun and Process !!

Outside of [parading culture] you look out and you think, this doesn’t make sense… What possible, rational, sensible reason could there be for these people to be in this? Well, the answer lies under rationality. It lies in something else.

— Rich, Presbyterian minister and former Orangeman !! The last chapter proposed an explanation for why people participate in contentious

rituals. This chapter is the first of three that takes an empirical look at the question. In it, I

present interview, survey, and ethnographic data that support my argument of ritual participation.

After a brief discussion of the data and my analytic approach, I show that, as expected by the

argument of the last chapter, participants generally view parades non-instrumentally. I

demonstrate that their primary reasons for action and understanding of their actions and are not

outcome-oriented, but focused on the process of participation itself. Not all reasons to parade,

however, are process-oriented, so in the second part I explore instrumental reasons, such as

sending a message to Catholics. But I show that the appeal of these instrumental reasons are

secondary.

!Data and Methods

The primary data I use in this chapter come from semi-structured interviews I conducted

in Northern Ireland during eight months of fieldwork in 2012 (July-August and November-

December), 2013 (April-August), and 2014 (June). Interview subjects were selected both

purposely and using snowball sampling. In total, I interviewed 82 individuals: 49 current or

former parade participants, and 33 nonparticipants. This chapter focuses on the participant

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interviews. The majority of interviewees lived in greater Belfast, though I also sought the views

of some people from the rest of the province. Reflecting the gender of paraders, the majority of

my interviewees were male. Nearly all interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed in full;

all were analyzed using NVivo, a qualitative data analysis software.

Semi-structured interviews provide two specific advantages for my research. First, the 1

variation in many of the variables I am interested in, such as the meanings and perceived

purposes of parades, is too diverse and/or subtle to measure accurately and reliably with close-

ended survey questions. Using what Michèle Lamont and Ann Swidler call an “open-ended and

pragmatic approach to interviewing,” I am able “to collect data not only, or primarily, about

behavior, but also about representations, classification systems, boundary work, identity,

imagined realities and cultural ideals, as well as emotional states.” The open-ended questions of 2

a semi-structured interview allow me to capture importance nuance in these variables while

remaining focused and ensuring that I ask all the necessary questions. Further, open-ended

questions provide the opportunity to capture the details of the process of mobilization.

Second, the broad questions I ask allow respondents to help direct the course of the

interview toward the topics they find important and meaningful. What they say and the way they

say it can reveal a lot about what is on someone’s mind. Thus, according to Blee and Taylor,

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On the benefits—and limitations—of semi-structured interviews, see Beth L. Leech, ed. “Symposium on Interview 1

Methods in Political Science,” PS: Political Science & Politics, Vol. 23, No. 3 (December 2002), pp. 663-88; Kathleen M. Blee and Verta Taylor, “Semi-Structured Interviewing in Social Movement Research,” in Bert Klandermans and Suzanne Staggenborg, eds., Methods of Social Movement Research (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), pp. 92-117; H. Russell Bernard, Research Methods in Anthropology, 5th ed. (Lanham, MD: AltaMira, 2011); Layna Mosley, ed., Interview Research in Political Science (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013); Michèle Lamont and Ann Swidler, “Methodological Pluralism and the Possibilities and Limits of Interviewing,” Qualitative Sociology, Vol. 37, No. 2 (June 2014), pp. 153-171.

Lamont and Swidler, “Methodological Pluralism,” p. 157.2

allowing participants and nonparticipants to speak for themselves helps us “understand[] social

movement mobilization from the perspective of movement actors or audiences.” They continue 3

by arguing that semi-structured interviews “provide greater breadth and depth of information, the

opportunity to discover the respondent’s experience and interpretation or reality, and access to

people’s ideas, thoughts, and memories in their own words rather than in the words of the

research.” The downside that they note is the “reduced ability to make systematic comparisons

between interview responses,” but analyzing my interviews alongside my other two data sources

helps ameliorate the problem. 4

The second form of data I use in this chapter comes from a randomized household survey

I conducted in Belfast in 2013. I only use this quantitative source sparingly throughout the

chapter and only in the form of univariate statistics. As a result, I will leave a full discussion of

the survey and its sample for Chapter 7, when I rely more heavily on quantitative analyses. For

now it is sufficient to say that 228 randomly-selected people were surveyed in nine Protestant

neighborhoods about their parading behavior and opinions as well as demographic

characteristics. Of the respondents, 28 are current parade participants (12 percent) and 70

participated in some point in their adult life (31 percent).

The third form of data are my fieldnotes from the observation of many parades, protests,

public meetings, marching band practices, and other related events. The fieldnotes were written

as soon after the event as possible from memory with the aid of written jottings, voice

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Blee and Taylor, “Semi-Structured Interviewing in Social Movement Research,” p. 92.3

Ibid., pp. 92-3.4

recordings, and photographs made during the event. Observing the events is an appropriate 5

method because my theory claims the primacy of process benefits, some of which are best

measured as they happen in order to avoid the distorting lens of memory. Through informed and

guided observation, I looked for specific variables that might impact these intrinsic benefits.

Features which I expected to increase the available process benefits include the crowd, social

interactions, symbols, and ceremonies. Therefore, when I attended parades I took particular note

of the size and enthusiasm of the crowd; how paraders interact with supporters, protesters, and

each other; how physical symbols, such as flags and banners, are used; and behavior during

religious and memorial services.

I analyzed the three data sources together and I am more confident in my conclusions

because, in general, all the data point in the same direction. When they do not (for example, in

the discussion of the impact of social pressure on participation in Chapter 7), I present the results

of all the relevant data and carefully explain my interpretation.

In this chapter, in particular, I approach the interview data with care. While collecting the

data and analyzing it, I was fully aware that loyalist parades are a heavily politicized topic in

Northern Ireland and that participants and supporters have good reason to present a particular

side. I thus conducted the interviews and analyzed the transcripts with skepticism, so that

statements that are outside the dominant Protestant narrative are given special value. That said, in

my analysis, I take seriously what people said about how they view the world, their own actions,

and their own motivations. There are problems with this stance for reasons such as imperfect

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See Robert M. Emerson, Rachel I. Fretz, and Linda L. Shaw, Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes (Chicago: 5

University of Chicago Press, 1995).

memory and social desirability bias, but I believe that when analyzed carefully, these data can 6

provide useful information.

Three dynamics can further increase our confidence in the data. One, in the interviews, I

asked about specific, recent events. For example, when asking interviewees to describe parades

and their experience in marching, I always asked them to describe the most recent parade they

walked it. For some, it was as recent as the previous day, but it was never more than several

months. But even when asking about events from years ago, such as their childhood and their

initial mobilization into parading, I, two, focused on specific events, choices, and relationships in

that period. Three, Schlozman, Verba, and Brady note that “there is general agreement that 7

answers about reasons gain significance to the extent that the matters at stake are important

ones.” Parades are generally extremely important to participants and the controversy 8

surrounding parades only increases the importance to them.

!Process-Oriented Reasons for Participating

How do parade participants understand their own actions? Do they think of what they do

as a means toward an end or as an end in and of itself? In this part, I present evidence that

participants primarily understanding parading as non-instrumental action. I show that in

interviews and the survey, participants do not focus on the outcomes of parades—which would

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On the problems with self-reported motivations, see Richard E. Nisbett and Timothy DeCamp Wilson, “Telling 6

More Than We Can Know: Verbal Reports on Mental Processes,” Psychological Review, Vol. 84, No. 3 (May 1977), pp. 231-59.

Ziad W. Munson, The Making of Pro-Life Activists: How Social Movement Mobilization Works (Chicago: 7

University of Chicago Press, 2009), p. 198.

Kay Lehman Schlozman, Sidney Verba, and Henry E. Brady, “Participation's Not a Paradox: The View from 8

American Activists,” British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 25, No. 1 (January 1995), p. 10.

be evidence of instrumental thinking—but on the experience of participation, which suggests the

appeal of process-oriented motives, the core of the ritual approach presented in Chapter 4.

In particular, I find that participants have are six primary “reasons for acting,” the

“values, norms, commitments, emotions, material interests, and aversions” that motivate action. 9

These reasons are expressing their collective identity, commemoration, tradition, defiance, the

pleasures of participation, and external communication. The first five, which are more prevalent

in the data, have the qualities of process-regarding benefits. That is, their benefits are rooted in

the process of participation, not in successfully achieving the goal of the action. The final reason,

sending a message, is more outcome-oriented. The benefits derive from successfully sending a

message to the intended recipient; simply trying is insufficient.

By dividing participants’ reasons for participating into process-regarding and outcome-

regarding, I am not reviving old distinctions between expressive movements and instrumental

movements. Many studies have shown that likely all movements use both instrumental and

expressive action and are oriented both internally and externally. Rather, I am describing the 10

reasons that bring people to participate. In fact, I will argue people can have expressive reasons 11

for participating in collective action with external outcomes.

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Elisabeth Jean Wood, Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador (New York: Cambridge University 9

Press, 2003), p. 231.

For example, James M. Jasper, The Art of Moral Protest: Culture, Biography, and Creativity in Social Movements 10

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997); Mary Bernstein, “Celebration and Suppression: The Strategic Uses of Identity by the Lesbian and Gay Movement,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 103, No. 3 (November 1997), pp. 531-565; and Verta Taylor and Nella Van Dyke, “‘Get up, Stand up’: Tactical Repertoires of Social Movements,” in David A. Snow, Sarah A. Soule, and Hanspeter Kriesi, eds., The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2004), pp. 262-293.

See Bert Klandermans, “Motivation and Types of Motives (Instrumental, Identity, Ideological Motives),” in David 11

A. Snow, Donatella della Porta, Bert Klandermans, and Doug McAdam, eds., The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements (Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013).

The expressive or intrinsic character of participants’ reason is well illustrated by Mark, an

Orangeman from Carrickfergus, just outside of Belfast. At the very beginning of the interview, he

told me that he first paraded at the age of four, when his uncle, “a very strong member of the

Orange Order,” brought him to the Twelfth of the July to hold the strings that hung from the

lodge’s banner. “I just knew this is where I was meant to be,” he recalled. “It was almost as if it

was my whole reason for being, to a certain degree—and that may sound very strange from a

young child.” He has “been a member of the Orange Order ever since.” As Mark grew older and

learned more about what the Orange Order stands for, he saw that it is “exactly what I’m about.

That is who I am.” Speaking rapidly, he continued: “It’s like asking a Jewish person, why do you

go to the synagogue? Asking a Catholic person, why do they go to Mass? Why am I in the

Orange? Because that is exactly what I am and it’s— I don’t do it to offend Catholics, to offend

anybody. I am in the Orange simply because that’s my identity and that’s my belief.” For Mark,

participation is related to his sense of self and part of how he understands his life and his world.

It is a reflection of his deepest held principles and priorities.

Participation, for Mark, is not a means toward an external social or political end. Later on

in the interview, he explained to me his view of what it is that parades celebrate: “It’s about that

we are a distinct cultural group,” he said. “And we’re still here and we still adhere to old-

fashioned British values of honesty and decency.”

“So is that the primary message then?” I asked.

“Eh, the message? I don’t know.” He hesitated before proceeding haltingly: “When I go

out parading do I go out to send a message? Hmm. Maybe it could be viewed upon that I am

sending a message, but probably it’s more of a statement of what I am.” His normal confidence

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was tripped up by my question about parading’s message. Despite just stating a plausible

message, he was unsure how to answer because he does not view his actions in these

instrumental terms. Parades are about his “identity” and are an “outward expression” of his

beliefs, as he put it a moments later. As a result, he generally does not think about them in terms

of their primary message and he did not have a ready answer for the question. His parsing of

“message” further reveals his non-instrumental reasoning. Although “message” and “statement”

are near synonyms, they have different connotations. Sending a message is an attempt to

influence an intended recipient, whereas making a statement does not presume a recipient and

thus does not attempt to influence them. Sending a message, therefore, is more instrumental

while making a statement is more expressive. Mark places parading firmly with the latter.

Intrinsic reasons thus dominate Mark’s thinking about parades, though instrumental

reasons appear as well. For instance, he acknowledged that parades have a political edge because

they are performed by people who support the union of Northern Ireland and Great Britain. “It is

a political statement in that regard,” he stated. “Although, we don’t set out— We simply set out

to celebrate, ‘this is what we are and this is what we stand for.’” The statement broadcast from

parades is not what he sets out to do; it is an unintentional byproduct. Instrumental reasons are

present but they are largely incidental, not a motivating factor.

Mark’s privileging of intrinsic reasons and his ambivalence toward intrinsic reasons is a

pattern found throughout the data. As a first cut, I use a question from the survey—“In your

opinion, what is the purpose of parades?”—to test whether participants are more likely to

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attribute intrinsic, rather than instrumental, purposes to parades. Each response was coded with 12

at least one of ten purposes, with some responses receiving multiple codes, using the definitions

in Table 5.1. The codes were developed inductively to accurately capture the concepts conveyed

by respondents. I then grouped the purposes into two general categories based on their

orientation: Intrinsic and Instrumental. Intrinsic purposes (culture, tradition, celebration,

commemoration, social, and carnival) are achieved simply by doing the act. For example,

successfully continuing a tradition is accomplished by doing the traditional act. Instrumental

purposes (taking a stand, displaying loyalty, promoting, and causing a negative outcome) are

only achieved if they accomplish something external to the act itself. For example, successfully

promoting Protestant culture requires a response from someone else.

Simple two-tailed t-tests show that participants are significantly more likely to mention

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Table 5.1. Types of Purposes Attributed to Loyalist Parades

Intrinsic Purposes

Tradition It is a tradition to parade; to continue that tradition.

Culture It is part of our culture to parade; or, parading maintains our culture.

Celebration To celebrate Protestant culture and people.

Commemoration To commemorate, celebrate, or mark the Protestant past.

Social To bring people together to enjoy each others’ company.

Fun/Carnival To create a fun environment for people to enjoy; also to compete musically.

Instrumental Purposes

To Promote To promote a particular agenda, such as Protestantism or Protestant unity.

Display Loyalty To display loyalty to the Protestant group, Northern Ireland, or the UK.

Take a Stand To show others what one believes in (culture, politics, etc.).

Negative To cause trouble, be provocative or send a message of triumphalism.

For a similar empirical approach, see Abby Peterson, Mattias Wahlström, Magnus Wennerhag, Camilo 12

Christancho, and José-Manuel Sabucedo, “May Day Demonstrations in Five European Countries,” Mobilization, Vol. 17, No. 3 (September 2012), pp. 281-300.

intrinsic purposes than instrumental purposes. The first column in Table 5.2 displays the results

for current participants (92 percent intrinsic vs. 13 percent instrumental; p = 0.00) and the second

column shows the results for respondents who have ever paraded since age 16 (88 percent

intrinsic vs. 14 percent instrumental; p = 0.00). Participants were thus much more likely to state

that the purpose of parading is to “celebrate Protestant culture and tradition” or “to

commemorate the victory of the Battle of the Boyne” than “to make a statement” or “marking

territory.” Interestingly, current paraders are also significantly more likely than nonparticipants to

cite intrinsic purposes (92 percent vs. 73 percent; p = 0.04).

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!Table 5.2. Purposes of Loyalist Parades Reported by Participants: Intrinsic vs. Instrumental (%)

Current Participants Ever Participated

Intrinsic Purpose 92% 88%

Culture 46% 47%

Tradition 38% 34%

Celebration 29% 25%

Commemoration 17% 16%

Social 4% 8%

Fun/Carnival 4% 3%

Instrumental Purpose 13% 14%

Take a Stand 8% 6%

Display Loyalty 4% 2%

To Promote 0% 3%

Negative 0% 2%

Intrinsic-Instrumental Difference 79% 73%

P-Value (Two-Tailed) 0.00*** 0.00***

Observations 24 64

Each response could take multiple codes, so columns do not sum to 100%. *p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001

The semi-structured interviews confirm that participants are far more interested in the

process than the outcome of participation. In analyzing participants’ stated purposes of their

actions, the same two categories emerged: intrinsic and instrumental. But intrinsic, process-

oriented purposes were cited more often and with the more vigor. Participants’ understanding of

parades focus on expressing a collective identity, commemoration, tradition, defiance, and the

social and emotional pleasures of participation. The following sections explore each in turn.

!Expressing Collective Identity

For most, if not all, paraders, the central purpose of a parade is the expression and

celebration of a multifaceted Protestant identity. In interview after interview, participants

described parades as opportunities to articulate “what I am,” to “show your identity,” and to

“express Protestant culture.” Among participants, expressing collective identity is a significant 13

reason for action. By collective identity, I mean: “a shared sense of ‘one-ness’ or ‘we-ness’

anchored in real or imagined shared attributes and experiences among those who comprise the

collectivity and in relation or contrast to one or more actual or imagined sets of ‘others.’” 14

Scholars have found that collective identity is an important cause and consequence of

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Interview with Mark, July 11, 2013; interview with Albert, August 20, 2012; and interview with Rachel, August 8, 13

2013.

David Snow, “Collective Identity and Expressive Forms,” Center for the Study of Democracy Working Paper, 14

University of California, Irvine, 2001, p. 2, available at: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2zn1t7bj. For discussions of the use of the concept in the social movement literature, see Francesca Polletta and James M. Jasper, “Collective Identity and Social Movements,” Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 27 (2001), pp. 283-305; Scott A. Hunt and Robert D. Benford, “Collective Identity, Solidarity, and Commitment,” in Snow, Soule, and Kriesi, eds., The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, pp. 433-457; and Cristina Flesher Fominaya, “Collective Identity in Social Movements: Central Concepts and Debates,” Sociology Compass, Vol. 4, No. 6 (2010), pp. 393-404.

mobilization. 15

In the case of parading, the relevant identities are Protestant, unionist, and/or loyalist and

to a lesser extent an organizational identity of the parading group that one belongs to. George, for

instance, states: “The overarching purpose is to say to the world, ‘Here we are.… Here we are as

members of the Protestant, reformed, evangelical faith. This is our cause and we want the world

to know.’ I think that’s the purpose.” George understands his actions as a declaration of his

religious identity. Parades are a public witness to his membership in a religiously defined group

(and its contrast with Roman Catholicism, evinced in the word “reformed”). As he says later in

the interview, Protestantism as a religion is less about specific teachings or values, but about “the

pride and the understanding of being a member of it.” I pushed him to discuss what religious

teachings were important to him, but by his own admission, he was “stumbling” and “hedging

around the question,” giving little more that the vague statement, “I believe in the teachings of

the Protestant church.” Far clearer was that he is not Catholic: “I would be vehemently against

the teachings of the Roman faith, where they are claiming to bring down God on Mass and his

body and blood are being given in bread and wine. If that’s not an abomination, I don’t know

what is.” Parades are how George articulates his collective identity, allowing him to declare

simultaneous that he is Protestant and he is not Catholic.

Walter also expresses multiple aspects of identity in parades. For him, parades are “about

going out and showing our cultural identity—not through violence, but through music and

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For example, Verta Taylor and Nancy E. Whittier, “Collective Identity in Social Movement Communities: Lesbian 15

Feminist Mobilization,” in Aldon D. Morris and Carol M. Mueller, eds., Frontiers in Social Movement Theory (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 104-129; Bernstein, “Celebration and Suppression”; and Bernd Simon, Michael Loewy, Stefan Stürmer, Ulrike Weber, Peter Freytag, Corinna Habig, Claudia Kampmeier, and Peter Spahlinger, “Collective Identification and Social Movement Participation,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 74, No. 3 (March 1998), pp. 646-58.

through the pageantry of it all. And to show how well and respectful we can be.” Parading is a

way to express his ethnic Protestant collective identity and demonstrate its worthy qualities. In

addition to the broader Protestant identity, Walter has a specific local identity which he also

relishes showing off. “[Our neighborhood] is known throughout the land because of [our band],”

he boasts. “It takes [the neighborhood’s] identity everywhere. It’s [written] on our bass drum.”

Most band members are from the same small, tight-knit interface neighborhood, so the identities

of the band and the community are intertwined. Walter even displays his attachment to his band

on his body, with a tattoo on his leg. Half the band, he estimates, has done the same: “We have

our band tattooed on us,” he says. Local and organizational identities, such as Walter and his

band, reinforce the broader collective identity as they tie individuals to a knowable segment of

the larger identity. Particularly in the case of ethnic movements, the ties to an organization

generate a real tie to the imagined community.

Though expressing a collective identity can be used instrumentally to effect an external

outcome, parade participants, for the most part, do not act with this intention. For example, 16

when I asked Albert what the goal of parading is, he replied: “Just to show your identity. … We

are a parading organization and we parade as and when necessary.” When I asked why, he said,

“That’s the thing to do. You show it to your supporters and if your non-supporters object, it’s up

to them.” Responding to the same question about the purpose or goal of parading, Robert said,

“To show that we are members of the Protestant community.” Neither Albert nor Robert evince

any indication of a goal outside of the parade itself. Their reason for acting is intrinsic of

parading; it is not dependent on achieving a particular result.

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For example, Bernstein, “Celebration and Suppression.”16

Implicit in their comments is an idea that Ben makes explicit: “Identity isn’t a private

thing, it’s a public thing.” He emphasizes the Orange Order’s relationship to Christian 17

evangelism and then continues: “Orangeism isn’t something that we are just going to have in our

wee halls and have our wee meetings and then go home again. Public expression of it is intrinsic

to it, it’s a value of it. It has to be public. It has to be a public manifestation of it.” Parading has

been part of Irish Protestant identity for so long that he cannot imagine the identity without its

public displays.

But participants do not just express their collective identity because they believe the

identity demands it. Expressing a deeply-held identity publicly is a source of process-oriented

benefits that participants seek. As Friedman and McAdam argue, “One of the most powerful

motivators of individual action is the desire to confirm through behavior a cherished identity.” 18

Parading is a way for participants to live their Protestant identity and beliefs. It is a way to

publicly enact deep connections to the broader community. Many of the process-benefits of

expressing collective identity in a parade are emotional, such as the strong feeling of pride. I will

return to these emotional rewards below when I discuss the pleasures of participation.

!Commemoration

A second major purpose for parades cited by participants is commemoration of the

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Compare to Sherry B. Ortner’s (“Theory in Anthropology since the Sixties,” Comparative Studies in Society and 17

History, Vol. 26, No. 1 [January 1984], p. 129) summary of Geertz: “culture is not something locked inside people’s heads, but rather is embodied in public symbols.” See also Ann Swidler, “Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies,” American Sociological Review, Vol. 51, No. 2 (April 1986), pp. 273-286; and Ann Swidler, “Cultural Power and Social Movements,” in Hank Johnston and Bert Klandermans, eds., Social Movements and Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), esp. pp. 26-27.

Debra Friedman and Doug McAdam, “Collective Identity and Activism: Networks, Choices, and 18

the Life of a Social Movement,” in Morris and Mueller, eds., Frontiers in Social Movement Theory, p. 169.

Protestant past, particularly historic battles. Through the parades, participants honor the great

moments in Protestant history and the individuals who gave their lives for the cause. Certain

parades commemorate specific events, the most important being the Twelfth of July, which

commemorates the Battle of the Boyne (1690); but others include the First of July, which

commemorates the Battle of the Somme (1916); and the two main Derry parades, which

commemorate the Siege of Derry (1689). But through repetition, which “automatically implies

continuity with the past,” even non-commemorative parades call the past to mind. For this 19

reason, anthropologist Neil Jarman describes Northern Irish parading as “the performance of

memory.” 20

Commemoration follows a process-oriented logic: the goal of a commemorative act—that

the past be appropriately marked—is inseparable from the means of achieving it. Participants see

no extrinsic purpose in commemoration; they are driven to commemorate by a drive to

commemorate. They do not see their commemorations as a means for an external end. For 21

example, Albert told me that, “The First of July [parade], it commemorates the Battle of the

Somme [and] the 36th (Ulster) Division [in World War I], the Twelfth of July [parade]

commemorates the Battle of the Boyne. They’re all battles we remember.”

“You do that to continue the memory?” I asked, probing his motives.

“Yes, to continue the tradition,” he replied.

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Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 45.19

Neil Jarman, Material Conflicts: Parades and Visual Displays in Northern Ireland (Oxford: Berg, 1997), chap. 1.20

A vast literature from the past several decades has documented beyond question that elites use commemorations 21

for political purposes. See, for example, the seminal collections of essays in John R. Gillis, ed., Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). Far less is known about the perspectives and motivations of the ordinary people who participate in these events.

For Albert, the purpose of marching is to maintain the memory of these great battles and

then men who died in them. He understands his actions as part of a long line of war

commemoration where the goal is wrapped up in the performance of tradition.

Kenny suggests a similar understanding: “You’ve got commemoration parades, like the

Twelfth. That to me is all part of my history. People fought and died for that and I want to be part

of it to keep it going.” His interest is in maintaining the honor of those who gave their lives for

the nation. Thus both Albert and Kenny are motivated to honor the memory of the victories and

sacrifices of Ulster Protestant history. They are driven to preserve the past. Their comments attest

to this intrinsic reasoning: the benefit they receive is the satisfaction of joining with friends “to

continue the tradition” and “keep it going.” The motive and reward cannot be separated from the

act itself.

It is important to note, however, that despite the intentions of most participants, these acts

of remembrance have effects that reverberate across society. Primarily, the commemorated past

is a sectarian, exclusively Protestant past. Catholics are almost always excluded—unless they

appear as the villain. In their commemorations, participants largely remember, celebrate, and

mourn the Protestant dead and those who died for the Protestant nation and the Union. This is

common of national collective memory and commemorations, which seek to produce and

reproduce myths, and therefore solidarity, of the nation. But in Northern Ireland and other plural

societies, “memory tend[s] to divide rather than unite.” Divisive commemorations thus 22

reinforce ethnic boundaries. Nevertheless, effect does not imply intent and across all my varied

sources of data I found no systematic evidence that the mass membership of parading

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John R. Gillis, “Memory and Identity: The History of a Relationship,” in Gillis, ed., Commemorations, p. 7.22

organizations are motivated to perpetuate divisive memory qua divisive. As the participants cited

here attest, most genuinely seek to honor their nation’s dead, not to promote a bifurcated past. 23

!Tradition

As the discussions of expressing collective identity and commemoration hint, participants

are concerned with the role of tradition. They regularly account for both the overall existence of

parades and their own reasons for parading by invoking “tradition.” Table 5.2 quantifies this

pattern, showing that one-third of men who ever participated cite tradition as a purpose of

parades. The survey also shows that 30 percent of men who have ever participated say that

tradition is what attracted them to join their specific lodge or band. In interviews too, tradition is

given as a major reason to participate. While some cite the concept without the term (“It’s what

we do; we’ve done it for years,” says Albert), references to the term and its derivatives are

common in my interviews. Billy, for instance, joined because of “tradition”; Robert began

parading because “it was part of the family tradition”; and Kyle got involved because “that was

just a family tradition.”

But what are we to make of the assertion of “tradition” as an explanation for action? How

should we explain their reasoning? Communication theorist James W. Carey elaborates the

dilemma: “Actions motivated by tradition, values, and affections pretty much escape our

understanding and end up as the human interest exotica that fill the space between the self-

!136

Some even went out of their way to mention their respect for the Catholics of the 16th (Irish) Division of the 23

British army in World War I who died alongside the 36th (Ulster) Division at the Somme in the service of King and Country. “What do you do? Not remember them because they were Catholic?” Kenny asks rhetorically. “They were still soldiers, so that’s the way I look at it.”

interest stories and provide the features for the National Enquirer and Charles Kuralt.” 24

There are two additional problems when trying to understand tradition as a reason for

action. One, participants could be merely mimicking the official language of parading

organizations. That is, interviewees might be giving me “little more than organizational slogans

repeated as personal beliefs.” And “tradition” certainly is an important slogan for parading 25

organizations: Bryan calls it “the dominant discourse used to legitimize the parades.” If this is 26

the case, “tradition” is not a reason so much as a justification, and a memetic one at that.

Building on this is a second problem: participants could be using the language of tradition

to mask their true motives. If true, tradition is not engrained in participants, but cleverly used by

them to deceive observers and interlocutors (American graduate students very much included).

We know from Hobsbawm, Ranger, and their contributors that tradition and traditions are

important ways to confer legitimacy on actions and institutions in the present. They find that in 27

the modern era, traditions are not “genuine,” but “invented” and therefore are not a valid reason

for action. From their perspective (as well as the many who follow them), the invocation of

tradition is a red flag and must be exposed. But this story of elite invention ignores non-elite

!137

James Carey, “The Dark Continent of American Journalism,” in Eve Stryker Munson and Catherine A. Warren, 24

eds., James Carey: A Critical Reader (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), p. 181.

Kathleen Blee, Inside Organized Racism: Women in the Hate Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 25

2002), p. 201.

Dominic Bryan, Orange Parades: The Politics of Ritual, Tradition, and Control (London: Pluto, 2000), esp. pp. 26

155-172. See, for example, Graham G.W. Montgomery and J. Richard Whitten, The Order on Parade (Belfast: Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland Education Committee, 1995), pp. 7-8. Thinking beyond parades, Jarman, Material Conflicts, p. 25, notes, “Tradition is one of the most over-used words in contemporary Northern Ireland.”

Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 27

1983).

participants. The very reason why Hobsbawm and Ranger’s critique is so powerful is that 28

traditions do not appear to be invented to most people most of the time; they appear traditional.

Thus when analyzing the motivations of the men and women who take part in a tradition, the feel

and appeal of tradition can be strong and authentic. We need not be so suspicious and

immediately pounce on the invocation of tradition for fear that it is invented. Rather, we should

investigate what participants mean by it and how it operates.

When participants speak of parading as a tradition there are three layers. From most

narrow to most general, they are parading as a personal tradition, as a family tradition, and as a

communal tradition. Each layer adds depth of meaning to participating in parades by building a

sense of continuing the past. This desire for continuity at each level is a powerful motive for

participation.

As a personal tradition, parading is something that people have done for many years.

Starting to parade at age five or six is not uncommon, and even infants are brought by their

parents to parades. For nearly all paraders, their engagement with parading culture began young.

The survey shows that 99 percent of participants attended parades in their childhood, and 60

percent belonged to the Junior Orange Order or a marching band before they turned 16. As Ben

recalls, “it was always just a part of life. It’s what we did.” In many ways these past experiences

add up cumulatively. Part of what makes current experiences so valuable is that they align with

!138

See a related critique in Ian McBride, “Memory and National Identity in Modern Ireland,” in Ian McBride, ed. 28

History and Memory in Modern Ireland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 9.

years of accumulated memories. These memories accompany participants as they march today. 29

At the family level, parading can link participants to father, grandfathers, and beyond. It

gives participants the ability to take part in an action that was cherished by ancestors. As Joseph

remarks: “when I parade with the very same band that my great-grandfather was in, that my

father paraded in, there is a sense of continuity. There’s a sense of continuing something which is

something to be proud of.” Parading allows Joseph to walk in his ancestors’ footsteps and sustain

something that was dear to them. Billy feels similarly: “Carrying on the tradition is important,”

he explains. “My tradition is going back generations in my family. So I think that it’s important

that I keep that going. I think it’s important that doesn’t fall by the wayside because somebody

couldn’t be bothered to take an interest in it.” A family history of parading also contributes to a

personal history, since it shapes the environment in which one is raised—providing memories of

watching one’s father on parade, for instance. This commitment to family can be an important 30

motive for some. It provides a meaning and a purpose that is filled with love and loyalty.

Finally, at the community level, participating is a way to connect with the broader

collectivity, past, present, and future. Participants recognize parades as “something my

!139

On biographical continuity, see Doug McAdam, “The Biographical Consequences of Activism,” American 29

Sociological Review, Vol. 54, No. 5 (October 1989), pp. 744-760; Silke Roth, “Developing Working-Class Feminism: A Biographical Approach to Social Movement Participation,” Pp. 300–23 in Sheldon Stryker, Timothy J. Owens, and Robert W. White, eds., Self, Identity, and Social Movements (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000); and Robert W. White, “Structural Identity Theory and the Post-Recruitment Activism of Irish Republicans: Persistence, Disengagement, Splits, and Dissidents in Social Movement Organizations,” Social Problems, Vol. 57, No. 3 (August 2010), pp. 341-370.

On family background influencing activism, see Donatella della Porta, “Recruitment Processes in Clandestine 30

Political Organizations: Italian Left-Wing Terrorism,” in Bert Klandermans, Hanspeter Kriesi, and Sidney Tarrow, eds., International Social Movement Research, Vol. 1 (Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1988), p. 158; Hank Johnston, “New Social Movements and Old Regional Nationalisms” in Enrique Laraña, Hank Johnston, and Joseph R. Gusfield, eds. New Social Movements: From Ideology to Identity (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), p. 271; Sidney Verba, Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Henry Brady, Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 437; and White, “Structural Identity Theory and the Post-Recruitment Activism of Irish Republicans,” p. 354.

community has always done” and this leads to reverence and a desire to continue. Thus Craig 31

says, “There’s tradition involved in it… and it’s a way of life,” and Frankie states, “[we’ve] been

doing this for hundreds of years… It’s part of our make-up, it’s part of what we do.” In this way,

the authority of tradition, as Weber argued, is legitimate because its “mores [are] sanctified.” 32

The communal tradition of parading is continued not only because it is old, though this matters

very much. Tradition motivates participation because people have “piety for what actually,

allegedly, or presumably has always existed.” Because it is old and because it is sanctified, 33

parading becomes “an inviolable norm of conduct” in the eyes of participants. 34

The desire to follow tradition at all three levels is a reason for action. Weber suggests as

much by placing traditional action among his four types of meaningful social action (along with

instrumentally rational, value rational, and emotional action). He is, however, “respectful but

hostile” to traditional action and authority, viewing it as non-rational. As Craig Calhoun 35

explains, Weber “opposed traditionalism as mere unconscious reflex or unexamined inheritance

to rationality as conscious and sensible action.” 36

Parade participants seem to share Weber’s separation of instrumental rationality and

!140

Interview with Kyle, June 11, 2014.31

Max Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” in H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, trans. and eds., From Max Weber: Essays 32

in Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), p. 78.

Max Weber, “The Social Psychology of World Religions,” in Gerth and Mills, eds., From Max Weber, p. 296.33

Ibid.34

Arnold M. Eisen, “Constructing the Usable Past: The Idea of Tradition in Twentieth-Century American Judaism,” 35

in Jack Wertheimer, ed., The Uses of Tradition: Jewish Continuity in the Modern Era (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1992), p. 451 n. 7.

Craig Jackson Calhoun, “The Radicalism of Tradition: Community Strength or Venerable Disguise and Borrowed 36

Language?,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 88, No. 5 (1983), p. 895.

tradition, but without the negative judgment of the latter. Indeed, they often treat tradition as a

superior mode of and reason for action. Both Tom and Kyle demonstrate the contrast between

instrumental action and tradition. I asked Tom what the overall goal of parading is and he

replied: “The overall, uh— It’s part of our tradition, it’s part of what we’ve always done, what

we do, who we are.” The question about goals seemed to throw him off and he stumbled for an

answer. His response suggests that he sees no goal outside the action itself. A goal implies an

instrumental orientation, while Tom’s understanding of parades lacks such an orientation.

Parades are a core part of how he understands himself and his place in the world, so thinking

about them in terms of goals is nonsensical.

Kyle’s comment exhibits a similar distinction between tradition and instrumentalism. In

response a question of whether parades send a message, Kyle said, “I wouldn’t say so. I’d say it’s

a celebration of culture, it’s heritage, it’s something we’ve always done.” Sending a message is

instrumentally rational, parading is something else: tradition. For both Tom and Kyle, “tradition”

means action that is not goal oriented. It is action whose rewards are found in the pleasures and

meanings of collective participation in a symbol-laden action that has been passed from

generation to generation.

Yet, as mentioned, tradition carries negative connotations for Weber and many other

social scientists as the forerunner to rational modernity. Weber’s definition of traditional social

action is action “determined by ingrained habituation.” “Strictly traditional behavior,” he

continues, “lies very close to the borderline of what can be called meaningfully oriented action…

!141

it is very often a matter of almost automatic reaction to habitual stimuli.” My interviews 37

demonstrate, however, that paraders do not understand their action as “ingrained habituation,”

but pleasurable action full of meaning, much of which is rooted in the long personal, family, and

communal histories of parade participation.

Interviewees repeatedly emphasize that the choices to begin parading and to remain

active were their own. Frankie, for instance, recalls that though membership in Orange Order

goes back several generations in his family, his father had quit at some point. Joining the

organization was therefore “completely a choice on my part” and not simply continuing down a

path determined by his family. Tom also sees deliberate decisions, not habit, as why he has

remained active for so many decades. “My own choice,” he says, “was to stay in the Order. I

could have left when I [got a new job] and became a Christian, but at each step I made a

conscious decision to stay.” And though these may not be entirely accurate recollections of their

mobilization (Chapter 7, for example, discusses structural factors involved in mobilization that

are ignored in these tellings), they provide a glimpse into how participants understand their

current actions. The element of active and informed decision-making that participants note 38

suggests that they do not perceive parading as a habit. Further evidence comes from the fact that

participants often quit parading or switch organizations for mundane reasons, not the types of

dramatic reasons we might expect are needed to shock people out of a habit.

Thus, tradition as a source of action does not mean habit or something done without

!142

Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich, trans. 37

and eds. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), p. 25. For a discussion of habit in political science, see Ted Hopf, “The Logic of Habit in International Relations,” European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 16, No. 4 (June 2010), pp. 539-61.

Munson, The Making of Pro-Life Activists, p. 198.38

thought. Tradition, contra Marx, does not weigh “like a nightmare on the brain of the living” or 39

compel action by eliminating conscious choice. In some circumstances, to be sure, tradition

constrains behavior; but in others, such as loyalist parading, tradition motivates behavior. By

providing meaning to action, it encourages mobilization. Framing an action as traditional 40

connects participants to their past at the level of biography, genealogy, and community. It gives

them the opportunity to connect with and continue history. Tradition thus motivates by providing

an appealing sense of continuity. Through parading, participants can enter the stream of history

to swim alongside forefathers and fading memories of childhood. These layers of history and the

accompanying feeling of continuity ensure that parading is not merely a habit, but action

“freighted with culture, memory, and experience.” Achieving the experience of living with 41

history and carrying the past into the present is what participants mean when they say they

parade because of tradition.

!Defiance

Parading provides the opportunity for some participants to express defiance and moral

outrage towards the perceived multifaceted attacks on their way of life by republicanism. 42

!143

Karl Marx, “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon,” in Robert C. Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader 39

(New York: Norton, 1978), p. 437.

See also Blee, Inside Organized Racism, p. 169; and Calhoun, “The Radicalism of Tradition.” As Jarman, 40

Material Conflicts, p. 10, writes about loyalist parades: “The apparent historical continuity of ritual is an important feature of its power, the unchanging form is itself a major attraction, to join in and carry on a tradition, to follow in one’s father’s footsteps, or to wear ‘the sash my father wore.’” See also his discussion in pp. 25-28.

Courtney Bender, Heaven’s Kitchen: Living Religion at God’s Love We Deliver (Chicago: University of Chicago 41

Press, 2003), p. 51.

As Joep Leerssen, “Monument and Trauma: Varieties of Remembrance,” in Ian McBride, ed., History and 42

Memory in Modern Ireland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 215, notes, “Even in Orange marches, the brash assertiveness is an act of defensive defiance rather than mere proclamations of supremacy.”

Unlike other oppositional messages that I will discuss below, defiance has the characteristics of

process-oriented action. Defiance is “a refusal to acquiesce,” writes Wood. “Its value [is] not

contingent on success or even on one’s contributing to the likelihood of success.” Its value, 43

rather, is in the act of expression.

Since the end of unionist hegemony in 1972, and especially since the peace process of the

mid-1990s, many Protestants have felt humiliated by and resentful of the changes in Northern

Irish society. According to Smithey, they “have tended to frame their experience of change… in 44

terms of loss or the perpetual potential for loss.” The transition from ethnic dominance to a 45

more level playing field is bound to cause pain in the formerly dominant community, but to make

matters worse in the eyes of many Protestants, many of the Catholic politicians now in power

were IRA combatants not long ago. It is an attack on their moral vision and their fundamental

sense of right and wrong. “Just seeing terrorists sitting in government and now ruling over this

country—that to me was I think shocking, to be quite honest,” says Ian, a parade supporter. As

Mark puts it: “Would David Cameron [or] Barack Obama bring… Osama bin Laden in? Give

him a place in government? Because that’s what we are expected to do here.” Just having to

accept this situation is unbearable enough, but the politicians “who had murdered and maimed

and destroyed this country” are also trying to stop parades that they find offensive. For many, if 46

!144

Wood, Insurgent Collective Action, p. 233. Also Jasper, The Art of Moral Protest, pp. 37-8.43

Roger D. Petersen, Understanding Ethnic Violence: Fear, Hatred, and Resentment in Twentieth-Century Eastern 44

Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), esp. pp. 40-61, argues that resentment is the natural emotional response to a reordered ethnic status hierarchy.



Interview with George, August 14, 2012.46

not all, participants, the irony is sickening. “Why can a convicted bomber tell me that I can’t

walk down the road because I’ve got a flute?” Mikey asks with indignation in his voice.

Parades, therefore, are a way to take a stand, voice their disgust, and defy those who want

to stop them. George, for instance, says: “Now I don’t mean that to be antagonistic, but [my

intention is] to say, ‘We’ve always been here and we’re not going away.’” The result of George’s

statement may well antagonizing Catholics, but his motive does not depend on that occurring.

His reason for participating is the “inner moral obligation” to vent his opposition against the

moral outrages he sees in his society. 47

Defiance, then, is a noninstrumental reason to participate. The reward is in the process,

not the outcome of the action. At a large parade I attended with Sammy, he repeatedly pointed

out bands to tell me that the town or village they are from used to have a Protestant majority, but

now only a few are left. Yet, he would proudly say, they still have a marching band. Why? The

band does not defend the Protestant community against the violence of the republican

paramilitaries, nor is it designed to counteract demographic changes. The Protestant minority still

supports a band out of defiance to what he views as the ethnic cleansing of those towns.

!The Pleasures of Participation

More generally, discussions about parades and what they mean to participants center on

the pleasures of participation. Most participants I interviewed happily talked on and on about

how much they loved to parade. Their enthusiasm was palpable. The pleasures they discussed

were varied, but they emerge from the very act of parading, not the consequences. They take the

!145

Bert Klandermans, “Motivations to Action,” in Donatella Della Porta and Mario Diani, eds., The Oxford 47

Handbook of Social Movements (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).

form of process-oriented benefits. The two most prominent sources of such benefits are the other

people who participate and the emotions experienced while parading.

The social benefits of parading come from the opportunity to spend meaningful time with

dear friends and articulate shared values together. For instance, what made Michael’s most 48

recent parade “fantastic” was “just being part [of it] and just spending the day with people of

like-minded views and showing your cultural identity. It makes me very proud. It excites me.”

He enjoys the company of his friends and acquaintances and the connection he feels with them.

But being with so many other Protestants also concretizes his collective identity and makes him

feel part of something bigger. As Sewell notes, “Big demonstrations or mass meetings not only

persuade the political authorities that the insurgents are, in Tilly’s words, ‘Worthy, United,

Numerous, and Committed,’ but also help persuade the insurgents of the same things.” Being 49

part of such a large, collective event, where the people feel bound together by ideology, faith,

and tradition, is exhilarating for Michael.

Rich also expresses positive experience of togetherness. “When you’re walking up the

street in an Orange parade,” Rich reminisces, “… waving at people you know and being part of

something, there’s a sense of belonging and being owned and owning something. It’s so hard to

!146

James M. Jasper, “The Emotions of Protest: Affective and Reactive Emotions In and Around Social Movements,” 48

Sociological Forum, Vol. 13, No. 3 (1998), p. 418.

William H. Sewell, “Space in Contentious Politics,” in Ronald R. Aminzade, Jack A. Goldstone, Doug McAdam, 49

Elizabeth J. Perry, William H. Sewell, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly, eds., Silence and Voice in the Study of Contentious Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 58. He is quoting Charles Tilly, “Social Movements and (All Sorts of) Other Political Interactions—Local, National, and International—Including Identities,” Theory and Society, Vol. 27, No. 4, (August 1998), pp. 453-480, but Tilly used the WUNC concept in a number of his works.

define.… It’s an undefinable quality of belonging.” This feeling of collective belonging is “part 50

of why it’s so hard to leave” a parading organization, yet Rich did just that. He quit the Orange

Order fourteen years earlier, after the signing of the Agreement, because he disagreed with the

confrontational and sectarian stances taken by the Order during the peace process and Drumcree

crises of the mid-1990s. Rich remains critical of parades and parading organizations—but the

power of the experience is still unmistakable to him. Years later, the powerful social benefits that

come from taking part in a parade continue to resonate with him. “Once you’re in it, you feel it,”

he tells me.

As the interviewees’ discussions of the social experience of participation suggest, a

significant part of that experience is emotional. Indeed, many of the social pleasures are rooted 51

in the “reciprocal emotions” of activism, “the emotions generated in a social movement… [that]

concern participants’ ongoing feeling toward each other. These are the close, affective ties of

friendship, love, solidarity, and loyalty, and the more specific emotions they give rise to.” 52

In addition to the affective ties between paraders, acting collectively to express deeply

held beliefs produces an emotional experience. Even collective identity itself, as Jasper argues,

“is an emotion, a positive affect toward other group members on the grounds of that common

!147

Psychology research shows that humans have a deep psychological need to belong to groups. See Roy F. 50

Baumeister and Mark R. Leary, “The Need to Belong: Desire for Interpersonal Attachments as a Fundamental Human Motivation,” Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 117, No. 3 (1995), pp. 497-529.

On the role of emotions in activism and conflict, see Jasper, “The Emotions of Protest”; Jeff Goodwin, James M. 51

Jasper, and Francesca Polletta, eds., Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001); Petersen, Understanding Ethnic Violence; Helena Flam and Debra King, eds., Emotions and Social Movements (London: Routledge, 2005); Deborah B. Gould, Moving Politics: Emotion and ACT UP’s Fight against AIDS (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009); James M. Jasper, “Emotions and Social Movements: Twenty Years of Theory and Research,” Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 37 (2011), pp. 285-303; and Wendy Pearlman, “Emotions and the Microfoundations of the Arab Uprisings,” Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 11, No. 2 (June 2013), pp. 387-409.

Jasper, “The Emotions of Protest,” p. 417.52

membership.” This affect manifests in multiple ways and can encourage both mobilization and 53

commitment. Walter, for instance, illustrates the role of reciprocal emotions in maintaining

commitment and persistence. “The band has been my main love all the years,” he says. It is “an

extended family” to whom he is loyal. As a result, “It’s not only something that you do for a year

or two years. It’s something that’ll stay with you all your life.” For Walter, this has meant thirty

years of participation.

Of all the emotions experienced by participants, pride is among the most common and

reports of it abound in the interviews. Pride, along with its opposite emotion, shame, are strong 54

motives for human action. Thomas Scheff calls it a “master emotion,” noting that pride 55

“generates and signals a secure bond” between individuals and between groups. I found three 56

primary sources of pride among paraders. First, participants are proud of their cultural heritage

and of displaying it to others. They take pride in the opportunity to collectively show their

culture to others—both in-group members and members of out-groups. Walter explains:

I love to get out there and show people what I can do and how proudly I can do it; how well I look and how well I sound when I do. It’s a pride thing, probably, for me. And it’s an identity thing, showing my identity as a loyalist to everyone—and I’m not just showing it to loyalist people, I’m showing it to nationalist people. I’m showing it to people who really don’t care. !

Showing off who he is as an individual and as a group and how well he performs fills Walter

with pride. This “pride thing” is a significant source of participants’ desire to express their

!148

Ibid., p. 415.53

This is not surprising, for as Jasper (Ibid., p. 418) writes: “articulating one’s moral principles is always a source of 54

joy, pride, and fulfillment.”

Thomas J. Scheff, Bloody Revenge: Emotions, Nationalism, and War (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1994).55

Ibid., p. 3.56

collective identity discussed above. It is an emotional aspect of publicly identifying with a

cherished identity and community.

Second, participants are proud of the recognition they get for their actions. As Tom

describes, “There’s a pride involved in marching. There’s a pride in the crowd cheering and

clapping. There’s that pride walking around.” A positive reception such as cheering is a typical

source of pride, which “we feel… with achievement, success, and acceptance.” Walter explains 57

the pride he feels when attracting the attention of tourists:

We get Japanese people or American people or people from all over the world coming over and asking, ‘Can I have [my] photo taken with you?’ So you’re doing something [or else] why would they want their photo taken with you? … They want their picture taken with somebody who looks well… I mean you’re standing and you’re smart, your uniform’s clean, your boots are shining. !

All the positive attention stands in contrast to day-to-day life, when he knows that no one is

going to approach him to snap a photo. The positive recognition he gets from visitors makes him

proud and confirms his sense that he is doing something worthwhile.

In addition to the anonymous cheers from the crowd or recognition from tourists, pride is

enhanced by personal connections between participants and audience members. Along the parade

route, participants greet and are greeted by friends, family, co-workers, and acquaintances. “It’s

fairly proud and enthralling moment,” says George, “because you can’t walk down the street

without someone shouting out at you who knows you.” Participants smile and their faces light up

as they shout hello, wave, nod, point, and occasionally jump out of the parade for a handshake or

!149

Ibid., p. 39.57

hug. After months of fieldwork, paraders I got to know would even wave to me on occasion. 58

These exchanges between participants and supporters illustrate the connections between the

social and emotional elements of parading. They show that many of the emotions are generated

in interaction with other participants and with the audience.

Third, participants are proud of their dignified self-presentation. Parades are an

opportunity to dress up in dark suits and collarettes for loyal order members and colorful,

elaborate, often military-style, uniforms for band members. “We go out and we’re all in nice

suits and nice collarettes—a lot of money spent—and you’re going out and you’re proud… and

your friends and family are proud to see you,” states Mikey, further touching on the social and

interactive roots of emotions. Billy hones in on the role of fine and ceremonial clothing:

I enjoy the parades. The Twelfth of July, you feel proud. You like to wake up on the Twelfth morning and you get your best suit on, and get your best clothes on. You get your bowler hat out. You get your coat and hat out. You get your white gloves out. You get your cuffs out. You go on parade. You turn out your best to do the organization proud. And it’s just a feeling of [being] so proud of the tradition, the culture… And the history of the village, keep the history going. !

Looking sharp, respectable, and dignified on parade fills Billy, a truck driver by

profession, with pride. Moreover, wearing clothing with a history connects him to that history. 59

The pride in wearing a bowler hat and white gloves comes not from being hip to the latest

fashions, but in dressing in a manner that consciously invokes the past. As Hobsbawm remarks, 60

!150

In fact, many interviewees mentioned that since audience members tend to stand in the same place year after year, 58

they expect to see certain friends and family at specific locations along the parade route. Iddo Tavory, “The Private Life of Public Ritual: Interaction, Sociality and Codification in a Jewish Orthodox Congregation,” Qualitative Sociology, Vol. 36, No. 2 (June 2013), pp. 127, 126, argues that these “predictable forms of interaction” are a common feature of “public worship and ritual.”

Bryan, Orange Parades, discusses the role of respectability in parading.59

See Connerton, How Societies Remember, pp. 45, 48, on how commemorative rituals deliberately refer to the past.60

“The wigs of lawyers could hardly acquire their modern significance until other people stopped

wearing wigs.” The same is true for the Orangeman’s démodé dress. Its current significance 61

lies in its obsolescence. Thus, dressing and acting in an explicit and expressive manner produces

pride. As Michael summarizes, “It’s always a proud moment to be on parade.”

The pride, excitement, and other positive, satisfying emotions are energizing and

encourage sustained participation. Craig describes the energizing aspect of parades: 62

It’s not routine to me. It’s a totally refreshing day. It’s one of those days when after you’ve walked twenty-two miles, you finish up with a load of energy. You’re on a high, so you are. And it’s thoroughly enjoyed, thoroughly enjoyed. If I was to walk five miles there today, I’d have sore feet and blisters. There’s something magical about being in the band and playing your flute. I never have a blister. !

Craig ends the day refreshed and full of energy despite being on his feet for many hours

and miles. And though he might exaggerate the ability of parades to prevent blisters, he certainly

conveys his sentiment. The face-to-face interactions, large cheering crowds, music, and feeling

of taking part in something important all contribute to the visceral excitement that Durkheim

calls “collective effervescence” and Randall Collins identifies as “emotional energy.” Durkheim

noticed the energizing features of collective gatherings, arguing that all groups need to convene

occasionally so that members may “renew their common faith by making a public demonstration

of it together.” Face-to-face conventions have this effect, he holds, because “in the midst of an

!151

Eric Hobsbawm, “Inventing Traditions,” in Hobsbawm and Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition, p. 4.61

Many scholars of collective action have argued the rituals and the emotions generated by them are a central 62

method for maintaining the enthusiasm and commitment of participants. The case of loyalist parading, however, shows that disengagement rates can still be high even when the organization’s primary form of mobilization is an emotionally rich collective ritual. For example, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Commitment and Community: Communes and Utopias in Sociological Perspective (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972); Jasper, The Art of Moral Protest, esp. chap. 8; Jasper, “The Emotions of Protest,” p. 418; Sharon Erickson Nepstad, “Persistent Resistance: Commitment and Community in the Plowshares Movement,” Social Problems, Vol. 51, No. 1 (February 2004), pp.52-54.

assembly that becomes worked up, we become capable of feelings and conduct of which we are

incapable when left to our individual resources.” This certainly seems the case in parades. 63

Building on Durkheim and others, Collins argues that emotional energy is the outcome of

any successful interaction ritual. Emotional energy, Collins argues, “makes the individual feel

not only good, but exalted, with the sense of doing what is most important and most valuable....

[It] has a powerful motivating effect upon the individual; whoever has experienced this kind of

moment wants to repeat it.” 64

The energy of parades is enhanced by the music that thunders through them. The music

played by loyalist marching bands tends to have a military rhythm that is designed to march to. 65

The beat sets a pace for the marchers and reverberates across the city, town, or village. Both

marching together and music, Jasper argues, “have unusual capacities to make people melt into a

group in feelings of satisfaction, perhaps because so many parts of the brain and body are

involved at once.” Walter and Rachel illustrate this idea well. Walter explains that “if your 66

band’s playing well and you bass drums sound loud, the hair on the back of your neck actually

lifts!” Rachel narrates the experience of a “blow out,” when two bands march past each other and

!152

Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, trans. Karen E. Fields (New York: Free Press, 1995), 63

pp. 211-212.

Randall Collins, Interaction Ritual Chains (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), pp. 38-39.64

For analyses of the musical elements of parading, see Gordon Ramsey, Music, Emotion and Identity in Ulster 65

Marching Bands: Flutes, Drums and Loyal Sons (Bern: Peter Lang, 2011); Gordon Ramsey, “Band Practice: Class, Taste and Identity in Ulster Loyalist Flute Bands,” Ethnomusicology Ireland, Vol. 1, No. 1 (February 2011), 1-20; Ray Casserly, “Blood, Thunder, and Drums: Style and Changing Aesthetics of Drumming in Northern Ireland Protestant Bands,” Yearbook for Traditional Music, Vol. 45 (2013), pp. 142-63; and Ray Casserly, “Parading Music and Memory in Northern Ireland,” Música e Cultura, Vol. 9 (2014). On music and movements in general, see, for example, Ron Eyerman and Andrew Jamison, Music and Social Movements: Mobilizing Traditions in the Twentieth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998); and William G. Roy, “How Social Movements Do Culture,” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, Vol. 23, Nos. 2-3 (September 2010), pp. 85-98.

Jasper, “Emotions and Social Movements,” p. 294.66

play as loud and hard as they can. “It’s the height of being out with the band,” she says. “The

adrenaline rush that comes through you when two competing bands playing opposite tunes just

start passing each other and blasting it out and the bass drummer is going absolutely mental

playing the tune. Yeah, your adrenaline goes up.” In both these cases, the intensity of the musical

experience generates a physical reaction among participants, demonstrating the mental and

bodily aspects of parading to music. 67

These positive emotions and energy of parading also explain why Craig feels that

something so often repeated is “not routine.” Conventional outcome-oriented approaches to

participation find rituals difficult to explain because they expect that people would get bored or

tired of repeating the same action, especially when there is no external goal or material

rewards. They predict that repeated action would feel “routine” because the sole benefit is 68

received upon its successful completion. But as Craig mentions, it does not feel this way. That is

because the allure of parading and other rituals is in the action itself. The appeal is the

experience: the pride, excitement, and energy; the quality time with respected friends and

comrades; forging a tangible connection to the past. These are what encourage mobilization and

sustained activism in a collective ritual. 69

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It is in this context that we should understand Gordon Ramsey’s remark that “It is only in the context of parading 67

to music that loyalism exists as a mass-movement, united in common practice, for in all other practical contexts, political, religious or cultural, loyalists are fragmented and often mutually opposed.” Ramsey, Music, Emotion and Identity in Ulster Marching Bands, p. 147. Original emphasis.

Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), p. 41, remarks that in 68

“contentious claim-making… perfect repetition from one performance to the next breeds boredom and indifference on the part of claimants and objects alike.”

This effect is also seen in William McNeil’s well-known recollection of aimless marching during basic training in 69

the US Army during World War II. Though marching around in the blistering Texas sun seemed pointless at the time, decades later his main memory is that he “rather liked strutting around… Words are inadequate to describe the emotion aroused by the prolonged movement in unison that drilling involved.” William H. McNeill, Keeping Together in Time: Dance and Drill in Human History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), pp. 1-2.

The sense of pride and energy, attained in the company of friends and family, is a prime

experience of participation. My findings resonate with Gordon Ramsey’s ethnographic

conclusion that marching in loyalist bands is motivated in large part by the “emotional rewards

of participation.” More generally, they match what Wood calls “emotional in-process benefits,” 70

the “emotion-laden consequences of action experienced only by those participating in that

action.” Feelings like this make it unsurprising that, despite the lack of personal or collective 71

material gains that I will demonstrate in Chapter 7, participants choose to return time after time.

Overall, the interviews demonstrate that parading is itself a benefit for participants. They

look forward to parades, talk about them with their friends, and many, if not most, come to

structure their lives around them. Some participants even told me about missing family functions

and damaging relationships in order to march in parades. Yet they certainly do not view parading

as a cost—on the contrary, as I will show in Chapter 7, they actually pay for the privilege to

parade their identity with pride and moral vision alongside dear friends and companions. The

paraders I spoke with would reject Olson’s framework out of hand; rather, I believe, they would

embrace Hirschman’s view that free-riders “cheat themselves first of all.” As Billy says of 72

friends who do not parade, “That’s their loss… You know, they’re missing out.”

* * *

As I mentioned throughout my discussion of collective identity expression,

commemoration, tradition, defiance, and the pleasures of participation, they all share a particular

!154

Ramsey, Music, Emotion and Identity in Ulster Marching Bands, p. 223.70

Elisabeth Jean Wood, “The Emotional Benefits of Insurgency in El Salvador,” Goodwin, Jasper, and Polletta, eds., 71

Passionate Politics, p. 268.

Albert O. Hirschman, Shifting Involvements: Private Interest and Public Action (Princeton: Princeton University 72

Press, 1982), p. 87. The original is italicized.

form. These reasons for parading are intrinsic to marching in the parades. One, they are selective

benefits available exclusively to participants. Two, they are rooted in the experience of

participation, not the consequences of the parade. Their source is in the sights and sounds, the

thoughts and feelings, the memories and people, not the social, political, or economic results, be

they personal or collective, of the parade. As Jack, a Methodist minister who was in a band as a

young man but quit parading years ago, reflects, “It’s not simply a parade. There’s a multiplicity

of issues: … identity, religion, self-worth, self-esteem, nostalgia, family members… there’s so

many competing emotions spilling into what looks like a normal day out… music, crowds, the

ritual, symbolism, memory, past, pain.” All of these elements, and more, join together to generate

the thrilling and meaningful experience of marching down a road to the sound of flutes and

drums in Northern Ireland.

!Instrumental Reasons for Participating

Parade participants collectively and individually bring a variety of reasons and

motivations with them. While the preponderance of the survey, interview, and ethnographic 73

evidence I collected about participants’ thinking is best understood as process-oriented or

intrinsic, some outcome-oriented or instrumental reasons exist as well. This is not problem for

my argument. Following much of the literature, I have tended to describe rituals as action

primarily done “for its own sake.” But rituals are also used as a means toward an end: to bring 74

!155

“The simple realization that human motivation is sufficiently complex and is likely to run on more than one 73

motivational ‘fuel’ is sufficiently close to a truism for the statement itself to be trivial,” notes Alexander A. Schuessler, A Logic of Expressive Choice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 28. Yet much contemporary social science operates without such realization.

Frits Staal, “The Meaninglessness of Ritual,” Numen, Vol. 26, No. 1 (1979), p. 9. 74

rain or a good harvest, to increase fertility, to heal the sick. This is the side of ritual that Mary

Douglas calls “instrumental efficacy.” Thus, a focus on the ritual elements of human behavior 75

does not preclude outcome-oriented motivations. Likewise, scholars of social movements now

generally recognize that the old distinction between instrumental movements and expressive

movements is unhelpful. Most movements are now thought to have instrumental and expressive

aspects. Moreover, my claim that the ritual nature of loyalist parades provide the primary 76

reasons for participation remains strong. The instrumental reasons I will now introduce are at the

margins, rather than center, of the average participant’s thinking.

The central outcomes sought by participants in parades are internal and external

communication—that is, sending a message to the Protestant in-group and Catholic out-group. 77

Many scholars theorize ritual as a communicative device. Tambiah, for instance, defines ritual as

“a culturally constructed system of symbolic communication.” And Douglas claims that 78

“[r]itual is pre-eminently a form of communication.” But ritual is an imprecise form of 79

communication. The ambiguity inherent in the meaning of symbols and rituals leaves room for

Protestant and Catholic audiences to receive a different message from the same parade. In the

!156

Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge, 75

1996), p. 69.

For example, Bernstein, “Celebration and Suppression”; and Taylor and Van Dyke, “‘Get up, Stand up.’”76

Parades have also been interpreted as sending messages to other paraders, the British government, and unionist 77

political parties and elites, but I rarely, if ever, heard these targets discussed by participants. See Jarman, Material Conflicts; Bryan, Orange Parades; and Lee A. Smithey and Michael P. Young, “Parading Protest: Orange Parades in Northern Ireland and Temperance Parades in Antebellum America,” Social Movement Studies, Vol. 9, No. 4 (November 2010), p. 402.

Stanley J. Tambiah, Culture, Thought, and Social Action: An Anthropological Perspective (Cambridge: Harvard 78


Mary Douglas, Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology (London: Routledge, 1970), p. 20.79

coming paragraphs, I examine what these competing messages are.

!Unifying Protestants

For members of the Protestant in-group, the primary message is unity and solidarity. The

intended effect, then, is social cohesion and communal strength. By gathering large crowds and 80

icons of the community, parades not only represent Protestant unity, but cause it as well. Irish

Protestants have long understood communal unity as essential for their strength and survival on

an island where they are a minority. But unity has also long been seen as elusive for a group

divided by religious denomination, class, and political allegiances. Parades have often been 81

seen as a source of and forum for Protestant unity. 82

Interviewees share this diagnosis and solution. For example, Robert believes that parades

help create cross-denomination and cross-class unity among Protestants by “bring[ing] a lot of

people… together” and, crucially, by “show[ing] that we’re together.” By assembling so many

people from across the religious and socioeconomic spectrums—“a lot of clergy from different

denominations… [and] people from the humblest person, a bus driver, a member of the Loyalists

[paramilitaries] to a doctor and professors… a high court judge… and a lot of our MLAs and

!157

Internally-directed messages have often been criticized as merely expressive outbursts of social movements, but 80

as a number of scholars have pointed out, they can lead to highly instrumental outcomes, such as solidarity and renewed commitment. For example, Jasper, The Art of Moral Protest; Bernstein, “Celebration and Suppression”; and Casquete, “The Power of Demonstrations.”

Smithey, Unionists, Loyalists, and Conflict Transformation, pp. 208-210. On the Northern Irish state’s strategies 81

for maintaining cross-class Protestant unity, see Mark McGovern and Peter Shirlow, “Counter-Insurgency, Deindustrialisation and the Political Economy of Ulster Loyalism,” in Peter Shirlow and Mark McGovern, eds., Who Are ‘The People?’: Unionism, Protestantism and Loyalism in Late Twentieth Century Ireland (London: Pluto, 1997), pp. 176-198.

Bryan, Orange Parades; and Paul Arthur, Government and Politics of Northern Ireland, 2nd ed. (London: 82

Longman, 1984), p. 40.

politicians”—parades create a sense of community that might otherwise be lacking among

Protestants. But speaking with Robert, I never felt that seeking this unity was a priority or that he

would stop if parading failed to achieve Protestant solidarity. Rather, for Robert and others with

whom I spoke, constructing Protestant solidarity is a byproduct of participation—albeit a valued

and desired byproduct—not a motive. The production of social cohesion may be a primary social

function of parades and other mass rituals, but that does not imply that the individual actors are

motivated to achieve the function. 83

!Opposing Irish Nationalism

For members of the Catholic out-group, the primary message is one of opposition.

Parades are a way that participants express opposition to a united Ireland, republican violence,

and losses in power and prestige that resulted from the peace process. One manifestation of this

opposition is the defiance discussed above with the other process-oriented reasons. The

opposition discussed here, in contrast, is outcome-oriented and aimed externally. Unlike

defiance, this opposition supposes an out-group audience to receive the message.

Isaac puts opposition squarely as his motivation to mobilize into a parading organization,

recalling that “the impetus to join was probably political.” It was the early 1970s, the height of

violence, and he did two things “as a way of saying, look, I’m British”: he joined the Orange

Order and he joined the part-time police force. For Isaac, using force and the law and using

symbols and rituals are related, even linked, ways of opposing republicanism.

But Isaac is the exception, not the rule. For the majority of participants that I interviewed,

!158

Jon Elster, “Marxism, Functionalism, and Game Theory: The Case for Methodological Individualism,” Theory 83

and Society, Vol. 11, No. 4 (July 1982), pp. 453-82.

sending a message of opposition is either a minor reason to act or an unintended consequence of

participation. George, for instance, articulates one of the most hardline oppositional stances of

any of the interviewees. He absolutely intends for his parading to send the message that he

wholeheartedly opposes Irish nationalism and its goals. But this developed out of his

participation and was not an original reason to join nor a major reason to continue. He got 84

involved because all his friends from the army were members and they asked him to join them.

The social element, not communicative role of parading, was his primary reason to act.

Importantly, the oppositional message, though read as aggressive by Catholics and other

outsiders, is generally intended by participants as defensive. This defensive message is

encapsulated in a phrase repeated by a number of interviewees: “We’re still here.” Mark explains

that after the decades of “attacks that have been placed on our community,” parades say, “We’re

still here, we’re still living, we’re still breathing.” Joseph elaborates: “‘We’re here, we exist…’

Not necessarily meant to be threatening or intimidating anybody, but ‘we exist’—it’s a simple

message, ‘we exist.’ We see ourselves at the heart of our community and heart of the town, heart

of the village and we don’t want to be marginalized and excluded.… Certainly there’s been a lot

of times in the past where I have paraded… just to say, ‘listen, we’re here, we’re not going to

threaten you, but we’re here, we exist.’” Joseph’s message of “we don’t want to be marginalized

and excluded” is not the message of a community that feels in command, but one that feels under

siege.

Ben expands on this sentiment. The message of parades, Ben states, are “that we exist.

We are a community, we exist, and we have things to celebrate and remember.” But, he believes,

!159

See Munson, The Making of Pro-Life Activists.84

that is not how Catholics view them:

You see, the thing is they are trapped in a mindset [that Protestants are politically dominant]. What have I got to be dominant about? I was born in 1973, a year after Stormont fell. … Unionists have not run Northern Ireland since 1972. What have I got to celebrate? Martin McGuinness [of Sinn Féin] should have been hung for treason against the British state for organizing and developing an attempt to overthrow the power of the United Kingdom… That hasn’t happened. He is now sitting in government as the deputy First Minister in the government of Northern Ireland. He helped murder dozens of people. He’s never been made amenable to justice. What have I got to be dominant about? But I’m still somehow sending this superior message that I’m better than them! !Ben is exasperated and honestly baffled. Through his eyes, the past decades have been

patently awful for Protestants, and he cannot understand how anyone could see otherwise. So as

he sees it, paraders are being accused of triumphalism that they do not, even cannot, actually

feel.

Some paraders, such as Isaac and Joseph, clearly participate in order to send an defensive

message to Catholics. For them, parading, at least some of the time, is an instrumental means

toward an external end. But no participant acts solely to send a message; they all also share the

expressive, process-oriented motives held by others. Conversely, not all paraders act in order to

send a message to Catholics. Several interviewees do not believe that their actions even send a

message. We see saw this above in Mark’s hesitation when asked about parades’ message and the

distinction he drew between sending a message and making a statement. We see it again in

Steven’s comment about parade terminology. The Orange Order often refers to its Twelfth

parades as demonstrations, because they march to a “demonstration field” where there are

speeches and benedictions. But Steven is not comfortable with this term. “I hate the word 85

!160

See, for example, Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland, “Twelfth 2014,” available at: http://85

www.grandorangelodge.co.uk/twelfth14.aspx. Accessed February 21, 2015.

‘demonstration’ being used,” he says. “To me it should be ‘celebration,’ as opposed to

‘demonstration.’ We’re not demonstrating anything, we’re celebrating our culture and heritage.”

The word demonstration, to Steven, connotes protest or deliberately sending a political message.

He therefore sees it as an inappropriate description of parades. The celebration of culture is not a

demonstration to Catholics or anyone else.

!Intimidation and Provocation

So far, I have argued that the meaning paraders broadcast is either defensive or process-

oriented. What about the reasons for participation that are both aggressive and instrumental,

intimidation and provocation? These are the reasons for participation most often attributed to

paraders by outsiders. Intimidation is intended as a cheap way to gain compliance from a

population by scaring people into submission. It is a way to maintain ethnic dominance.

Provocation is intended to elicit a reaction (and preferably an overreaction) from the out-group in

order to influence the in-group. It is a way to mobilize the in-group, reinforce an ethnic

boundary, or sideline in-group moderates or dissenters.

Participants never so much as hint that their intention is to intimidate or provoke

Catholics. On the contrary, they vigorously distance themselves from the divisive consequences 86

of parades. In interview after interview, paraders emphasized that their actions are not intended

to offend or antagonize anyone. Isaac, for example, told me earnestly, “I don’t think we’re 87

going out to make an offensive statement. Certainly, anything that ever I have been personally

!161

Table A2 in the Appendix shows that participation is not predicted by stating that “sometimes Catholics need to be 86

reminded that they live in the United Kingdom.”

Offense and division may be unintended consequences, but they are not unanticipated consequences.87

involved in, I haven’t seen any particularly offensive actions or anything that anybody could take

as offensive.” Kyle recognizes that some Catholics do view parades as offensive, but, he

maintains, it is the result of a misinterpretation: “There’s the perception that the bands go out to

offend Catholics and to assert dominance over them, but it’s not the case. I mean we don’t go out

on parade to dominate anybody or to claim anything is ours or to intimidate anybody.” He

continues by pointing out, as several others did, that participants put a lot of time and effort into

parades and if the goal was simply to antagonize Catholics, there would be easier ways to do it.

“I mean we practice I would say on average twice a week all year round,” Kyle says about his

band. “We don’t do that to offend anybody.”

The time I spent with a marching band in West Belfast provides further support for Kyle’s

two points (Kyle was not a member of this band). Participants did spend time and effort in

practicing. At the weekly practices, they often practiced a single part of a song repeatedly until

the musical director was pleased. And, as best I could tell, most if not all members could read

music. These facts are unremarkable from the point of view of a musical group, but seems

unnecessary if the goal is to provoke a riot. 88

What is more, there were never any discussions of intimidating or provoking Catholics.

In fact, I never heard an overt discussion of politics at all, despite specifically listening for it. I

was keenly attuned to any mention of politics, Catholics, or any instrumental goal in the privacy

of the band practices, but it never came up. Indeed, the two most illuminating episodes in this 89

!162

It also challenges prevailing stereotypes of loyalist marching bands as hoards of “knuckle draggers.” 88

My observations are likely impacted by the fact that the band practices I attended was a melody band, not a blood 89

and thunder band. Melody bands require more musical skill and practice and they do not have the same reputation for aggressive sectarianism. That said, I am near certain I once saw this band in clearly violating a legally-binding Parades Commission decision by loudly playing music as they marched by St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Belfast. No one would mistake them for goody two-shoes.

regard feature the absence of sectarian politics. The first is a recurring episode. Each practice

session concluded with the band playing “God Save the Queen,” the United Kingdom’s national

anthem. This was generally the only remotely explicit political or nationalist moment during the

ninety-minute practice. When played on the streets, where Irish nationalists can hear it, “God

Save the Queen” can take a provocative or defiant flavor. In the privacy of a clubhouse, however,

it does not. They generally played it perfunctorily, as it was the final task before they could go

home. It seemed to me more “banal nationalism” or “everyday nationhood” than the “contrived

occasions for the crystallization of national awareness” that often spill into the streets of

Belfast. 90

The second episode involves a t-shirt. On the last practice before the Twelfth of July in

2013, Dan, one of the band leaders, wore a t-shirt with a cartoon of a potato and the words, in all

caps, “THE FAMINE IS OVER SO WHY DON’T YOU GO HOME.” These are the lyrics of the

expressly sectarian “Famine Song” which caused so much controversy outside St. Patrick’s

Catholic Church in Belfast the previous year. The shirt looked brand new—I noticed that the

sleeves were still creased, as if it was just purchased—so I guessed that he had worn it

specifically for the band practice. Yet despite the jokes and laughs I imagine Dan was hoping to

inspire, I never heard any. Even with this invitation to discuss the intimidation or provocation of

Catholics, I heard no comments by other band members. I was not following Dan the whole

night, so I could have missed private conversations, but nothing was said in front of the band as a

whole. Furthermore, he wore the shirt in a private, Protestant forum, not in public, where

Catholics could see it. Does this make the act less insensitive? Likely no. But wearing it was not

!163

Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism (London: Sage, 1995); and Jon E. Fox and Cynthia Miller-Idriss, “Everyday 90

Nationhood,” Ethnicities, Vol. 8, No. 4 (2008), pp. 536-63, the quote is from p. 545.

an attempt to offend Catholics who were not a potential audience for this private act.

Given the prevailing unfavorable stereotypes about loyalist bands, the absence of

sectarian conversations around these episodes is striking. But ethnomusicologist Gordon Ramsey

reaches a similar conclusion in his long-term ethnographic study of two marching bands:

Participating in a loyalist parade is almost universally seen by outsiders as a display of political and religious allegiance, an act of power or resistance with a political goal. Some within the band may accept such characterization to some degree… Yet… in six years of intensive involvement in the band scene, spanning some of the most politically controversial events of the peace process, I have never heard politics or religion discussed seriously in a bandroom. 91

The playing of the national anthem and the non-reaction to the wearing of a potentially

offensive t-shirt hint that participants are generally not looking to provoke or intimidate

Catholics. The closest that any participants get to admitting a connection between parades and

these outcomes are the few interviewees who mentioned that other participants want to cause

trouble. Members of the loyal orders tended to the put the blame on bands, while band members

tended to blame other bands or the “blue bag brigade,” young men who follow a parade carrying

loads of cheap alcohol. Ramsey similarly describes how the bandsmen he knew referred “to

other bands as political bands, by which they meant those bands with paramilitary affiliations.” 92

A central reason why participants do not intend to offend Catholics is that they do not

believe that Catholics are actually offended. Instead, participants believe that the objections are

all disingenuous cant manufactured by the republican movement. Thus, the controversy is

invented, Catholics feign the offense, and any violence that may follow a parade is, in fact,

unrelated to the parade. “We’re not causing the trouble,” Sammy stresses. “It’s violent

!164

Ramsey, Music, Emotion and Identity in Ulster Marching Bands, p. 163.91

Ibid., p. 226. Original emphasis.92

republicans who are causing the trouble.” These widely-held beliefs suggest that participants are

not consciously trying to offend Catholics or polarize the communities. Since participants do not

believe that Catholics get offended, it is unlikely that they act with the goal of offending them.

There is much more to say on this issue and I will return to it in more detail in the next chapter,

where I argue that participants’ understanding of culture and cultural action helps them to

disassociate parades from their consequences.

Of course, Protestants have strong incentives to say that they do not intend to effect the

harmful outcomes of parades, even if it is untrue. Nevertheless, my formal interviews and

informal conversations with a broad range of participants and observations at many parades and

related events overpowered my strong skepticism and convinced me that most of them are

sincere in their beliefs—even if the reader likely has justifiable doubts. More convincing

evidence of the demotion of instrumental outcomes is that interviewees also devalued the

positive outcomes of parades, such as entertaining the crowd of supporters. For example, when I

asked Mikey if parading has a goal, he replied, “It’s not a goal as such.” But he then

acknowledged the public service they provide: “There’s hundreds of parades going on in

Northern Ireland and people like to go out and watch them, it’s a spectacle. People like to listen

to bands. People like to see their brothers and sisters, their family walking. People like to see it.”

And people who attend parades agree wholeheartedly. Sophie, an enthusiastic attender, describes

being at parades this way: “Love it. … You just feel more of your cultural identity. You’re all

together and it gives you a wee bit of hope for the future.” And local scholar Michael Hall

records a band member recalling: “One woman [at a community meeting in east Belfast] said,

‘We struggle all year to make ends meet, and watching the bands is the only bit of holiday time

!165

we get.’” 93

So why would participants dismiss these positive outcomes, about which they can be

justifiably proud? These beneficial outcomes do happen, and they are a satisfying byproduct of

parading, but, they told me, it is not why they act. Both Michael and Howie, for instance, convey

this idea. Michael states, “It’s our right to do it. It’s our belief to do it. The crowds and the

spectators are an added bonus to us. We will walk the streets whether there is one person

watching us or one hundred million people watching us. It’s our right, it’s our identity. It’s our

reason we exist.” Howie agrees: “[When there is a large crowd] it’s just nicer. But if there wasn’t

as many of a crowd there it wouldn’t bother me… I’ve been to parade where there hasn’t been

many people watching it, but it’s still an honor and a privilege for me to walk with the

Apprentice Boys.”

My field observations confirm their claims: on occasion, I was the only person on the

street watching the parade, particularly when the parade was in the early morning or the pouring

rain. A crowd of cheering supporters certainly makes a livelier atmosphere, but they will parade

whether or not there are spectators. As Michael and Howie make clear, entertaining the

community is not what drives them. Rather, their motives are internal to the very process of

participation: honor, privilege, fulfilling a right, acting on a belief, and living out one’s identity.

!Conclusion

Parades generate significant social and political effects in Northern Ireland. Among other

things, they build Protestant solidarity, entertain deprived communities, intensify communal

!166

Michael Hall, Towards a Shared Future (5): Ulster’s Marching Bands (Belfast: Island Publications, 2014), p. 9.93

friction, and occasionally trigger violence. Some of these effects are intended, so the participants’

reasons are ends-oriented and instrumental. But many are not intended, so to understand their

participation we must maintain a distinction between the reasons for the action and the

consequences of the action. Parades may lead to solidarity, entertainment, tension, provocation,

intimidation, or violence, but that does not mean that these outcomes are motivations. To say that

they are commits the fallacy of explaining behavior simply by stating its effects. In particular, the

divisive consequences of parades are a byproduct of action motivated by other ends and desires.

To attribute them as motives for paraders would deliver “a very distorted picture of their

participation.” The participants’ reasons for participating are related to effects that are far less 94

visible because they are intrinsic to the process of acting collectively, such as carrying on a

tradition and the fulfillment experienced when publicly affirming a cherished identity.

This chapter has demonstrated that, as expected by the argument developed in Chapter 4,

participants’ reasons for acting are primarily process-oriented. I used interview, survey, and

ethnographic data to show that participants concentrate on the process of participation and

largely disregard the outcomes. Yet the outcomes, especially the polarizing outcomes, seem hard

to overlook. The next chapter suggests how participants sustain their process-oriented thinking in

the face of glaring political consequences of their parades. I will continue to argue that parades

produce outcomes that do not necessarily motivate participants and show how they disassociate

their means from the ends that are produced. In so doing, I will provide further evidence that

participants’ reasons for acting are the intrinsic benefits of publicly parading their beliefs and

values with friends and family.

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Nina Eliasoph and Paul Lichterman, “Making Things Political,” in John R. Hall, Laura Grindstaff, and Ming-94

Cheng Lo, eds., Handbook of Cultural Sociology (New York: Routledge, 2010), p. 489.

Chapter Six Culture, Politics, and the Paradox of Anti-Politics in Loyalist Parades !!This is the difference in thinking, Jonathan. If there was a parade by a religious group in the United States and they flew the Star Spangled Banner on the parade, would you deem that parade as being political? Probably not. But if you fly the Union Jack in Northern Ireland, it’s political.

— Mark, Orangeman !! A curious feature of the discourse surrounding loyalist parades in Northern Ireland is the

impassioned insistence of many Protestants that parades are apolitical. In this chapter, I will

show that at the center of this claim is a paradox: parades have patently and widely recognized

political causes and consequences, yet many parade participants insist that they are not just

apolitical, but anti-political—that parades transcend politics and exist apart from it. How is it that

these activities, which from the outside look to be political activism, are imagined and

encountered as non-political by participants? To answer this question, we must examine how

participants construct, understand, and experience social categories such as politics and culture.

Through this we can see how they try to remove parades from the realm of politics, making

parades “inaccessible to deliberation or contestation.” 1

I begin by demonstrating the contours of the paradox in the interviews I conducted with

parade participants. The interviews show that many participants fully recognize the politics

ingrained in parades, while at the same time maintaining that parades have nothing to do with

politics. Parades, they argue, are about culture, a social category they see as mutually exclusive

to politics. Second, I explain why this paradox matters. In particular, I argue that there is political

power in the claim of anti-politics. It shapes outcomes by shifting the debate away from

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Nina Eliasoph and Paul Lichterman, “Making Things Political,” in John R. Hall, Laura Grindstaff, and Ming-1

Cheng Lo, eds., Handbook of Cultural Sociology (New York: Routledge, 2010), p. 483.

bargaining and compromise, thereby making the conflict over parades more intractable. Third, I

probe how this seemingly untenable paradox is maintained by the ritual nature of parades. As

rituals, parades provide participants with apolitical reasons to participate and the symbolic

ambiguity of ritual allows for alternative interpretations of the events. Together, these two

features create the behavioral and attitudinal environment that sustains the idea of anti-politics,

thereby perpetuating this aspect of the Northern Irish conflict.

!The Paradox of Anti-Politics

Though they have served varying political projects over their two century history,

Protestant parades in the north of Ireland have been thoroughly political since their earliest days. 2

Their political character remains to this day—that is, parades “striv[e] to influence the

distribution of power… among groups within a state.” By calling parades political, I refer to two 3

specific characteristics: they make political claims and they have political consequences.

The primary claim made by parades is that the six counties of Northern Ireland should

remain part of the United Kingdom. This claim is an answer to the paramount question in

Northern Irish politics: should the territory be part of the Republic of Ireland or the United

Kingdom? The two main answers to this question form the most significant political and social

cleavage in the province by far. All politics is debated around the unionist-nationalist cleavage

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Neil Jarman, Material Conflicts: Parades and Visual Displays in Northern Ireland (Oxford: Berg, 1997), pp. 2

25-79; Dominic Bryan, Orange Parades: The Politics of Ritual, Tradition, and Control (London: Pluto, 2000), pp. 29-96; Charles Tilly, The Politics of Collective Violence (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 120-7.

Max Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” in H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, trans. and eds., From Max Weber: Essays 3

in Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), p. 78. This political character is evident to nearly all outside observers—a remark by Marc Howard Ross, Cultural Contestation in Ethnic Conflict (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 88, is archetypal: “These cultural enactments are political statements—provocations and challenges, rights claims, assertions of power, and public acts of commitment.”

and all policies are interpreted through it. This question was also central to the thirty years of

violence in the late twentieth century. At times, parades proclaim political loyalty to the U.K. 4

implicitly using symbols, such as flying the Union flag or playing “God Save the Queen,” while

at other times they make it explicitly, such as in speeches on the Twelfth of July. Through these

means, each loyalist parade makes a claim about the most important political question in

Northern Ireland.

In addition to claims about the constitutional question, parades make several other, but no

less significant, claims. Smithey and Young argue, “Orange parades have operated as expressions

of loyalty and dissent across at least three relational domains: between Protestants and Catholics,

between Protestant unionists and British governments, and within unionist politics.” Between 5

Protestants and Catholics, parades make claims about power, status, and ethnic hierarchy. For

example, Ruane and Todd describe loyalist parades as “a symbolic assertion of power over

Catholics.” Further, parading is “the most prominent means of… claiming dominance over 6

territory,” ranging from specific streets to whole neighborhoods to public space generally. 7

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For distinctly political interpretations of the Troubles, see, for example., Richard Bourke, Peace in Ireland: The 4

War of Ideas (London: Pimlico, 2003).

Lee A. Smithey and Michael P. Young, “Parading Protest: Orange Parades in Northern Ireland and Temperance 5

Parades in Antebellum America,” Social Movement Studies, Vol. 9, No. 4 (November 2010), p. 402.

Joseph Ruane and Jennifer Todd, The Dynamics of Conflict in Northern Ireland: Power, Conflict, and 6

Emancipation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 109.

Jarman, Material Conflicts, p. 79. Allen Feldman, The Formations of Violence: The Narrative of the Body and 7

Political Terror in Northern Ireland (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), chap. 2, “The Spatial Formations of Violence,” discusses the role of public space in the Troubles, with particular attention to parades on pp. 29-30. The aural intensity of parades allows them to mark territory far beyond the specific streets they march on—the sound of flutes and drums echoes across the city. As Tom Boylston remarks: “Territory is not just about the occupation of land. It is just as much about soundscapes and sightlines, not to mention tastes and smells.” Tom Boylston, “What Kind of Territory? On Public Religion and Space in Ethiopia,” The Immanent Frame (blog), August 26, 2014, available at: http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2014/08/26/what-kind-of-territory-on-public-religion-and-space-in-ethiopia. Accessed September 11, 2014.

Although most participants object to this characterization of their parades and explicitly argue

that they are not making these claims vis-a-vis Catholics, they are most certainly read this way

by most Catholics, who, whether or not participants intend it, are a relevant audience. 8

Between Northern Irish unionists and British governments, parades make claims about

the interests of the unionist community, primarily ensuring that London does not abandon them

to drift toward Dublin. For example, Smithey notes that “historically, Protestant elites used the

latent threat of a large popular loyalist community, publicly manifested in Orange parades, to

ensure due attention to the union by British governments.” Finally, within unionist politics, 9

parades make hardline claims on unionist political parties, often serving to narrow their

bargaining position. The Orange Order, for instance, campaigned for a “no” vote on the 1998 10

referendum on the Agreement. Parades are also used by rival loyalist paramilitary organizations

to assert power and claim territory.

Importantly, all of these claims change over time in response to shifting social and

political conditions. Despite their self-promoted appearance as a timeless and unchanging

traditional ritual, parades and their claims respond to changing currents in all of the relations just

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Compare Jack Santino, “Public Protest and Popular Style: Resistance from the Right in Northern Ireland and South 8

Boston,” American Anthropologist, Vol. 101, No. 3 (September 1999), p. 518: “Certainly not all parade participants, nor all members of the Orange Order, march to flaunt their power in a territorial or triumphalist way, but many do. Not every Catholic reads the parades in this manner, but many do.” On how social movements construct their audiences, see Kathleen Blee and Amy McDowell, “Social Movement Audiences,” Sociological Forum, Vol. 27, No. 1 (March 2012), pp. 1-20; also James M. Jasper, “A Strategic Approach to Collective Action: Looking for Agency in Social-Movement Choices,” Mobilization, Vol. 9, No. 1 (February 2004), p. 6.



See, e.g., Henry Patterson, Ireland since 1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 8: The Orange Order’s 10

“political importance resided not simply in the fact that it had representation as of right in the [Ulster Unionist] party at all levels, or that the overwhelming bulk of Unionist MPs and cabinet members were members, but also in its ability to criticize the party and the government if they were seen to deviate from the defence of Protestant interests.”

discussed: unionist-nationalist, Protestant-Catholic, unionist-British, and unionist-unionist. For

example, Jarman describes how the Orange Order reacted to Daniel O’Connell’s campaign for

Catholic emancipation in the 1820s by “marching more often, in more places and with more

people.” And Bryan documents how as working-class Protestants became more alienated from 11

the British state over the course of the Trouble, parades lost their position as “an expression of

the state.” This was reflected in the rise of blood and thunder bands (and the concomitant 12

decline of more “respectable” marching bands), the display of loyalist paramilitary iconography,

and the reduced display of the British flag. Paraders’ reactions to political events naturally also

engendered responses by other actors. For example, the Royal Ulster Constabulary reported in

1981 that: “Against the emotional background of the Republican hunger strikes and various

Loyalist activities, the traditional parades required a higher level of policing than usual.” More 13

serious reactions to periods of severe parade-related violence included the banning of all parades

in Ireland by the British government from 1832 to 1845 and 1850 to 1872. 14

Political claim-making by parades is not unique to Northern Irish Protestants. Rather,

parades are “common features of contentious politics.” Historian Susan Davis claims that “as 15

public representations, parades and public ceremonies are political acts: They have pragmatic

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Jarman, Material Conflicts, pp. 53-56, quote is from p. 56.11


Royal Ulster Constabulary, Chief Constable’s Report, 1981 (Belfast: Royal Ulster Constabulary, 1981), p. 10, 13

Northern Ireland Political Collection, Linen Hall Library, Belfast.

Jarman, Material Conflicts, pp. 54-61. Though the prohibitions were not always enforced when it came to Orange 14

parades. Just one striking example: an estimated 100,000 people marched in the Belfast Twelfth in 1870. Ibid., p. 65.

Smithey and Young, “Parading Protest,” p. 394.15

objectives, and concrete, often material results.” Indeed parades are often arenas for contesting 16

authority, generating legitimacy, challenging policies, forging new political identities,

confronting rival groups, asserting personhood, and claiming citizenship. They are thus an 17

important part of the modern repertoire of contention. 18

The second reason parades are political is that they have political consequences. They are

hotly debated by politicians in the Northern Ireland Assembly and local government councils, as

well as in the media. Unionist politicians have used parades to campaign and connect with voters

en masse since at least the mid-nineteenth century, and the tradition continues today. For 19

example, David Trimble’s role in the Drumcree parade dispute in 1995 helped propel him to the

leadership of the Ulster Unionist Party, which placed him at the center of the peace process—20

and, three years later, in Olso to share the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize. More recently, politicians

regularly give speeches from the platform on the Twelfth of July and many elected officials have

spoken at the ongoing weekly protests over the current parade dispute in north Belfast.

The history of politicking at parades is long, but the history of Protestant-Catholic

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Susan G. Davis, Parades and Power: Street Theater in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia (Philadelphia: Temple 16


There is a rich literature on parades and politics. Notable examples include: Ibid.; Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture 17

and Class in the French Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986); Mona Ozouf, Festivals and the French Revolution, Alan Sheridan, trans. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988); Mary Ryan, “The American Parade: Representations of the Nineteenth-Century Social Order,” in Lynn Hunt, ed., The New Cultural History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), pp. 131-53; Mabel Berezin, Making the Fascist Self: The Political Culture of Interwar Italy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997); and Geneviève Zubrzycki, “Aesthetic Revolt and the Remaking of National Identity in Québec, 1960-1969,” Theory and Society, Vol. 42, No. 5 (2013), pp. 423-75. David I. Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), provides a general and comparative synthesis.

See Charles Tilly, Contentious Performances (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008).18

Bryan, Orange Parades, pp. 44-6; Jarman, Material Conflicts, pp. 61-219


violence is longer. At the Orange Order’s very first Battle of the Boyne commemoration parade,

in 1796, a Mr. McMurdie exchanged “some words” with a local militia member, the two “came

to blows,” and “Mr. McMurdie received a stab of which he died.” Thus began a sustained 21

relationship between parades, disorder, and violence that has continued to this day. Parades have

proved particularly likely to stir unrest during periods of Catholic political assertiveness and

mobilization, such as O’Connell’s campaign for emancipation in the 1820s and the civil rights

movement of the late 1960s. As a result of this combustibility, historically and today, the

performance of parades often requires the coercive apparatus of the state—police, riot police,

and, until 2006, the British military. Parades also create opportunities for both loyalist and

republican paramilitaries to mobilize and assert their continued presence. Even in the absence 22

of overt physical violence, parades polarize the two communities and heighten tension between

them. They thus have a detrimental effect on the political peace process and grassroots peace-23

building efforts. In this manner, sustained violence has been replaced by largely non-violent

conflict over parades. Echoing Clausewitz, Kertzer argues that “the Protestant-Catholic 24

struggle in Northern Ireland, like so many other political battles, continues to be waged as much

through ritual as any other means.” 25

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Belfast News Letter, 15 July 1796, quoted in Bryan, Orange Parades, p. 33; and Jarman, Material Conflicts, p. 47.21

Paul Nolan, Northern Ireland Peace Monitoring Report, Number 2 (Belfast: Community Relations Council, 22

2013), pp. 62, 168.

Smithey, Unionists, Loyalists, and Conflict Transformation, p. 122, argues that “although both loyalist and 23

nationalist parading is in some technical sense nonviolent, it is also tied to coercion and intimidation.”

See Neil Jarman and Dominic Bryan, Parade and Protest: A Discussion of Parading Disputes in Northern Ireland 24

(Colraine, UK: Centre for the Study of Conflict, University of Ulster, 1996), p. 41; and Ross, Cultural Contestation, p. 5. Compare René Girard, Violence and the Sacred (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977).

Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power, p.124.25

The parade participants themselves often recognize one or both of these political

characteristics of parades—though, as I will soon demonstrate, they resolutely refuse to

recognize parades as political. In particular, three themes emerged in my interviews with

participants which betray a political interpretation of parades. First, some participants readily

acknowledge that parades make a political claim about the constitutional question. For example,

Jesse, an Orangeman and DUP elected official and party strategist, articulates this view

forcefully. He mentioned to me that he got involved in the Orange Order through his political

activism, so I asked him to explain the relationship between parades and politics:

Well there is when it comes to identity. There is when you consider— And, so it’s not party political. So you’ll not find the Orange Order advocating for political position of the Ulster Unionist Party, the Democratic Unionist Party, the Progressive Unionist Party, or whatever. But on those big ticket items, on Northern Ireland being a part of the United Kingdom, on reverence for the monarchical system that we have and our head of state, it is, it is political. !

Here Jesse makes clear that in his view parades are political because of their message about the

“big ticket items,” namely remaining in the United Kingdom. Though, observe how he begins by

qualifying his remarks by stating that parades are not political in the sense of party politics.

Jesse also illustrates a second theme: parades help the political prospects of unionism by

unifying the Protestant community. Parades are politically useful “not only [in] energizing

people, [and] getting the people on the streets, but [in] showing that there’s such level of support

for political aspiration, for a political goal.” As a politician, he understands the political utility of

large, public demonstrations. They mobilize citizens and excite them about the unionist cause,

which is valuable since it re-energizes the unionist base. They also symbolize, and thus help

engender, Protestant unity and communal solidarity. Protestants have long understood unity as

!175

necessary for the community’s survival, but difficult to achieve due to internal divisions based on

religious denomination, class, and political party allegiances. Parades are seen as a source of and

forum for unity across those divisions. This even affects people who do not attend parades. By 26

“showing that there’s such level of support,” parades can influence non-attenders by

demonstrating to them that the ideology has huge support as evinced by large crowds. This is

important to communicate to supporters as well as opponents of unionism. Protestants see that

unionism is alive and well—which might forestall electoral defection—while Catholics see that

it remains a formidable political force.

Others speak more explicitly about sending a message to the Catholics, a third political

theme. For them, parades are a ritualized means of communication with nationalists and

republicans. That parades are ritualistic matters for how the communication is sent, and how it is

received. In particular, the message of parades is made obliquely through the display of 27

symbols—flags, collarettes, uniforms, music, banners—and through the physical presence of the

marchers. So the two necessary ingredients which jointly constitute a parade—symbols and

bodies—are simultaneously the means for communication. That means that parades generally 28

!176

E.g., Bryan, Orange Parades; Paul Arthur, Government and Politics of Northern Ireland, 2nd ed. (London: 26

Longman, 1984), p. 40. See, for instance, Michael Hall, Towards a Shared Future (5): Ulster’s Marching Bands (Belfast: Island Publications, 2014), p. 30: “The unionist community is more and more fragmented, and the bands are the only thing which is holding the Protestant working-class community together at the present moment.” Like all of the volumes in Hall’s excellent “Island Pamphlets” series, Towards a Shared Future (5) is an edited transcript of a conversation between people from Northern Ireland on a topic of pressing concern. Throughout the chapter, I supplement what I heard in the field with footnoted quotes from anonymous band members who took part in this conversation. Also Gordon Ramsey, Music, Emotion and Identity in Ulster Marching Bands: Flutes, Drums and Loyal Sons (Bern: Peter Lang, 2011), p. 147.

Writing on loyalist parades, Lee A. Smithey, “Strategic Collective Action and Collective Identity Reconstruction: 27

Parading Disputes and Two Northern Ireland Towns,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas, Austin, 2002, p. 96, notes: “Ritualistic collective action… facilitates communication with opponents and third parties.”

For an anthropological analysis of the relationship between Orange Order icons and the body, see Feldman, 28

Formations of Violence, pp. 57-8.

eschew the use of explicit signs, flyers, speeches, chants, or other canonical elements of the

contemporary contentious politics repertoire, and instead rely on the core elements of its very

performance to communicate a message. 29

At the core of the communication to Irish nationalists is the message, “We are here.” For

instance, George says that “the intent” is “to say we’ve always been here and we’re not going

away.” Republican dreams be damned, George suggests—Protestants are on Ireland and are not

going anywhere. Kenny agrees: Parades are “about making the stand that we can’t just be forced

out of our own country,” he says. “It shows we’re still here,” states Walter.

Some specifically see their parading as an act of opposition to nationalism and

republicanism. For example, John sees parades’ message as one of negating republicanism rather

than just affirming unionism. “I look at it as not simply about a parade, but it has to do with civil

liberty. It has to do with tyranny. It has to do with [not] giving into the violence, giving in to the

people who want to take away your civil rights, which I would look upon as republicanism.”

Through parading, this clergyman sees himself taking a stand against Irish republicanism. In all 30

of these examples, we see that communication with nationalists is intentional. Whether they are

trying to maintain the Protestant political position or erode that of nationalists, parades are used

as a means of political communication.

While participants acknowledge these claims and consequences of parades, they

nevertheless generally refuse to accept that they are political. We can begin to see the tension

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On the modern demonstration repertoire, see Jesus Casquete, “The Power of Demonstrations,” Social Movement 29

Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1 (May 2006), 45-60; Olivier Fillieule and Danielle Tartakowsky, Demonstrations, Phyllis Aronoff and Howard Scott, trans. (Halifax: Fernwood, 2013); and Tilly, Contentious Performances, esp. pp. 71-87.

See, also, Hall, Towards a Shared Future (5), p. 27: “Our band culture is the last obstacle standing in the way of 30

militant Irish Republicanism.”

caused by this paradox in Mark. On the one hand, Mark makes statements that suggest he

believes that parades are inherently political and are used politically. On the other hand, he

expresses a reluctance to characterize parades as political actions, identifying the Northern Irish

context as the reason why parades are considered political. Regarding the former point, he

suggests that parades have a political component due the fact that they commemorate political

events. “Obviously there is a political part,” Mark says, “I mean the Battle of the Boyne was won

in 1690 by the king of England, which in a way heralded a change in almost the constitution of

the United Kingdom that guaranteed the rights of everybody.” Secondly, he argues that parades

today make an explicit political claim:

You know, the parades are almost a statement of what we stand for, and we stand for the union between Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom.… It is a political statement in that regard. Although, we don’t set out— We simply set out to celebrate, “This is what we are and this is what we stand for,” and what we stand for is the union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. !

As I noted earlier, “stand[ing] for… the union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland” is one of

two predominant positions in all Northern Irish politics. But then Mark’s view shifts as he argues

that rather than being fundamentally political, parades are made political by the political context.

He provides two comparisons to show how this is the case. First, he says that while parades in

Northern Ireland are Protestants saying, “We’re still here,” in the Republic of Ireland, parades

mean something entirely different since “they have a different set of problems to deal with.” In

other words, there is nothing about parades that gives them the political claim of “we’re still

here;” it results from the context. And second, he argues that parades have “political

connotations… because… you are carrying the Union [Flag].” “This is the difference in thinking,

Jonathan,” he tells me. “If there was a parade by a religious group in the United States and they

!178

flew the Star Spangled Banner on the parade, would you deem that parade as being political?

Probably not. But if you fly the Union Jack in Northern Ireland, it’s political.” Again, it is the

vexed politics of Northern Ireland that renders parades political, not parades’ nature. So Mark is

torn between his understandings of the sources of parades’ politics. He cannot quite seem to

decide whether parades are political by nature or whether Northern Ireland’s social, political, and

historical context made them so. His reluctance to accept the politics of parades is not

unfounded. In fact, it is deeply rooted in the Protestant public discourse around parades. For most

participants, as I will now show, there is not even a question.

Many, if not most, participants strongly believe that parades are in no way political. In 31

fact, for many participants, parades are anti-political, in that they exist outside the realm of

politics. Rather, parades have been strategically politicized by the Republican movement. Thus 32

parades, which are not political, have been made political by the enemies of Protestantism.

What do I mean by anti-politics? By identifying paraders’ claims and rhetoric as anti-

political, I intend to highlight their view that parades are not merely not political, but above and

beyond politics. Anti-political is a stronger, more extreme stance than just apolitical. Something 33

that is apolitical is passively not political, whereas being anti-political is an active and

antagonistic stance against politics and the political. Things that are anti-political are not on the

!179

See also Ramsey, Music, Emotion and Identity, pp. 226-7; and Ray Casserly, “The Fyfe and My Family: Flute 31

Bands in Rathcoole Estate,” Irish Journal of Anthropology, Vol. 13 (2010), p. 11.

Eliasoph and Lichterman, “Making Things Political,” p. 483, usefully define politicizing as “action, collective or 32

individual, that makes issues or identities into topics of public deliberation or contestation.” Conversely, depoliticizing is “making once-salient issues or identities inaccessibly to deliberation or contestation.”

Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), p. 242, makes a 33

similar distinction when she argues that “love… is not only apolitical but antipolitical.” For a case study of the anti-political effects of love, see Jeff Goodwin, “The Libidinal Constitution of a High-Risk Social Movement: Affectual Ties and Solidarity in the Huk Rebellion, 1946 to 1954,” American Sociological Review, Vol. 62, No. 1 (February 1997), pp. 53-69. Jim Jasper pointed out this connection to me.

same spectrum as things that are political; there is an absolute difference in kind.

To understand how parades are anti-political, we must first know how participants view

politics. Politics, for most participants, is the domain of elite and electoral competition. In their

eyes, politics is about politicians and political parties jockeying for advantage, challenging each

other, and competing for votes. This is a narrow, but not incorrect, conception of political life. 34

By this definition, contemporary parades are not especially political, particularly when compared

to parades in earlier decades when the Orange Order was tightly linked to the ruling Ulster

Unionist Party and Orange parades were practically party rallies. In contrast, the parading 35

organizations today do not advocate for a particular party—which is not to say that unionist

politicians do not try to use parades, as events and as an issue, to their personal and party’s

advantage: they most certainly do. In large part this is because the membership of parading

organizations reflects the panoply of unionist political parties. As Rachel puts it, “We avoid 36

bringing up politics in band because it’s a very, very, very sensitive issue.… It just takes one

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In fact, many political scientists might agree. For a discussion of varying approaches to “politics” and “the 34

political,” see Andrew Mason, “Politics and the State,” Political Studies, Vol. 38 (1990), pp. 575-87. The “elite competition as politics” approach I find in the interviews is even narrower than what Mason calls the “narrow approach,” which is anything having to do with government. For an important discussion of how observers should approach “the political” and navigate the differences between their own views and the “native” view, see Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding Politics: How Americans Produce Apathy in Everyday Life (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 14-15.

From 1905 to 2005, the Orange Order sent 15 percent of delegates to the Ulster Unionist Council, the governing 35

body of the Ulster Unionist Party. Eric P. Kaufmann, The Orange Order: A Contemporary Northern Irish History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 216. The two organizations broke their formal tie in 2005. The Order’s real power in the UUP is reflected in the fact that from the formation of Northern Ireland until the imposition of direct rule, all but three Stormont cabinet ministers were Orangemen. Bryan, Orange Parades, p. 60.

See Jocelyn A.J. Evans and Jonathan Tonge, “Unionist Party Competition and the Orange Order Vote in Northern 36

Ireland,” Electoral Studies, Vol. 26 (2007), pp. 156-167; Jon Tonge, Jocelyn Evans, Robert Jeffery, and James W. McAuley, “New Order: Political Change and the Protestant Orange Tradition in Northern Ireland,” British Journal of Politics and International Relations, Vol. 13, No. 3 (2011), pp. 400-419; and Kaufmann, The Orange Order, esp. chap. 8, “Breaking the Link: Orange-UUP Relations after the Good Friday Agreement.”

snide comment and a whole band can be torn apart.” So at least in this confined sense, parades 37

are not political.

But that is not the main reasoning that drives participants’ belief. Rather, participants

believe that parades are not political because they are cultural, which they see as mutually

exclusive categories. Culture and politics are often juxtaposed by participants and defined in

contrast to each other. For example, Craig states that, “[Parades] wouldn’t be seen as political 38

from anybody coming from a parading side. It’s a cultural thing.” We can see the contrasting

concepts employed by Robby, a very active parader, as he compares himself to his brother. His

brother is very interested in politics: “He can’t not watch the news every night and he was a

member of the DUP party and stuff. He was quite politically minded.” Robby, however, has “no

real interest” in politics. Instead, he is interested in parades: “As [for] what I do as in the

Orangeism and the band scene and stuff like that… I’m more culturally-minded to politically-

minded.” Culture and politics, then, are seen as distinct, even opposing, points of view. For

Robby, culture replaces politics: while his brother lives and breathes politics, Robby lives and

breathes culture.

The contrast between the cultural and the political is made explicit by Rachel:

Any time it’s said that the Twelfth of July is making a political statement, no, it’s not. It’s a cultural statement. The only time that it would be making a political statement [is] if it’s a protest against [something], like say flag protest, or if it’s a civil rights march, then that’s political. But if it is cultural, it’s not.

For Rachel, there is no overlap between culture and politics. Politics is protests and “trying to

score political points against other Unionist parties,” as she says several moments later; culture is

!181

See also Ramsey, Music, Emotion and Identity, p. 145.37

See also Ibid., p. 227.38

parades, tradition, music, history, and the like. And if it is one, it cannot be the other.

The belief that parades are cultural and not political is built on more than just definitional

and conceptual distinctions. Parades’ non-political nature rests on a comparative and empirical

foundation as well. One piece of evidence that several informants cited to me is that parades are

not political because they are a widely enjoyed cultural practice. How can parades in Northern

Ireland be political, they ask, when they are simply one example of a global means of self-

expression and celebration that elsewhere is apolitical? Edward is certainly correct when he says,

“People all around the world celebrate with parades. It’s not unique to Orangemen, to Northern

Ireland, or to Britain.” So is Mikey, who provides more details to this argument: “The army has

parades, schools in America have parades, they have parades on St. Patrick’s Day. People want to

parade.” And in all of those cases, he argued, there are no political challenges. Therefore, the

logic insists, parades in Northern Ireland are not political either.

Secondly, parades are a tradition, in that they have been practiced for a long time. Again,

this is true: parades commemorating the Battle of the Boyne date to the 1740s, the Orange Order

held its first parade in 1796, and the Apprentice Boys was founded in 1814. The conclusion that 39

participants draw is that since parades have been going on for a long time, they cannot have

relevance to contemporary politics. Traditions, by definition, do not change over time: their

“object and characteristic… is invariance.” Thus, a tradition that began in the eighteenth 40

century and has continued unchanged to the present cannot speak to today’s political debates.

!182

James Kelly, “The Emergence of Political Parading, 1660-1800,” in T.G. Fraser, ed., The Irish Parading 39

Tradition: Following the Drum (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), pp. 15-16; Bryan, Orange Parades, p. 33; T.G. Fraser, “The Apprentice Boys and the Relief of Derry Parades,” in Fraser, ed., Irish Parading Tradition, p. 174.

Eric Hobsbawm, “Inventing Traditions,” in Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition 40

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 2. As Jarman, Material Conflicts, p. 9, notes, repetition in and of rituals “enhances the feeling that they never change.”

“How can there be a political parade,” Dan asks, “when it’s been walking that road for one

hundred years?”

Relatedly, parades are not only from the past, they are about the past: they are

commemorations. Since the subject of parades is the past, not the present, they do not have

relevance to contemporary politics. If anything, the era that parades commemorate was a time

when Catholics and Protestants were united against a common enemy. As a number of

interviewees smugly pointed out to me, William of Orange and Pope Alexander VIII were allies

in 1690. How, they ask, can parades which celebrate a cause supported by the Pope himself be

considered political by Catholics?

Yet even the staunchest defender of parades’ anti-politics recognizes that parades today

are disputed. But if parades are not political by their origins, their subject of focus, or their

history, why are they so contested today? How did they become the subject of such intense

political controversy? The nearly universally-held answer is that that parades were politicized by

the republican movement during the Troubles. Sinn Féin, the Provisional IRA (PIRA), and others

deliberately transformed parades into subjects of politics. By doing so, republicans inserted

politics where it did not belong and had not been before. And their campaign of politicization

succeeded: parades today remain “not political, but they’re perceived as political.” This 41

explains why events which, from participants’ perspective, are and always have been cultural are

so political today.

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Interview with Craig, December 12, 2012.41

The history interviewees told me again and again goes like this. For centuries, parades 42

passed uncontested. In fact, they were attended and enjoyed by Protestants and Catholics alike.

Many participants tell stories of childhood Catholic friends who wanted to join the parade with

them, or of a Catholic neighbor coming over on the morning of the Twelfth to pin a flower on

their father’s lapel. This all changed around the 1980s and 1990s. In those years, Sinn Féin and 43

the PIRA developed a strategy to turn the Catholic population vehemently against parades. The

intensity of this campaign increased during the peace process as the PIRA began demobilizing

troops and Republican prisoners were released. Suddenly, the republican leadership needed

something for these men to do beyond armed conflict. So, they placed operatives in Catholic

communities to manufacture anti-parade emotions and orchestrate local protests against parades.

A number of informants referenced a well-known rhetorical question that Sinn Féin president

Gerry Adams posed to a party meeting in Athboy, Ireland in 1997: “Do you think Drumcree

happened by accident?” As protests mounted and succeeded in a particular place, republicans 44

moved their attention to new parade routes, with the intention of one day banning all parades

!184

The history is also recounted by parading’s senior leaders in public addresses. See, for example, Grand Secretary 42

of the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland Drew Nelson’s speech of January 17, 2014, excerpted in “Is the Long War on the Orange Order Over?,” available at: http://www.grandorangelodge.co.uk/news. Accessed 9 February 2014.

See also Jack Santino, Signs of War and Peace: Social Conflict and the Uses of Symbols in Public in Northern 43

Ireland (New York: Palgrave, 2001), p. 34. Bryan, Orange Parades, pp. 69-70, points out that the postwar era (1945 to mid-1960s), when parades were relatively harmonious, was the formative period for the generation of who became loyal order leaders during and after the Troubles. Friendlier times were within their living memories which shaped their reaction to growing Catholic opposition.

Drumcree Church parade was the most contested parade in the mid-1990s. Dominic Bryan point out to me the 44

irony that this is the only thing Gerry Adams ever said that these men believe.

from Northern Ireland. 45

This narrative, in varying degrees of detail, is ubiquitous among my interviews. For

example, Dan remembers:

Twenty years ago on the Twelfth day, Catholics used to come out. Now it’s all been IRA orchestrated to try to stop bands going where they want to go. The bands used to go by Catholic areas and they would turn the radio up: live and let live, it’ll be by in a minute. But now they’re out in the streets trying to stop parades. It has changed. !

Isaac also has rosy memories of a bygone era: “Neighbors lived at peace with each other.

What has happened is that we’ve all become contentious now. You know, you didn’t need a

Parades Commission before the Troubles.” Craig told me that “the reality is people have

marched down the same road there for umpteen years… without causing offense until Sinn Féin/

!185

Parts of this account are accurate. There was a republican strategy to target parades that began in those years, and 45

Adams was reported to have said that. See Malachi O’Doherty, The Trouble with Guns: Republican Strategy and the Provisional IRA (Belfast: Blackstaff, 1998), pp. 173-76 and 183; Martyn Frampton, The Long March: The Political Strategy of Sinn Féin, 1981-2007 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), pp. 126-7; Harvey Cox, “Keeping Going: Beyond Good Friday,” in Marianne Elliott, ed., The Long Road to Peace in Northern Ireland, rev. 2nd ed. (Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press, 2007), pp. 162-3; and James Dingley, “Marching Down the Garvaghy Road: Republican Tactics and State Response to the Orangemen’s Claim to March their Traditional Route Home after the Drumcree Church Service,” Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Autumn 2002), pp. 42-79. Nevertheless, Bryan cautions that we should not give too much credit to the strategic view which “underestimates the local community dynamics that have long existed in places such as the Garvaghy Road and the political space the peace process created for public opposition to parades.” Dominic Bryan, “Parade Disputes and the Peace Process,” Peace Review, Vol. 13, No. 1 (2001), p. 45. However, my interviewees’ idealized interpretation of the years before 1980s is the result of selective memory: there is a long history of sectarian violence at loyalist parades and their predecessors. See Bryan, Orange Parades; Jarman, Material Conflicts; Sean Farrell, Rituals and Riots: Sectarian Violence and Political Culture in Ulster, 1784–1886 (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2000); Mark Doyle, Fighting Like the Devil for the Sake of God: Protestants, Catholics and the Origins of Violence in Victorian Belfast (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009). This selective memory seems to have a history of its own: for example, just days before July 12, 1969, the Northern Irish Prime Minister James Chichester-Clark and the Inspector-General of the RUC “were assuring the General Officer Commanding in the Province… that Orange marches had never been a source of communal strife.” Bourke, Peace in Ireland, p. 99. Yet my point is not to dismiss my interviewees’ understanding of history; it is to investigate how their understanding of the past works in the present. What kind of power does this narrative have and how does it affect behavior? For a general account of cultural polarization following political polarization, see Ann Swidler, Talk of Love: How Culture Matters (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), pp. 169-75. She specifically addresses ethnic conflict on p. 259 n. 10. For a similar analysis to mine also based on interviews with Protestants, see Neil Southern, “Territoriality, Alienation, and Loyalist Decommissioning: The Case of the Shankill in Protestant West Belfast,” Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 20, No. 1 (2007), pp. 79-80 (though Southern only interviews elites). On recent dynamics, especially the irony that the residents groups got too powerful and now Sinn Féin cannot control them, see Henry Patterson, “Beyond the ‘Micro Group’: The Dissident Republican Challenge,” in P.M. Currie and Max Taylor, eds., Dissident Irish Republicanism (New York: Continuum, 2011), pp. 75-6.

IRA politicized it.” Or, in Mark’s telling:

During the thirty years [of the Troubles] the republican community weren’t interested in parades, because they had other things on their mind: how they were going to plan their next atrocity, who they were going to murder next. They seem to have changed tactics and come away from that. ‘Ok, let’s pick a soft target now during the peace process,’ which is a parade. !

The story they tell is of a passive Protestant community being acted on by republican

agents. Paraders are not agents in their own telling of history; politicization happened to them. 46

Participants speak of parades being “pulled into politics” by “a very serious negative propaganda

attack from Sinn Féin.” “The situation has been politicized,” says Isaac. As these examples 47

illustrate, when speaking of parades, participants tend to use the passive voice; but when talking

about Republicans, their verbs are active, and their language is the language of conspiracy:

“There was a deliberate policy formulated by Sinn Féin/IRA… when they were in prison”;

parades become contentious when “republicans deem them to be contentious”; republicans

“sectarianize the unionist tunes”; “they’re going out of the way to cause problems.” Billy 48

summarizes the sentiment: “It’s all orchestrated. It’s created, deliberately created conflict where

there was no conflict.” 49

!186

It is common for groups to view their rivals as far more organized and unified than themselves, or than the rival 46

actually is. See Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), chap. 8, “Perceptions of Centralization.”

Interview with Craig, December 12, 2012.47

Interview with Craig, December 12, 2012; Interview with Mark, July 11, 2013; Interview with Sammy, July 9, 48

2013; Interview with Howie, August 13, 2012. For interpretations of the conspiratorial elements of loyalist ideology, see Ronnie Moore and Andrew Sanders, “Formations of Culture: Nationalism and Conspiracy Ideology in Ulster Loyalism,” Anthropology Today, Vol. 18, No. 6 (December 2002), pp. 14-15.

Note that interviewees are now using “politics” differently than they did before. Recall that when discussing 49

unionist politics, they use the term narrowly to mean intra-unionist party politics. Now, when discussing nationalist politics, they use the term much more broadly to mean contestation.

A conclusion drawn from this narrative is that all anti-parade sentiment is artificial. The 50

only people who are offended by parades are those who choose to be offended by parades. For

many Protestants, parades are a synecdoche for their community, so to be offended by parades is

to be offended by the the Protestant community—and to challenge parades is to challenge the

community’s very existence. So those who choose to be offended by parades do so because 51

they hate Protestants and want to drive them off the island of Ireland. Any and all opposition to

parades is, consequently, illegitimate. 52

For all of these reasons, participants understand parades not just as not political, but in

contradistinction to politics, despite their widely known political claims and consequences. The

paradox of anti-politics comes through most clearly in individuals who explained to me the

patently political functions and effects of parades, but ardently refused to call them political. We

!187

Or perhaps even coerced. Billy told me the following: “I had a very good friends in there who are Catholics and 50

talking to them and chatting like the way we are, they would say, ‘The parade’s been going down here for a lifetime. It didn’t annoy me, because I didn’t go to see it. But I didn’t tell you that. I can’t openly say that. If I openly say that, I would be told to get out.’ So they’d be under pressure for that.” And Steven said: “I have been told by Catholic friends that they were visited by Sinn Féin activists and told that if they got anywhere near Orange parades, the Twelfth of July, well, the repercussions would be fair… so then they stopped coming.” Whether or not these stories are true, they are certainly part of the dominant narrative.

Marc Howard Ross, Cultural Contestation, esp. pp. 22-6, provides a rich cultural theory of this dynamic, with a 51

specific analysis of loyalist parading in Chapter 4, “Loyalist Parades in Northern Ireland as Recurring Psychocultural Dramas,” and Marc Howard Ross, “Psychocultural Interpretations and Dramas: Identity Dynamics in Ethnic Conflict,” Political Psychology, Vol. 22, No. 1 (2001), pp. 157-78.

For an alternative interpretation of this dynamic of ethnic conflict, see Sherill Stroschein, Ethnic Struggle, 52

Coexistence, and Democratization in Eastern Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 238. She finds that in Romania and Slovakia, people see also tend to blame ethnic mobilization by another group on manipulation by the other group’s elites. From this she draws the interesting conclusion that this is a mechanism to reduce tensions in the daily interactions with members of the other ethnicity. Rather than blame your neighbor for contentious mobilization, you can blame their elites for manipulating them. This way you can continue shopping at their stores and saying hello on the street. I interpret this tendency to blame rival elites in Northern Ireland very differently. Rather than facilitate good relations, I see it as stripping “the enemy” of their own autonomy and agency. It transforms the other group into one undifferentiated whole who are slaves to their masters. In the context of Protestant-Catholic relations this builds from and feeds into the old idea that Catholics just follow orders. It is at least partially rooted in theological differences between the two faiths, where Protestantism is seen as rooted in personal choice, while Catholicism is rooted in submission (see John Bell, For God, Ulster or Ireland? Religion, Society and Security in Northern Ireland [Belfast: Institute for Conflict Research, 2013], pp. 5, 7, 61-71, 106). Placing the blame on republican elites reinforces the old idea that “Home Rule equals Rome Rule.”

see this, for example, with Robert, a retired factory worker very active in the Orange Order in

West Belfast:

JB: Now is parading at all political? !Robert: Well I don’t think so. Now there was a time it would have been termed that [because of the connection to the UUP], but I’m thinking over the last 30 years it’s not, it used to be everything had to be a politician on the field, but you find a lot of places that wouldn’t be. Yes, there’s members of the Orange Order that are politicians and they’d maybe speak, but it’s normally they’ve done away with the political, excuse me, agenda so. !JB: So does parading help to maintain the union? !Robert: Yes, it does let people see we’re still here and we haven’t gone away and I think that’s one of the main things. !JB: What’s one of the main things? !Robert: That we see that we maintain the union with Great Britain. [It] lets people see we’re still very strong in numbers. … !JB: So if parading relates to unionism, is that not political? Or is that— !Robert: Not really. I would say most of the Orangemen would—Alliance [Party] people not many and some, well, quite a lot of independents, but most of the Orangemen would be of a unionist family background. No, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t say it was political. !

Robert had just told me that helping to maintain the constitutional union between Northern

Ireland and Great Britain is “one of the main things” about parades. It is also, of course, the main

thing in Northern Irish politics. But then when I pushed him to acknowledge the politics involved

in that action he demurred and returned to a discussion of party politics.

We see the same dynamic with Walter, the bandsman from a West Belfast interface

community. He first argues that parades are not political on the grounds that they are unrelated to

political parties:

!188

JB: So some people would argue that parading in general is political. I’m assuming you would disagree. !Walter: Well we don’t have any political agenda. ![…] !Walter: I don’t really know any bands that are [political]. The DUP probably would have had— !JB: Well maybe not party political, but political in the most basic sense of the sovereignty issue or the constitutional issue. Does that play— !Walter: No. !JB: That plays no role in it? !Walter: No, not to a great extent. A lot of people believe that they want to be British, but it wouldn’t be played out in a role within a band. The band wouldn’t play a role of being—of wanting to keep the union, if you know what I mean. !

Political agendas, according to Walter, are things that politicians and political parties have.

Cultural organizations, such as his band, do not have political agendas. In fact, individual

members suppress their political beliefs in the context of the band. But then later in the interview,

I asked Walter if parading has a goal, and he said:

I think it has. It shows that we’re still here. It shows that the people still want to be part of Ulster. They want to remain loyalist, they don’t want to be part of anything else, just our own—This is our wee country. This is our band’s walk on the streets to show that we can do, how many of us there is, and that’s the support there is for our cause, which is loyalism. !

So somehow, though Walter wants to “be part of Ulster,” opposes a united Ireland, and supports

the (political) cause of loyalism, his is not a political agenda. The reason why he, and many

others, construct this contradiction is the subject of the coming section.

!

!189

The Power of the Paradox of Anti-Politics

Thus far I have demonstrated that the anti-political discourse of parades promoted by

participants is paradoxical. But, to paraphrase Lori Beaman, the interesting and important

question is not whether or not parades are political. Rather, what is interesting and important is

“what is achieved, which power relations [are] shifted and preserved, by recasting” parades “as

‘cultural’ rather than” political. What is achieved by the anti-politics paradox, I argue, is the 53

creation of a powerful political tool to be wielded by parade participants and their allies.

Specifically, the paradox provides them with two advantages. First, the anti-politics paradox

protects participants’ self-concept as good people. Participants’ approach to politics is shaped by

an understanding of the world where culture is inherently good and politics is inherently bad. By

forcefully separating culture from politics, the language of anti-politics places parades and

paraders on the moral high ground. Second, I argue that there is political power in the discourse

of anti-politics. This discourse shapes debates and political outcomes because if parades are not

political, they are immune from critique and they are protected from compromise. Participants

use the logic of anti-politics to silence democratic opposition. Participants, therefore, want

parades to be outside of politics because, ironically, there is political power in the claim of

transcending politics. So parades are more than just passively apolitical, they are actively anti-54

political. These two features of the anti-politics discourse explain why there is such a strong and

sustained resistance to thinking of parades as political.

!190

Lori G. Beaman, “Battles over Symbols: The ‘Religion’ of the Minority versus the ‘Culture’ of the Majority,” 53

Journal of Law & Religion, Vol. 28, No. 1 (April 2012), p. 79.

See also Bryan, Orange Parades, esp. chap. 10, “‘Tradition,’ Control, and Resistance.” Ramsey, Music, Emotion 54

and Identity, p. 228, suggests a third reason why bandsmen in particular resist a political label, “music defined as ‘political’ is devalued as music” (emphasis in the original).

Are these not just post hoc rationalizations of their behavior? I believe they are not. The

elements of the anti-politics paradox are what sociologists Gresham Sykes and David Matza call

“techniques of neutralization.” Sykes and Matza argue that techniques of neutralization are

commonly “viewed as [justifications] following deviant behavior and as protecting the individual

from self-blame and the blame of others after the fact. But there is also reason to believe that

they precede deviant behavior and make deviant behavior possible.” Thus the discourse of anti-55

politics more than just rationalizes controversial parading behavior—it enables it.

For most participants, as previously discussed, politics and culture are separate spheres of

social life. Politics is the sphere of politicians, their parties, and their competition for power.

Culture, meanwhile, is the sphere of faith, tradition, and heritage. Layered on top of this

distinction is an implicit normative ranking: culture is good, politics is bad. Culture is pure, 56

politics is corrupt. Culture is about communal identity, politics is about individual greed. This

negative view of politics emerges in interviewees’ language and argumentation. Parades are

“tarnished as being political,” Rachel told me. Politics is dirty and soils parades. For one thing,

politics is about naked self-interest. As George puts it, parades “crept into the political realm

because various politicians have used the political network to assist their own ends.” He puts the

blame on Sinn Féin, but then also criticizes “our political people, who have used it for their own

ends when needed.”

Part of this conceptual division is the idea that “we” do culture, but “they” do politics.

!191

Gresham M. Sykes and David Matza, “Techniques of Neutralization: A Theory of Delinquency,” American 55

Sociological Review, Vol. 22, No. 6 (December 1957), p. 666.

For a general analysis, see Colin Hay, Why We Hate Politics (London: Polity, 2007); also Eliasoph, Avoiding 56

Politics.

Interviewees argue that nationalists have even pushed politics on their own culture. Irish

nationalists politicized, and thus excluded Protestants from, elements of Irish culture such as the

Irish language and St. Patrick’s Day. Likewise, republicans made parades political to serve their 57

political agenda. Dan sums up the general thinking. He was telling me about protests

orchestrated by the IRA, so I asked him, “Why is the IRA interested in this?”

“They want to break the loyalists down. They want a united Ireland,” he replied.

All of the protests, all of the anger, all of the restrictions, then, are part of the republican

agenda for a united Ireland. And they are able to pull it off because republicans are brilliant

strategists and excellent manipulators: “The republican media/PR machine has been so good,” as

Mark puts it. Protestants, on the other hand, are just plain-spoken, honest folk who were

outgunned from every angle, so to speak. Tom explains the problem:

They’re better at manipulating the press, they’re better at spin.… We’re blunt and straight to the point… We call a spade a spade, that’s what it is. We don’t flower it up or dress it up, and sometimes that straight truth needs dressing up. Republicans dress it up, so people tend to believe what republicans are saying. !

So “they,” with their sophisticated “propaganda machine,” play politics, while “we” do what 58

!192

Interview with Frankie, December 4, 2012; Interview with Steven, December 5, 2012. In a speech at the weekly 57

loyalist protest in North Belfast, Grand Master of the Belfast County Orange Lodge, George Chittick, warned Protestants against learning the Irish language because “it’s part of the republican agenda.” According to the BBC, “He said the Irish language had not been ‘political’ in the past, but this had been changed in recent times by republicans.” Mark Simpson, “Orangeman Says Protestants Should Not Learn Irish Language,” BBC News Online, February 1, 2014, available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-26000146. Accessed February 5, 2014. And Gregory Campbell, the DUP MP for East Londonderry, stated, “I will use whatever device I have to use to expose [Sinn Féin’s] duplicity, and their politicising of the Irish language.” Jennifer O’Leary, “Why Is Irish Language Divisive Issue in Northern Ireland?,” BBC News Online, December 17, 2014, available at: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-30517834. Accessed December 17, 2014. Again, Gerry Adams has made statements which support the loyalist claim. For example, he wrote: “The revival of the Irish language as the badge of identity, as a component part of our culture and as the filter through which it is exposed, is a central aspect of the reconquest.” Gerry Adams, Free Ireland: Towards a Lasting Peace (New York: Penguin, 1995), p. 139, quoted in Hugh F. Kearney, Ireland: Contested Ideas of Nationalism and History (New York: NYU Press, 2007), p. 128. Ironically, during the nineteenth century, the Irish language was preserved by Presbyterians.

Interview with Robert, November 28, 2012. Relatedly, there is a widespread sentiment amongst my interviewees 58

that the media is out to get Protestants, in general, and parades, in particular.

we’ve always done, culture.

In bemoaning the politicization of parades, participants also yearn for the lost innocence

of the “good old days,” a mythic past of ethnic harmony under unionist rule. The contrast

between the friendly parades of the halcyon, pre-political era and today’s anger and hyper-

contestation could not be clearer. Scott told me that when unionists controlled the country, they

could parade anywhere. During those years, there were no such thing as contentious parades.

Isaac recalls the era when “the RUC [Royal Ulster Constabulary, an all-Protestant police force]

policed all those parades and there never was really any trouble.” But these statements

inadvertently reveal the truth. The earlier era was not pre-political: parades were always tied up

with politics and political power. It’s just that respondents used to support the politics, since it

permitted them, and in fact helped them, to parade wherever they liked. Indeed, the very reason

that parading is so much more prominent among Protestants than Catholics is that the state

promoted Protestant parades while using expansive legislation to suppress Catholic ones. 59

Parades “have always been closely associated with Protestant political ascendancy,” but 60

the zenith of their power was during the five decades that unionists dominated the Northern

Ireland Parliament in Stormont (1921-1972). During the Stormont years, Protestant were

politically supreme, and at the center of their hegemony was the Orange Order. Northern Ireland

was “the Orange state” and loyalist parades were “rituals of state.” The general mood was 61

!193

Bryan, Orange Parades, p. 61; and Jarman, Material Conflicts, p. 72. One of the laws used to restrict Catholic 59

parades was the Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Act of 1922, about which an Apartheid-era South African Justice Minister said that he would “trade all the coercive powers at his disposal ‘for one clause of the Northern Ireland Special Powers Act.’” Bourke, Peace in Ireland, p. 46.

Smithey, Unionists, Loyalists, and Conflict Transformation, p. 11660

Michael Farrell, Northern Ireland: The Orange State (London: Pluto Press, 1976); and Bryan, Orange Parades, 61

esp. chap. 5, “Rituals of State.”

captured in a well-known statement by James Craig, Northern Ireland’s first Prime Minister: “I

have always said I am an Orangeman first and a politician and Member of this Parliament

afterwards. … All I boast of is that we are a Protestant Parliament and a Protestant State.” The 62

Orange Order, along with the other institutions of unionist hegemony, actively worked to exclude

Catholics from political power and labor markets and to maintain Catholics’ “degraded form of

citizenship.” A leading Northern Irish human rights organization, points out the bitter irony that 63

while the loyal orders extol and exercise their own rights and liberties, their “political

involvement… has often served to deny civil, religious and political liberties to others.” And 64

though loyalist parades were generally used to symbolize and display Protestants’ privileged

position, at times they were creatively used to maintain it. During the late 1960s, for example,

loyal orders would organize “annual parades” for the same time and location as planned civil

rights demonstrations, forcing the government to prohibit both marches. 65

This history, however, is conveniently ignored. As I discussed previously, participants’

general understanding of the historical shift from Catholic quiescence to protest is that Catholics’

attitudes changed, not that the balance of power in government changed. This is reflected in the

heartfelt desire expressed by several participants that one day Catholics would come to love

parades as much as Protestants do. As Walter says: “I wish they could feel the passion that we

!194

Parliamentary Debates, Northern Ireland, 1933/34, Vol. 16, Column 1091 and 1095, April 24, 1934. The Hansard 62

record is fully digitized and available online at: http://stormontpapers.ahds.ac.uk/.

Bourke, Peace in Ireland, p. 11.63

Pat Finucane Centre, For God and Ulster: An Alternative Guide to the Loyal Orders (Derry: Pat Finucane Centre, 64

1997), available online at: http://www.patfinucanecentre.org/archive/loyal.html.

Jarman, Material Conflicts, 76-7; Tilly, Politics of Collective Violence, p. 125. Also Eric Kaufmann, 65

“Demographic Change and Conflict in Northern Ireland: Reconciling Qualitative and Quantitative Evidence,” Ethnopolitics, Vol. 10, Nos. 3-4 (September-November 2011), pp. 381-2.

feel.” Howie states:

I would love the day, and I think it probably does happen, but it’s not being reported—I want to see the day when the Catholic community can come out and enjoy it. Enjoy the spectacle of it and enjoy the music of the bands. That’s the way it used to be whenever I was growing up… We would have traveled into Belfast, whenever we were young teenagers, and them guys [Catholic friends] would come with us to watch the parade. !

If only the future would be like the past, everything will return to normal. For many paraders, the

solution to current problems surrounding parades is for Catholics to accept, or even embrace,

loyalist parades, just like they did in their memories and interpretations of the past.

There is a second aspect to the language of anti-politics and the logic of de-politicization:

there is power in anti-politics. This power is premised on the idea that culture transcends politics

and is therefore exempt from the practices of democracy, such as critique, debate, and

compromise. Culture and cultural practices, as anti-political phenomena, are simply beyond the

reach of democratic processes and procedures. The discourses of culture and tradition are thereby

a free pass to act in ways that would not normally be acceptable in society. But, as traditional

cultural practices, parades simply have to be accepted.

To show how the discourse of anti-politics is used to silence criticism and dismiss

compromise, I will focus on two of the most illuminating things said to me in all my interviews.

The first is from Alexander, a senior member of the Orange Order and retired unionist politician.

Sitting in his comfortable living room, sipping milky tea his wife had served us earlier, I asked

him, “Are parades at all political?” Alexander replied:

I don’t think that they seem to be political. Some can be. I mean, there have been political processions in Belfast, but the Orange parade is not a political parade as such. The speeches designated by the Grand Lodge, the resolutions to which the speakers are asked to speak as to loyalty, as citizens to the United Kingdom. That

!195

could be perceived as political if you don’t like the United Kingdom. [My emphasis.] !

In his response, Alexander first distinguishes Orange parades from political parades. Then, he

states that that the resolutions proclaimed at parades are not political, rather they are merely

about citizenship and loyalty to the state. His last quoted sentence, however, is the most

illuminating: “That could be perceived as political if you don’t like the United Kingdom.” Seeing

politics where there is not any is a pathology caused by hatred of the union. It has nothing to do

with the parades themselves. In other words, we need not take these people seriously, because

they are not serious people. By calling parades political, this Orange doyen argues, the opponents

of parades show their true cards.

The second remark comes from Rachel, the university-educated, female band member

from East Belfast. I already quoted a piece of it earlier, but reproduce the entire segment here:

They’re tarnished as being political because the other side would see that as being political, but when you’re in them with your other friends, they’re not political, they’re cultural. One thing that keeps getting told off is that… this is a political problem. It’s not a political problem, it’s a cultural problem. But it’s ingrained in the minds of people that it’s a political problem because Sinn Féin always puts it down as being over politics. I don’t see— You know, fair enough, people see Ardoyne as being a political tension point because who’s the first people to come out and stand by? It’s politicians. But it’s cultural, they’re not respective of our culture. [My emphasis.] !

She begins by contrasting the cultural experience of parades with the negative and false

perception of parades as political. Therefore, the problems surrounding parades are cultural

problems, not political problems. And then she identifies the real problem: “they’re not

respective of our culture.” The crux of the issue is that republicans do not like Protestants, end of

story. The implication being that no political solution is possible. Dialogue will not fix the

!196

problem, reason will not fix the problem, compromise will not fix the problem. These are

political hammers that simply cannot bend this cultural nail. The logic of anti-politics leads to no

other conclusion. Opponents cannot have a legitimate problem with parades because as cultural

events there is nothing to object to, unless you object to the entire premise of Protestants in your

presence. This is made clear in a large banner I saw carried by a group of women in the 2013

July Twelfth parade and displayed by parade supporters in Ardoyne: “END HATRED OF

ORANGE CULTURE.” The message is clear: opposition to parades is caused by and reflects

hatred of Protestant culture.

The discourse of tradition and cultural anti-politics does a lot of work for participants. It

justifies their actions and delegitimizes opposition. It explains why other people object to them

and simultaneously dismisses their objections from the agenda, thereby shaping the political

arena. Acknowledging the politics embedded in parades opens the door to a number of distasteful

outcomes, including a tarnished self-conception and compromising a cherished tradition. The 66

platform of anti-politics, conversely, keeps the door tightly sealed. Therein lies the power of anti-

politics.

!The Ritual Foundations of the Paradox of Anti-Politics

Nevertheless, how is it possible that participants maintain the paradox of anti-politics?

Strong personal and political incentives to sustain it notwithstanding, how can they determinedly

resist understanding parades as political actions given the political claims and consequences of

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Further, Ross, Cultural Contestation, p. 14, notes that “each side deeply fears that recognizing the claims of the 66

other invalidates their own.” Jennifer Todd, “Two Traditions in Unionist Political Culture,” Irish Political Studies, Vol. 2, No. 1 (1987), p. 19, argues that this trait is especially acute among unionists.

parades that many of them all but outright acknowledge? In this section, I argue that the

foundation of the paradox is the ritual nature of parades. As rituals, parades provide participants

with alternative (and genuinely apolitical) reasons to participate as well as with symbolic

ambiguity that supports multiple and conflicting interpretations of the events. Further, rituals

nurture the idea that within them, the normal connection between means and ends is broken.

Finally, the repetitive and formal qualities of rituals suffuse parades with a feeling of invariance,

feeding the idea that parades never were and are not now political. This impression of continuity

with the past is also a source of legitimacy in contemporary society. These four features of 67

ritual sustain the paradox of anti-politics, against evidence to the contrary. And without the claim

to anti-politics, parades could not take advantage of the defense mechanisms enumerated above.

Thus, the intractability of the conflict over parades—and all of the hostility and violence that has

resulted from it—is supported by parades’ ritual nature.

Parades, like all rituals, provide process-oriented motives to participate. The achievement

of process-oriented benefits, such as emotional energy and a sense of belonging, is unrelated to

the consequences of the action. Therefore, participants’ own understanding of why they

participate has nothing to do with the political effects of their actions, such as ethnic polarization,

damage to the peace process, protests, and sometimes violence. For participants, these political

outcomes might be an unwelcome, tolerated, or happily welcomed, but in my interviews I found

no evidence that they are actively sought. The political consequences are a byproduct of parades,

not a motivation to act. Their motivations are the emotions, solidarities, and opportunities for

self-expression that are intrinsic in the very act of taking part in a symbol-laden, traditional ritual

!198

Hobsbawm and Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition; and Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (New 67

York: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

celebration of the nation along with family, friends, and members of the imagined community.

Thus there is a disconnect between the individual-level causes and the social functions and

consequences of parades.

Rituals, secondly, provide participants with politically useful ambiguity. As Anthony

Cohen’s discussion of symbols makes clear, even “commonly accepted symbol[s]” hold a “range

of meanings.” This ambiguity is, in fact, the key to their utility: “Symbols are effective because 68

they are imprecise.” The symbolic ambiguity of parades means that Protestants and Catholics 69

can hold different, even contradictory meanings of parades. Paraders and protesters can read

parades in opposite ways, and each can still believe themselves entirely correct—and indeed

each can be correct. This view of ritual stands in contrast to that of Durkheim and the neo-70

Durkheimians. They view society as coherent and rituals as a major source of social 71

integration. In this model, there is little room for incompatible interpretations of a ritual. But as

Lukes points out in his critique of the neo-Durkheimians, in societies such as Northern Ireland

“value consensus is manifestly absent or minimal.” In such divided societies, Lukes—writing 72

!199

Anthony P. Cohen, The Symbolic Construction of Community (London: Routledge, 1985), p. 15. Original 68

emphasis.

Ibid., p. 21.69

This multivocality and ambiguity of rituals can be exploited by elites to use them for controversial purposes while 70

maintaining that they are simply supporting a legitimate cultural practice with no negative connotations. Beyond giving them political cover, it makes it hard for the government “to ban the event, for who could possibly object to the performance of a religious obligation, the raising of the national flag, or the celebration of a national day?” As Wilkinson notes, most states “institutionally privilege[] some forms of mobilization—and in particular, ‘traditional’ religious ceremonies and processions—over others.” Steven I. Wilkinson, Votes and Violence: Electoral Competition and Ethnic Riots in India (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 23-24.

Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, Karen E. Fields, trans. (New York: Free Press, 1995 71

[1912]); and, for example, Edward Shils and Michael Young, “The Meaning of the Coronation,” Sociological Review, Vol. 1, No. 2 (December 1953), pp. 63-81; Robert N. Bellah, “Civil Religion in America,” Daedalus, Vol. 96, No. 1 (Winter 1967), pp. 1-21.

Steven Lukes, “Political Ritual and Social Integration,” Sociology, Vol. 9 (May 1975), p. 300.72

specifically about loyalist parades—argues, “Ritual here exacerbates social conflict and works

against (some aspects of) social integration.” Thus, given that Cohen argues that even 73

participants in a ritual need not share its meaning, it is entirely logical that people on opposite 74

sides of Northern Ireland’s sectarian division do not share parades’ meaning. Ambiguity means

that just because many Catholics believe that parades are sectarian and hateful does not mean

that Protestants see them the same way. 75

The ritual nature of parades also supports participants’ understanding of their

politicization. Recall the narrative that paraders tell to explain current controversies: parades had

been peaceful for centuries until the republican movement decided to whip up opposition during

the Troubles. This story has the effect of exculpating parades and deflecting blame for the unrest

of the last two decades. But it is buttressed by certain features of ritual. Since parades and other

rituals project a sense of continuity with the past, they imply that any change could not have 76

been internal; rather, it must have come from outside the parading community.

The paradox of anti-politics is further made possible by the way that ritual suggests a

hazy connection between means and ends. Rituals are non-instrumental acts, they entail “a

qualitative departure from the normal intentional character” of action. As Connerton writes, 77

rituals are “expressive acts rather than instrumental acts, in the sense that they are either not

!200

Ibid.73

Cohen, Symbolic Construction of Community, p. 55.74

Ross, Cultural Contestation, p. 63, emphasizes the role of “divergent group psychocultural narratives” in 75

producing such contradictory interpretations of events.

Connerton, How Societies Remember, p. 45, argues that commemorative rituals, such as many loyalist parades, 76

“do not simply imply continuity with the past but explicitly claim such continuity.”

Caroline Humphrey and James Laidlaw, The Archetypal Actions of Ritual: A Theory of Ritual Illustrated by Jain 77

Rite of Worship (Oxford: Claredon Press, 1994), p. 89.

directed to a strategic end, or if they are so directed, as with fertility rites, they fail to achieve

their strategic aim.” Rituals have “no obvious empirical goals”: 78

There is no clear point in walking the ox round the dancers—or, for that matter, the dancers around the scene. More generally, in rituals one typically washes instruments that are already clean, one enters rooms to exit them straightaway, one talks to interlocutors that are manifestly absent, and so forth. … True, a given ritual generally has a specific purpose (e.g., healing a particular person) but the set of sequences that compose the ritual are not connected to this goal in the same way as subactions connect to subgoals in ordinary behavior. 79

!We can see the traces of this ruptured means and ends in the interviews. For example, when

Walter says, “People in the band, yes, they want to keep the union, but they wouldn’t use the

band as a means towards an end.”

Politics, in contrast, is fundamentally instrumental. Politics is the pursuit of power, and

political action is toward that end. Pursuing “‘means’ for the attainment of the actor’s own

rationally pursued and calculated ends” is Weber’s very definition of instrumentally rational

social action. By portraying itself as non-instrumental, ritual thus propels the appearance of 80

being anti-political. Ritual stands against politics, each operating with a different logic. So

because parades are rituals, they cannot be political.

Together all of these features make possible and validate participants’ experience of

parades as apolitical. As Rachel makes clear, “When you’re in them with your other friends,

they’re not political, they’re cultural.” Parades do not feel political, they feel cultural, traditional,

!201


Pierre Lienard and Pascal Boyer, “Whence Collective Rituals? A Cultural Selection Model of Ritualized 79

Behavior,” American Anthropologist, Vol. 108, No 4 (December 2006), p. 816.

Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich, trans. 80

and eds. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), p. 24.

and ritualistic—the opposite of political. Therefore the complaints by others that parades are

sectarian, intimidating, triumphalist, or provocative—i.e., political—do not resonate with

participants’ own experience.

Paraders, for example, understand that Catholics think that parades are about confronting

Catholics, but their own experience tells them that this is not true. As Ben says: “The Catholic

community has got it in its head [that] it’s all about them: this is us stating our dominance over

them.… [But, it’s not.] It’s just basically us being us. It’s as simple as that.” Ben’s language

inadvertently echoes a distinction that Schuessler makes between instrumental and non-

instrumental behavior. Instrumental behavior, he argues, is characterized by “Doing—individuals

perform X in order to do Y”—whereas non-instrumental, expressive behavior is characterized by

“identification, attachment, or Being—individuals perform X as this is how they become X-

performers.” Ben thus unwittingly illustrates the distinction by contrasting “us stating our 81

dominance over them”—quintessential Doing—with “us being us.”

One element of the parading experience emphasized by several interviewees is that when

they are marching, Catholics do not even cross their mind—except for the minutes it takes to

walk past any protesters. Mikey, for instance, describes how he sees it:

You’re out with your friends… It’s a social thing. It’s not us going, “Yea, we’re going to annoy the Catholics! Yo! We’re all Protestants! Yo!” It’s not like that. … The parade is like a gathering of friends. … There’s this perception [among] nationalists and republicans—I don’t know whether it’s Catholics in general—… that I’m getting up in the morning and I got to bed on a Thursday night and wake up Saturday morning a sectarian bigot, and I’m going down to annoy Catholics. You don’t care about that. Nobody cares about their religion. I don’t care about them, I’m not thinking of anything. I’m not even thinking of the Protestant religion. I’m getting up and I know I’m going out… with my [Orange] lodge, with

!202

Alexander A. Schuessler, A Logic of Expressive Choice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 30.81

all my friends. !For Mikey, the contrast between the perception of parades and the actual experience of parades is

stark. Like Ben, he is fully aware of the Catholic interpretation of parades, but has never

observed it in his own involvement. Parades are an enjoyable time spent with friends; Catholics

do not enter the equation. Thus, to paraders like Ben and Mikey, parades do not feel in anyway

political. 82

Of course, ritual is not the only way to create or maintain a politics of anti-politics. The

human rights movement, for instance, has generated an ideological (and perhaps pragmatic) anti-

politics premised on a “moral discourse centered on pain and suffering.” Political theorist 83

Wendy Brown writes that human rights:

generally presents itself as something of an antipolitics—a pure defense of the innocent and the powerless against power, a pure defense of the individual against immense and potentially cruel or despotic machineries of culture, state, war, ethnic conflict, tribalism, patriarchy, and other mobilizations or instantiations of collective power against individuals. 84

!It is human rights’ very anti-politics, she argues, that allows it to pursue political projects (such

as “liberal imperialism”) unquestioned. Historian Samuel Moyn also finds that the human rights

movement and its predecessors mobilized the language of anti-politics to its advantage. For

example, in discussing Warsaw Pact dissidents of the 1970s, he writes: “In reality, of course, the

movement ‘was political in the sense that it threatened the foundations of Soviet power.’ But it

!203

See also Ramsey, Music, Emotion and Identity, p. 163.82

Wendy Brown, “‘The Most We Can Hope For…’: Human Rights and the Politics of Fatalism,” South Atlantic 83

Quarterly, Vol. 103, No. 2/3 (Spring/Summer 2004), p. 453. On the anti-politics of human rights’ cousin, humanitarianism, see Michael Barnett, Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011), esp. pp. 212-219.

Ibid.84

was based on a politics that worked precisely by claiming to transcend politics.” 85

The moralism of human rights that Brown and Moyn identify as anti-political has been

similarly observed in other social movements. Deborah Gould identifies and theorizes the role of

moralism in the fracturing of the direct-action AIDS group ACT UP. She finds that moralism can

supplant real political dialogue, since moralizing claims question the very essence of your

opponent. Therefore, covering an issue with moralizing rhetoric removes it from the possibility

of political debate, persuasion, bargains, or compromise. 86

In The Anti-Politics Machine, James Ferguson argues that economic development

officials in Lesotho cultivated an anti-politics based on scientific authority. He finds that the anti-

political, technocratic rhetoric of economic development is a source of power for the

development industry. He concludes that “the ‘development’ apparatus” is an “anti-politics

machine” whose trick is “the suspension of politics from even the most sensitive political

operations.” By using its variation on Midas’s Touch, “a ‘development’ project can end up

performing extremely sensitive political operations involving the entrenchment and expansion of

institutional state power almost invisibly, under the cover of a neutral, technical mission to which

no one can object.” 87

!204

Samuel Moyn, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), pp. 85

136-7. He is quoting Philip Boobbyer, Conscience, Dissent and Reform in Soviet Russia (New York: Routledge, 2005), p. 89. Looking specifically at the Polish opposition, David Ost, Solidarity and the Politics of Anti-Politics: Opposition and Reform in Poland since 1968 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990), pp. 16-17, argues that not only did they need to reject state-centered politics, they wanted to abandon state-centered politics in favor of civil society. “Anti-politics… is not a negation of politics,” he writes, “but a relocation of the political public from state to society. It is this ‘anti-political’ project that is crucial to understanding Solidarity’s practice.”

Deborah B. Gould, Moving Politics: Emotion and ACT UP’s Fight against AIDS (Chicago: University of Chicago 86

Press, 2009), pp. 378-92.

James Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine: “Development,” Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in 87

Lesotho (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990), p. 256.

Presenting an issue as anti-political operates in all three approaches to power identified

by scholars. Within Dahl’s one-dimensional approach to power, the discourse of anti-politics 88

can be used to influence decision-makers. It is a resource to be wielded by A in her bargaining 89

with B to resolve a conflict over issue J. Within the two-dimensional approach to power

elaborated by Bachrach and Baratz, claiming an issue as anti-political is a way to get that issue

off the agenda in the first place. The second face of power is where this discourse’s influence 90

really takes shape. There may still be a conflict between A and B over issue J, but J is never put

up for debate since it is not a political issue and therefore B is prevented from raising the issue in

political fora. Within the three-dimensional approach to power theorized by Lukes, the discourse

of anti-politics affects B so profoundly that she does not even consider J, which is objectively

detrimental to her, to be a problem. Here too the power of anti-politics can be great. B cannot 91

even get to the point of conceiving that J is detrimental because she is convinced that J exists

outside the realm of political conflict.

This source of power is not lost on many groups and causes who try to use it to their

advantage in the defense of culture and traditional practices. The rhetoric of anti-politics is

commonly used in an attempt to influence political outcomes related to cultural issues. For

example, historian David Hollinger argues that Americans tend to “give religious ideas a pass,”

meaning that they follow the “convention of protecting religious ideas from the same kind of

!205

My understanding was greatly improved by the discussion in John Gaventa, Power and Powerlessness: 88

Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1980), pp. 5-20.

Robert A. Dahl, “The Concept of Power,” Behavioral Science, Vol. 2, No. 3 (July 1957), pp. 201-15.89

Peter Bachrach and Morton S. Baratz, “Two Faces of Power,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 56, No. 4 90

(December 1962), pp. 947-52.

Steven Lukes, Power: A Radical View (London: Macmillan, 1974).91

critical scrutiny to which we commonly subject ideas about almost everything else.” This

convention is not only founded on the “virtues of decency and humility,” but also a

“constitutional tradition that does indeed treat religious ideas as a distinct category…. [And] a

history of religious diversity that renders silence a good way to keep the peace.” The result of 92

this convention is that American politicians frequently justify their positions on religious grounds

and their critics cannot question their reasoning. Religion is a “conversation-stopper,” as Richard

Rorty suggests. Proponents of controversial practices such as female genital cutting and flying 93

the Confederate flag in the American south appeal to culture and tradition to defend their actions.

By shifting the debate to culture and tradition, these actors as arguing that society needs to give

them a pass. By appealing to culture and tradition, they are moving the debate away from

politics.

We see the same logic at work with loyalist parades. If parades are political, then they are

open to normal democratic politics and processes. Compromise becomes a necessary part of

doing business. Accepting restraints and restrictions on parades becomes inevitable. And,

possibly worst of all, to be political is to acknowledge the legitimacy of nationalist opposition. It

means taking their objections seriously, which in turn requires a hard look in the mirror and the

possibility of seeing something unexpected and undesirable. The distinction between “good,

cultural us” and “bad, political them” disappears, and the moral landscape is suddenly level.

This, then, is the power provided by the anti-politics of culture and tradition. It protects parades

!206

David A. Hollinger, “Religious Ideas: Should They Be Critically Engaged or Given a Pass?” Representations, Vol. 92

101, No. 1 (Winter 2008), pp. 145-6.

Richard Rorty, “Religion as Conversation-Stopper,” Common Knowledge, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Spring 1994), pp. 1-6; 93

cited in Hollinger, “Religious Ideas,” p. 145.

from the inevitable, distasteful compromises inherent in democratic politics; and it protects

participants’ moral vision of the world. The source of that power is the ritual nature of parades.

!Conclusion

“When,” ask Taylor, Rupp, and Gamson, “is cultural performance a form of protest?” 94

Their answer is that three factors “distinguish between events staged purely for entertainment

and those staged for political ends”: contestation, intentionality, and collective identity. That is, 95

the event must contest the dominant order, the actors must intend this contestation, and the actors

must hold a collective identity. This model is a useful corrective that helps us expand the 96

boundaries of what we consider political action. It shows that events that look “merely cultural”

from the outside, can be political on the inside. But this chapter has shown that in loyalist

parades, the opposite is the case. From the outside, parades look deeply political, but on the

inside, participants see them as “merely cultural.” Participants lack intentional political

contestation.

Political rituals, Pfaff and Yang argue, are double-edged because they can be used to

!207



Ibid., p. 108.95

Also Leila J. Rupp and Verta Taylor, Drag Queens at the 801 Cabaret (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 96

2003); Verta Taylor and Nella Van Dyke, “‘Get up, Stand up’: Tactical Repertoires of Social Movements,” in David A. Snow, Sarah A. Soule, and Hanspeter Kriesi, eds., The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004), pp. 262-293; and Verta Taylor, Katrina Kimport, Nella Van Dyke, and Ellen Ann Andersen, “Culture and Mobilization: Tactical Repertoires, Same-Sex Weddings, and the Impact on Gay Activism,” American Sociological Review, Vol. 74, No. 6 (December 2009), pp. 865-890.

support the regime or the opposition. This has long been true of loyalist parades, but this 97

chapter highlights a second way in which political rituals have a double-edged character. One on

hand, as Taylor and coauthors demonstrate, rituals and other cultural performances can make

political claims. But on the other hand, as I showed in this chapter, rituals and other cultural

performances can mask political claims. The ritual character of parades allows participants to

disavow their political claims and consequences. It allows them to make a political action

apolitical, even anti-political. As rituals, parades provide participants with process-oriented

reasons to act and symbolic ambiguity that muddles their meaning. This does not diminish the

political quality of loyalist parades. Events can be unintentionally political, particularly when 98

political opponents interpret them so—as is clearly the case here. But it does push us to clarify

how culture is used as a political strategy. By suggesting that cultural performances are can be

useful to promote political claims, Taylor and colleagues reveal one edge of the sword. By

suggesting that cultural performances can be useful to hide political claims, I uncover the other.

!208

Steven Pfaff and Guobin Yang, “Double-Edged Rituals and the Symbolic Resources of Collective Action: Political 97

Commemorations and the Mobilization of Protest in 1989,” Theory and Society, Vol. 30, No. 4 (August 2001), pp. 539-589.

Olivier Fillieule, “The Independent Psychological Effects of Participation in Demonstrations,” Mobilization, Vol. 98

17, No. 3 (September 2012), p. 236; and Rupp and Taylor, Drag Queens at the 801 Cabaret, p. 218.

Chapter Seven For God and Ulster or Private Payoff?

Assessing the Role of Collective and Selective Incentives ! This chapter assesses the evidence for plausible alternative explanations for loyalist

parade participation: that participation follows the instrumental logics of ethnic rivalry or

collective action. In order to rigorously test these arguments, I rely on more evidence that I have

in the previous two chapters. In particular, I draw on data from parade participants and

comparable nonparticipants so that I can make claims about systematic differences between the

two groups. Sampling negative cases is a standard method in modern social science that ensures

variation in the dependent variable, but existing studies of loyalist parades and other “cultural 1

forms of political expression” have only collected data from participants, the positive cases. 2

This methodological shortcoming limits the claims they can make. In research on loyalist

parades, both ethnographic and quantitative scholars have failed to sample comparable 3 4

!209

Gary King, Robert O. Keohane, and Sidney Verba, Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative 1

Research (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 129-37.



Neil Jarman, Material Conflicts: Parades and Visual Displays in Northern Ireland (Oxford: Berg, 1997); Dominic 3

Bryan, Orange Parades: The Politics of Ritual, Tradition, and Control (London: Pluto, 2000); and Gordon Ramsey, Music, Emotion and Identity in Ulster Marching Bands: Flutes, Drums and Loyal Sons (Bern: Peter Lang, 2011).

The most systematic quantitative study is James W. McAuley, Jonathan Tonge, and Andrew Mycock, Loyal to the 4

Core?: Orangeism and Britishness in Northern Ireland (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2011), but even they only sample members of the Orange Order.

nonparticipants. The same is true for research on contentious cultural events in general. Even 5

one the most systematic and methodologically sophisticated studies of participants in cultural

contentious politics, Verta Taylor et al.’s research on same-sex weddings in San Francisco, is

limited by this sampling issue. They “conducted a random survey of all participants in the San

Francisco weddings,” but acknowledge that a “sample of nonparticipant gays and lesbians would

be virtually impossible to obtain.” I address this by exploiting Belfast’s sectarian housing 6

segregation to construct a random sample of participants and comparable nonparticipants.

Thus, the rest of this chapter overcomes previous methodological limitations by using

quantitative and qualitative data collected from participants and nonparticipants. In the next

section, I explain how I constructed a random sample to survey. In short, I assume that every

person from a Protestant background is a potential parade participant and therefore take a

random sample of households in Protestant neighborhoods. Belfast’s severe sectarian segregation

makes it possible to generate a pool of potential paraders of whom some choose to parade. I can

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Taylor, Rupp, and Gamson, “Performing Protest”; Leila J. Rupp and Verta Taylor, Drag Queens at the 801 Cabaret 5

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003); and Suzanne Staggenborg and Amy Lang, “Culture and Ritual in the Montreal Women’s Movement,” Social Movement Studies, Vol. 6, No. 2 (September 2007), pp. 177-194. Despite increasing methodological sophistication, selecting on the dependent variable is a general problem in research on participation in contentious politics. For important exceptions, see Doug McAdam, “Recruitment to High-Risk Activism: The Case of Freedom Summer,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 92, No. 1 (July 1986), pp. 64-90 Bert Klandermans and Dirk Oegema, “Potentials, Networks, Motivations, and Barriers: Steps Towards Participation in Social Movements,” American Sociological Review, Vol. 52, No. 4 (August 1987), pp. 519-531; Doug McAdam and Ronnelle Paulsen, “Specifying the Relationship between Social Ties and Activism,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 99, No. 3 (November 1993), pp. 640-667; Sharon Erickson Nepstad and Christian Smith, “Rethinking Recruitment to High-Risk/High-Cost Activism: The Case of the Nicaragua Exchange,” Mobilization, Vol. 4, No. 1 (April 1999): 25-40; and Alan Schussman and Sarah A. Soule, “Process and Protest: Accounting for Individual Protest Participation,” Social Forces, Vol. 84, No. 2 (December 2005), 1083-1108. Macro-level studies that focus on the event, rather than the individual, also fail to sample comparable non-events. See Steven I. Wilkinson, Votes and Violence: Electoral Competition and Ethnic Riots in India (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 38-39; though Wilkinson tries to address the issue in Steven I. Wilkinson, “Which Group Identities Lead to Most Violence? Evidence from India,” in Stathis N. Kalyvas, Ian Shapiro, and Tarek Masoud, eds., Order, Conflict, and Violence (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 271-300.

Verta Taylor, Katrina Kimport, Nella Van Dyke, and Ellen Ann Andersen, “Culture and Mobilization: Tactical 6

Repertoires, Same-Sex Weddings, and the Impact on Gay Activism,” American Sociological Review, Vol. 74, No. 6 (December 2009), pp. 872, 873 n. 6.

therefore compare those who parade to their neighbors who do not. I then present the texture of

the quantitative data, reporting descriptive statistics about paraders, parade attenders, and parade

non-attenders. Third, I test two prominent existing theories of participation, ethnic rivalry and

collective action. Using the survey data, supplemented by qualitative data, I show that, contrary

to the predictions of the ethnic rivalry approach, participants are neither more pro-Protestant nor

more anti-Catholic than nonparticipants, and, contrary to the predictions of collective action

approach, participants do not receive material benefits nor do pre-existing social ties increase the

likelihood of participation. The quantitative data do provide some support for the collective

action approach’s expectation of social sanctioning, but the qualitative data are not consistent.

!The Survey

To collect individual-level data, I conducted a randomized survey in nine Protestant

neighborhoods in Belfast. The interviews were conducted face-to-face by local interviewers from

late May to mid-August 2013. In total, 228 valid surveys were collected. In this section, I

describe the survey methodology in detail, explaining the choices I made and constraints I faced.

!Selecting Neighborhoods

The purpose of the survey was to determine who participates in parades and who does not

participate in parades. Since loyalist parades are done by the Protestant community, I needed

neighborhoods that are predominantly Protestant. A nationally representative sample would

include many Catholics who are not potential participants and therefore not a comparable group

of nonparticipants. Due to high levels of sectarian housing segregation, finding Protestant

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neighborhoods is easy. I used the 2011 Northern Irish census to restrict my search to census 7

wards with a Protestant majority. Secondly, I wanted to maximize the likelihood of gaining 8

parade participants in the sample, so I needed neighborhoods with high concentrations of

participants. I based these decisions on conversations with academic experts and leaders of

parading organizations, as well as my own observations. Given the working class dominance of

!212

Table 7.1. Information on the Neighborhoods Included in the Survey

Census informationComparing: % British

Comparing: % Employed

full-time

Usually resident

populationHouse-holds

% Protestant

Sample (Source: Survey) Survey Census Survey Census

East Belfast 1 1596 652 82.1% 39 65.8% 75.9% 53.9% 48.9%

East Belfast 2 1538 625 87.1% 34 67.7% 80.8% 44.1% 55.2%

East Belfast 3 1401 655 67.5% 13 61.5% 65.5% 16.7% 38.0%

South Belfast 1 933 485 70.4% 13 77.8% 70.1% 16.7% 33.6%

South Belfast 2 3425 1770 62.0% 34 93.9% 60.0% 29.4% 40.9%

South Belfast 3 809 394 78.9% 50 89.8% 73.8% 44.0% 37.6%

West Belfast 1 2574 1126 85.0% 26 96.2% 80.9% 34.8% 40.0%

West Belfast 2 1127 594 89.7% 10 90.0% 85.0% 11.1% 26.7%

West Belfast 3 472 244 87.3% 9 100.0% 77.1% 33.3% 33.9%

Note: The census data are the sums of the Small Areas which I sampled in a neighborhood, and not necessarily the entire geographic area which locals consider their neighborhood. Also note that the percentages of British and full-time employment from the census are for the entire population of the area, while my survey only sampled Protestants. We would expect, therefore, that the percent identifying as British should be higher in the survey than the census, which it is in six of the nine areas. Sources: 2011 Northern Ireland Census. Usually resident population and Households: Households (Statistical Geographies); % Protestant: Religion or Religion Brought Up In: KS212NI (statistical geographies); % British National Identity (Classification 2): KS203NI (statistical geographies); % full-time: Economic Activity - Males: KS602NI (statistical geographies).

Housing segregation means that almost every neighborhood in Belfast is considered either Protestant or Catholic. 7

See Peter Shirlow and Brendan Murtagh, Belfast: Segregation, Violence, and the City (London: Pluto, 2006); Brendan Murtagh, “Ethno-Religious Segregation in Post-Conflict Belfast,” Built Environment, Vol. 37, No. 2 (2011), pp. 213-225; and Christopher D. Lloyd and Ian Shuttleworth, “Residential Segregation in Northen Ireland 2001: Assessing the Value of Exploring Spatial Variation,” Environment and Planning A, Vol. 44, No. 1 (2012), pp. 52-67.

Of the 40 Small Areas where the survey took place, only one had less than 50 percent Protestant population (it had 8

48.7 percent). Thirty-one were over 75 percent Protestant. All of the neighborhoods would be considered Protestant, Unionist, or Loyalist by locals.

contemporary parading, the survey mainly took place in the Victorian- and Edwardian-era red-

brick terrace houses and the mid-twentieth century public housing estates. However, in order to

gain a more representative sample, I also included two middle-class Protestant neighborhoods,

neither of which was known to be a hotbed of parading.

The reality of working-class neighborhoods in Belfast meant that I could not simply pick

areas that matched the criteria I was looking for and begin interviewing. The vast housing estates

of Northern Ireland are generally controlled by the UDA or UVF paramilitaries and working in

these areas meant gaining the consent from the local gatekeepers. In some neighborhoods, I first

approached the gatekeepers and then assembled a team of interviewers, in others it was reversed.

Working with the gatekeepers caused both ethical and methodological dilemmas. On the

one hand, I needed their approval to conduct the survey in their area. But this raised the ethical

concern that my research teams could be viewed as coercive. I could not accept that my

interviewers might knock on a door and have the resident feel that they had to answer “or else.”

This also raised a methodological concern in that respondents might feel that they need to give

the answer that the paramilitaries want to hear. For both these reasons I worked hard to ensure

that I employed interviewers were who not be seen as affiliated with a paramilitary. One effect of

this was that a majority of interviewers were female.

The third issue I faced in choosing a neighborhood to sample was finding interviewers.

The neighborhoods in which I was interested in working tend to be highly insular. Locals often

described Belfast to me as a collection of villages. Like in a village, within each neighborhood,

everyone knows each other and their business, and is suspicious of outsiders. This limited my

choice of interviewers. I consulted with many local academics, community activists, and

!213

residents, and almost uniformly they told me that I needed to use interviewers that were from

each neighborhood.

There were two main reasons why I could not just hire and train university students and

send them out into the neighborhoods to conduct the survey. First, there is the issue of getting the

door open. I was told repeatedly that respondents would be very suspicious of interviewers they

did not recognize and unlikely to complete the questionnaire. Second, several people 9

independently mentioned that they thought it could put the interviewers at risk. Residents

suspicious of outsiders traipsing the neighborhood with clipboards could warn the interviewers to

leave or even call the local paramilitary. Not everyone agreed with this assessment, but enough

people I trusted thought it was a concern, so I decided it could not hire a single team to use

everywhere. Rather, I hired and trained people to conduct the survey in the neighborhood in

which they lived or worked. Therefore, in order to work in a neighborhood, I needed to find a

team of interviewers who could conduct the survey there without problem. Of course, there is a

trade-off in this decision. While using local interviewers meant that selected respondents were

more likely to participate, they also might not to divulge certain things about themselves to

people they see on a regular basis. Ultimately, I decided that it was a compromise I had to make;

given the possible risk to outside interviewers, I could not ethically employ them.

The issue then became finding suitable interviewers in neighborhoods that fit my criteria

of mainly Protestant and strong parading scene. To do this I used every connection I had, made

cold calls, and followed every lead. I established five teams (four with three members, one with

!214

People still live by what the late Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney called “The famous / Northern reticence, the tight 9

gag of place” whereby “whatever you say, you say nothing.” Northern Ireland, Heaney continued, is the “land of password, handgrip, wink and nod.” Seamus Heaney, “Whatever You Say, Say Nothing,” Opened Ground: Selected Poems, 1966-1996 (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1998), p. 124.

four members) through a local housing association, a restorative justice organization, a women’s

center, a youth club, and a personal connection. I trained each team and then monitored their

work as they conducted the survey.

In the end, the neighborhoods in which the survey was conducted––three in West Belfast,

three in South Belfast, and three in East Belfast––were in part chosen by me based on

demographic characteristics, but also chosen for me based on where I where I was able to

assemble a team and get local permission to work. (Table 7.1 provides demographic information

from the 2011 Census on the nine neighborhoods included in the survey.) The enumerated areas

are therefore not representative of any larger population. However, I have no reason to suspect

that any additional bias was created based on where I was able to work and where I was not.

Neighborhoods that fell through did so because people not return phone calls, particular

individuals were not interested, and so on, not factors about the neighborhood which would

likely matter to the results of the survey. In other words, I have no reason to suspect that they

neighborhoods where the survey did take place are meaningfully different from similar

neighborhoods where it did not take place. That said, since the areas were selected purposefully,

rather than randomly, the respondents in the survey are not representative of the Protestant

population at large. However, within each neighborhood, respondents were randomly selected, as

I will now explain.

!Selecting Respondents

Once each neighborhood was chosen, the goal was to randomly select individuals to

interview. To select individuals, I began by selecting households. First, I used detailed maps

!215

created by the Land and Property Services (see Figure 7.1) to generate a list of each address in a

Small Area, the smallest geographic unit in the census. Each Small Area generally contains 10

100-200 households and 200-400 people (see Figure 7.2). Each neighborhood is made up of a

number of Small Areas, but their boundaries do not always align with local definitions. I

therefore used Small Areas which were entirely within the local understanding of the

neighborhood. Using a random number generator, I selected one-quarter of houses in each Small

Area for an interview.

Lists of selected addresses in hand, interviewers went to each house to find target subjects

to interview. To be eligible for the survey, a house must have a male who is 18 years old or older

and from a Protestant background who usually lives there. Although women do participate in

parades, they are a small minority and to include females in the sample would reduce the number

of participants surveyed. This trade-off reduced costs at the expense of the richness of the data. 11

If the house had more than one eligible subject, the one with the most recent birthday in the

calendar was selected for the sample. If the house had more than one eligible subject, the one

with the last (most recent) birthday was selected for the sample. If the household did not have an

eligible subject (single-mothers with children and elderly widows were common in these

neighborhoods), then the address was replaced using the original randomization. I did the same if

the respondent refused to participate. If the respondent was not home, enumerators were to try to

!216

Detailed maps that show each address are available at: https://www.spatialni.gov.uk/geoportal/viewer/index.jsp?10

title=&resource, accessed 7 October 2013. Maps of each Small Area are available at: http://www.ninis2.nisra.gov.uk/public/StaticMapsAddress.aspx, accessed 7 October 2013.

On the role of women, see Linda Racioppi and Katherine O’Sullivan See, “Ulstermen and Loyalist Ladies on 11

Parade: Gendering Unionism in Northern Ireland,” International Feminist Journal of Politics, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Spring 2000), pp. 1-29; and Katy Radford, “Drum Rolls and Gender Roles in Protestant Marching Bands in Belfast,” British Journal of Ethnomusicology, Vol. 10, No. 2 (2001), pp. 37-59.

make an appointment, or, if that was not possible, to return to the house until he was home (up to

four times). Once the enumerator identified and reached the selected respondent, they conducted

the interview in person, recording the responses on paper. This process yielded 228 responses. 12

The last four columns of Table 7.1 compare the census figures to the survey figures on two

measures, the percent identifying as British and the percent of men with full-time jobs. As we

can see, the survey did a fairly good job matching the general characteristics of each

neighborhood.

Further, I believe that this procedure constructed an appropriate sample of

nonparticipating Protestants. That is, they can be reasonably considered a pool of potential

participants. First, they are drawn from the same neighborhoods, many of which have well

established parading organizations. Second, they have considerable social ties to participants.

Among nonparticipants in the sample 67 percent have close friends who parade, 35 percent had a

father who paraded, 64 percent had other family members parade (71 percent had any family),

and 28 percent have personally been asked to parade. Third, a majority of nonparticipants (64

percent) attend parades, an action which suggests ideological support and mobilization

potential. And finally, a substantial number of nonparticipants have participated at some point 13

in their life. Thirty percent of them marched before the age of 16 and 21 percent have marched

after the age of 16. Altogether, these structural and biographical features of the nonparticipant

sample suggest that they are a pool of potential participants comparable to the participants.

!217

In one neighborhood, interviewers had trouble gaining cooperation for face-to-face interviews and therefore left 12

the questionnaire to be filled out by the selected respondent. Wherever possible, they sat with the respondent as they filled it out.

Further, 81 percent of nonparticipants identify as British and 84 percent identify as unionist.13

Figure 7.1. Example Small Area 14

!

Figure 7.2. Screenshot from the Land and Property Service’s Spatial NI Map 15

!

The Interview Process

Once the enumerator identified and reached the selected respondent, they conducted the

!218

From the Ballysillian neighborhood in North Belfast (not in the survey). Available at: www.ninis2.nisra.gov.uk/14

public/StaticMapViewer.aspx?geoCode=N00000910&geoLevel=SA. Accessed September 25, 2013.

From a section of the Small Area from Figure 7.1. Available at: www.spatialni.gov.uk/geoportal/viewer/index.jsp?15

title=&resource. Accessed Accessed September 25, 2013.

interview in person, recording the responses on paper. On average, the interview took 52 16

minutes. At the end, respondents were asked if they would agree to participate in a follow up

survey as well. Those who did gave their contact information to the enumerator who recorded it

on a separate sheet of paper. To incentivize participation in the second survey, respondents were

told that if they completed the second interview they would be entered into a lottery to win £100.

!Potential Biases

As already noted, the data are biased due to the deliberate selection of the areas of

enumeration. I must additionally note a potential bias stemming from individuals’ choice of

responding to the survey. Individuals selected for the survey were told that this was a survey for

an American university about “parades and culture in Northern Ireland.” This could have led men

with little or no interest in parades not to participate. Though conversely, it could have led who

do parade but do not wish to discuss it publicly to not participate. Unfortunately, there is no way

to estimate or correct for these biases.

!Descriptive Statistics

The Paraders

In this section, I present descriptive statistics that begin to paint a quantitative picture of

parade participants. Twelve percent of the sample are active marchers, but in this section I look

at both current participants and former participants, i.e., people who marched in parades at some

!219

In one neighborhood, interviewers had trouble gaining cooperation for face-to-face interviews and therefore left 16

the questionnaire to be filled out by the selected respondent. Wherever possible, they sat with the respondent as they filled it out.

point after the age of 16. Seventy men (31 percent of the sample) fall into this category. I 17

exclude boys who only paraded when they were younger than 16 since I am interested in mature

decisions and it is unclear how much of a choice children make about such matter and how much

is their parents making the choice for them. However, this does include men who began parading

before they were 16 as long as they continued to participate after they were 16. The reason is that

while the decision to join at, say, age six may not been made entirely (or at all) by the child, the

decision to continue parading at age 18, 30, and 60 is made by an adult. I refer to marching after

the age of 16 as marching as an adult.

When do paraders begin participating? On average, participants joined their first parading

organization when they were 18.3 years old. The median age, however, is 16, which is reflected

in the distribution’s skew toward youth seen in Figure 7.3. Men in their late teens and early

twenties are most likely to be active paraders. Figure 7.4 shows the percentage of men in the

sample who participated at each age. The percentage rapidly increases from age 3 to age 17,

where it peaks, and then gradually declines as men get older. The data get less precise as age

increases since the denominator only includes men who have reached each age. So whereas all

men in the sample had been 17 years old (since they had to be at least 18 to participate in the

survey), only half of the sample had been older than 42, and only one-quarter had been older

than 57.

!220

There are no robust estimates for the number of paraders in Northern Ireland to which we can compare my 17

findings. According to a 2010 survey of 994 residents of Northern Ireland conducted by the University of Liverpool, 28.6 percent of Protestant males are members of the Orange Order (69 out of 241). The figure rises to 33.9 percent of Protestant males when I restrict the sample to Belfast residents (19 out of 56). Unfortunately, the 2010 survey just asked about membership in the Orange Order and not in other Loyal Orders or marching bands. If we sum the estimates of members in the Orange Order, Apprentice Boys, and marching bands and then adjust for the fact that there is some overlap in membership, I calculate that 13 to 17 percent of Protestant men are current parade participants. In my survey, 12.4 percent of the sample is a current member of a parading organization. Jonathan Tonge, Bernadette C. Hayes, and Paul Mitchell, Northern Ireland General Election Attitudes Survey, 2010, Distributed by UK Data Archive, 2010, doi: 10.5255/UKDA-SN-6553-1.

Figure 7.3. Histogram of the Age Participants Began Parading

!Figure 7.4. Percentage of Respondents Marching, by Age

Many participants actually began parading even earlier in their lives. Sixty percent of

participants belonged to the Junior Orange Order or marching band before the age of 16 and 59

!221

0 20 40 60 80

05

1015

20

Age

Percentage

Age

Frequency

0 10 20 30 40 50

05

1015

2025

percent marched in parades as a small child even before formally joining a group (e.g., marching

alongside their father for part of a parade). Even higher numbers were active in parading culture

in other ways. Nearly all participants (99 percent) attended parades as a child and 93 percent

collected wood for Eleventh Night bonfires, which are lit to mark the start of the Twelfth of

July. These figures are all significantly higher (at the 99 percent significance level) for 18

participants than non-participants: among non-participants, only 8 percent belonged to a parading

organization before age 16, 18 percent marched as a child, 87 percent attended parades, and 72

percent collected wood for bonfires.

We have even more information about the 28 current paraders. In the last year, they

marched an average of 9.9 times, with a median of 8 times and a range from 1 to 32. In the last

year, 82 percent have marched on a route labeled contentious by the Parades Commission, and

89 percent have marched on a route that was protested by Catholics. Thus, a large majority of

participants in the sample—drawn from three of Belfast’s four parliamentary constituencies

(South, West, and East)—have participated in a disputed parade in 2012-13, even though only a

very small percent of parades during that period were considered contentious by the Parades

!222

In Protestant communities across Northern Ireland, large bonfires are lit the night before the Twelfth of July. The 18

bonfires are festive events usually celebrated by the whole neighborhood or town. The bonfires are built by groups of mainly young boys and men who often spend weeks collecting wood and other flammable objects (including, car tires, couches, and mattresses), and then building the bonfires. Some of them are true feats of engineering, with precisely placed wooden pallets stacked well over fifty feet high. Boys will spend all day and night guarding the growing towers from attempts by boys from rival neighborhoods (both Protestant and Catholic) to set it alight early. When they are finally burned at midnight of July Twelfth, the bonfires are often adorned with images of nationalist and republican political leaders and topped with the Irish tricolor flag. In recent years, the flames have also consumed the flags of Poland and Cote d’Ivoire (the former a reaction to the large, and Catholic, Polish immigrant community; the latter a mistake, since the Ivorian flag is mirror image of the Irish flag) and an effigy of a popular local Catholic priest who had recently committed suicide.

Commission. This is likely because portions of three of the major arterial streets into the city 19

center are disputed by Catholic residents (Donegall Street from the north, Newtownards Road

from the east, and Ormeau Road from the south).

!PATTERNS OF PARTICIPATION

Although I label all of these men as paraders or marchers, they in fact were members of

diverse organizations and followed differing trajectories of participation. Of the 70 respondents

who have marched as adults, 47 percent were members of a loyal order at some point in the life

and 59 percent were members of a marching band. Among loyal order members, 88 percent were

in the Orange Order, 27 percent were in the Apprentice Boys of Derry, and 18 percent were in the

Royal Black Institution. Among band members, 68 percent have been in blood and thunder bands

and 24 percent have been in other types of marching bands. There is also some cross-20

membership, with 9 percent of participants having been in both a band and a loyal order (though

not necessarily at the same time). Figure 7.5 displays these graphically, with the general

categories in dark gray and the more specific organizations or categories in light gray.

The trend of switching membership between or among bands and loyal orders is common

among activists. This reflects the simple fact that people often move in and out of organizations.

!223

In 2012-13, 5 percent of parades were deemed contentious (215 of 4,4449). Even though contentious parades are 19

disproportionately Protestant (while 58 percent of all parades are Protestant, 90 percent of contentious parades are Protestant), only about 7.5 percent of Protestant parades nationwide are deemed contentious. The figures are not broken down geographically, so we cannot calculate the proportion of Belfast parades that are contentious, but the figure is low. Parades Commission for Northern Ireland, Annual Report and Financial Statements for the Year Ended 31 March 2013 (London: Stationary Office, 2014), pp. 10-11.

These figures do not add to 100 percent due to missing data on the type of band several respondents were in.20

Corrigal-Brown has analyzed this pattern in her study of American social movements. She 21

identifies three ideal-type trajectories of participation: persistence, where an individual maintains

their activism over time; disengagement, where an individual quits their activism and never again

gets involved; and individual abeyance, where an individual stops participating but rejoins later

in life. The same patterns exist among paraders. Twenty-one percent of participants are

persistent, meaning they joined one organization and have remained a member ever since. Fifty-

nine percent of participants have disengaged, meaning they left their parading organization and

have not paraded since. And 19 percent of participants have undergone some form of individual

abeyance, meaning they are currently active paraders, but have also left a previous

organization. 22

Figure 7.5. Percentage of Participants in Each Organization (N=70)

!224

Catherine Corrigal-Brown, Patterns of Protest: Trajectories of Participation in Social Movements (Stanford: 21

Stanford University Press, 2011).

There are several timelines that could constitute this pattern in the data, such as joining Groups A and B at the 22

same time and continuing membership in A but quitting B; or joining Group A, quitting, and then not parading for several years before joining Group B.

!The Attenders

As large events, parades consist of more than those actually marching. A central feature

of performance, whether theatrical or political, is the audience. In fact, as Fillieule and

Tartakowsky point out, public demonstrations have multiple audiences, from the observers

present at the event to those who read about it in a newspaper. Here, however, I look at just the 23

most immediate audience of parades, then men who attend as supporters or spectators. Among

non-paraders (that is, people who do not currently parade, in contrast to the previous section

which examined people who ever paraded as an adult), 64 percent attended at least one parade in

the last year. This represents 56 percent of the entire sample. On average, attenders attended 5.6

parades, with a median of 4 parades. The mode, however, is 1, meaning that many probably only

attended the Twelfth of July.

!The Non-Attenders

This leaves those who did not attend any parades in the last year. They represent 31

percent of the sample. When asked why they did not attend, non-attenders have a range of

reasons. A majority (55 percent) said they had no interest, while 20 percent said they had no

time. The former reason suggests they had no intention to attend, but the latter suggests they may

have liked to if they had the time. However, some non-attenders gave reasons which explicitly

suggest aversion toward parades. Ten percent did not attend because they think parades are

!225

Olivier Fillieule and Danielle Tartakowsky, Demonstrations, trans. Phyllis Aronoff and Howard Scott (Halifax: 23

Fernwood, 2013), pp. 16-17; also Olivier Fillieule, “The Independent Psychological Effects of Participation in Demonstrations,” Mobilization, Vol. 17, No. 3 (September 2012), p. 236; and Kathleen Blee and Amy McDowell, “Social Movement Audiences,” Sociological Forum, Vol. 27, No. 1 (March 2012), pp. 1-20.

sectarian; 4 percent find parades intimidating; 4 percent do not like big crowds or loud music; 3

percent believe parades are associated with paramilitaries; and 1 percent said they had Catholic

friends or family they did not wish to offend. Further evidence that the majority of non-attenders

do not attend deliberately (rather than because of a health constraints or lack of time) is that only

14 percent of men who did not attend a parade in 2012/13 said that they intend to go watch the

Twelfth of July parade in 2013 (whereas 87 percent of men who attended a parade in 2012/13

intend to go to the 2013 Twelfth). Figure 7.6 summarizes the sample’s parading choices in the 24

year between the summer 2012 and summer 2013.

!Figure 7.6. Summary of Respondents’ Parading Behavior, 2012-2013

!226

The Twelfth of July is a public holiday in Northern Ireland, so most people do not have work, and many shops are 24

closed, making even running errands inconvenient.

Did not attend Attended Marched

Respondents' choices about parades, 2012 - 2013 (%)

Percent

010

2030

4050

60

31.4

56.2

12.4

Assessing Alternative Arguments

In this section, I use the quantitative survey data as well as the qualitative interview and

ethnographic data to test the hypotheses derived from two prominent theories of ethnic conflict:

ethnic rivalry and collective action. As I explained earlier, this analysis addresses methodological

shortcomings of prior research by using data on participants and nonparticipants. Thus, I provide

more sound tests of these important hypotheses than previously available in studies of cultural

collective action.

The dependent variable in the quantitative analysis, Parade Participant, takes a value of

1 if he is currently a member of a loyal order or marching band and a value of 0 if he is not. 25

Twelve percent of the sample are current parade participants (N=28). I estimate the determinants

of participation using logistic regressions with standard errors clustered by neighborhood and

interviewer fixed effects. The results are presented in Table 7.2. After the initial analyses, I

provide two robustness checks. First, I reestimate the regressions using rare events logit.

Although, King and Zeng state that rare events logit is most useful when less that 5 percent of

observations are “events,” it is worth re-running the models since the proportion of participants

is still low and the number of observations is small. Second, I account for deleted observations 26

due to missing data by reestimating my original models using multiple imputations.

!

!227

A benefit of this outcome variable is that it measures participation in a specific, discrete action, rather than general 25

support for a cause or vague “movement participation.” Using this type of precisely measurable dependent variable is recommended by McAdam, “Recruitment to High-Risk Activism”; and Gregory L. Wiltfang and Doug McAdam, “The Costs and Risks of Social Activism: A Study of Sanctuary Movement Activism,” Social Forces, Vol. 69, No. 4 (June 1991), pp. 987-1010.

Gary King and Langche Zeng, “Logistic Regression in Rare Events Data,” Political Analysis, Vol. 9, No. 2 26

(Spring 2001), p. 157.

Testing the Ethnic Rivalry Hypotheses

The ethnic conflict approach to participation looks to and an individual’s feelings towards

their in-group and the out-group. The first hypothesis is that people are more likely to participate

the more they identify with their own ethnic group. I measure positive feelings towards the in-

group with a measure, Protestant Identification, that captures how strongly the respondent

identifies with the Protestant community. Protestant Identification is an additive scale of three

survey questions, each with five response categories. I find that stronger identification with the 27

Protestant community is not associated with an increased probability of parade participation.

This result remains in alternative measures of identification (see Appendix Table A1), including

entering each component variable individually or substituting with an indicator for self-

description as British (as opposed to Irish, Northern Irish, or Ulster-Scots). 28

The second ethnic conflict hypothesis is that people are more likely to participate the

more hostility they feel towards the rival out-group. I measure negative feelings towards the out-

group with a measure, Anti-Catholicism, that captures the degree of anti-Catholic views

professed by the respondent. This variable is scaled from 0 to 1 to account for differing numbers

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Respondents were first asked if they strongly agree, agree, neither agree nor disagree, disagree or strongly 27

disagree with the statements “I feel strong ties with other Protestants in Northern Ireland” and “In many respects, I am like most other Protestants in Northern Ireland” (coded from -2 to 2). Then they were asked “Would you be proud to be called an Ulster Protestant?” on a five-point scale from “not at all” to “very much” (coded 0 to 4). The three responses were summed to produce a scale ranging from -4 to 8. For similar measures, see Bert Klandermans, Jojanneke van der Toorn, and Jacquelien van Stekelenburg, “Embeddedness and Identity: How Immigrants Turn Grievances into Action,” American Sociological Review, Vol. 73 (December 2008), pp. 992-1012; Bernd Simon, Michael Loewy, Stefan Stürmer, Ulrike Weber, Peter Freytag, Corinna Habig, Claudia Kampmeier, and Peter Spahlinger, “Collective Identification and Social Movement Participation,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 74, No. 3 (March 1998), pp. 646-58.

Generalized ordered logit analyses (not shown) demonstrate that non-attenders have lower in-group identification 28

than attenders and paraders,

of response categories in the questions. I find that anti-Catholic prejudice is not a significant 29

predictor of participation in any of the model specifications. The null finding holds if I recreate

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Table 7.2. Determinants of Current Parade Participation, Logit Models

Model 1 (No controls)

Model 2 (Main model)

Model 3 (Disaggregate

social pressure)

Ethnic Rivalry

Protestant Identification 0.04 [0.11] -0.07 [0.13] -0.07 [0.13]

Anti-Catholicism 1.88 [1.26] 2.56 [1.92] 3.07 [1.87]

Collective Action

Social Pressure 0.68 [0.15]*** 0.79 [0.17]***

Family Expected Participation 0.56 [0.32]*

Community Thinks Less of Non-Participants 1.12 [0.39]***

Social Ties

Family Marched -0.04 [0.83] -0.11 [0.80] -0.04 [0.83]

Close Friends at Age 16 0.31 [0.30] 0.31 [0.38] 0.29 [0.38]

Been Asked to March 0.43 [0.53] 0.22 [0.92] 0.30 [0.90]

Control Variables

Marched as Youth 0.93 [0.47]** 0.96 [0.49]**

Age -0.05 [0.03] -0.05 [0.03]

Education -1.14 [0.94] -1.12 [0.91]

Children under 18 -1.48 [0.74]** -1.51 [0.71]**

Full-Time Job 2.59 [0.83]*** 2.56 [0.80]***

Church Attendance 0.35 [0.15]** 0.35 [0.16]**

Constant -4.93 [0.90]*** -4.50 [2.14]** -4.99 [2.45]**

Number of observations Correctly predicted Reduction in error

174 90.80% 23.81%

160 90.6% 16.67%

160 91.25% 22.22%

Standard errors clustered at neighborhood level in brackets. Enumerator fixed effects are not reported. * p<0.10, ** p<0.05, *** p<0.01

The first question asked how much the respondent would mind if a close family member married a Roman 29

Catholic. The second asked “Do you think that sometimes Catholics need to be reminded that they live in the United Kingdom?” The third asked “How much of the sectarian tension that exists in Northern Ireland today do you think Catholics are responsible for creating?” The fourth: “Do you strongly agree, agree, disagree, or strongly disagree that over the past few years, Catholics have gotten more economically than they deserve.” Each variable was scaled from 0 to 1, with 1 as the most anti-Catholic view, then added together, and then re-scaled from 0 to 1. The third and fourth questions, as well as the scaling, are adapted from P. J. Henry and David O. Sears, “The Symbolic Racism 2000 Scale,” Political Psychology, Vol. 23, No. 2 (June 2002), pp. 253-283.

the scale without the question on whether Catholics deserve their economic gains, with had

substantially more non-responses than the other three questions (Appendix Table A2).

Both identification with the in-group and hostility toward the out-group are plausibly

endogenous to parade participation. It is easy to imagine that membership in a parading

organization and marching in parades increases one’s attachment to the Protestant community

and prejudice towards the Catholic community. However, collecting a valid retrospective

measure of these attitudes from before a respondent joined would be near impossible. We would

believe answers to a question like, “How did you feel about Catholics thirty years ago, when you

were eight years old?” We cannot, therefore, attribute any causality and settle only for

association. Had I found a positive and significant relationship between in-group and out-group

attitudes and participation, we could attribute little to the correlation. The standard model of

participation argues that attitudes precede and motivate participation. But we also know that

attitudes can be a function of involvement. As a result, distinctive attitudes among participants

could be a cause or an effect of their participation. In a cross-sectional study, we have no way of

knowing. Finding no difference in attitudes, however, actually gives us more confidence that

holding particularly strong attitudes did not motivate participation. Unless we assume that people

with less of an attachment to Protestants and prejudice towards Catholics join parading

organizations and then increase those attitudes through their participation, the data show that, 30

regarding these two positions, parade participants reflect the communities they come from.

By sampling nonparticipants as well as parade participants, the survey reveals that,

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A highly unlikely, but not impossible, scenario. For example, Ziad W. Munson, The Making of Pro-Life Activists: 30

How Social Movement Mobilization Works (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), p. 189, finds that 23 percent of his sample of pro-life activists were pro-choice prior to mobilization; another 20 percent expressed ambivalent beliefs about abortion.

ceteris paribus, participants do not express notably extreme ethnic attitudes. Their degree of in-

group identification and out-group prejudice does not stand out from their non-parading

neighbors. Note that this does not mean that paraders do not express high levels of Protestant

identification or anti-Catholicism, only that they do not express levels that are notably higher

than nonparticipants. This result matches a robust finding across number studies of social

movement mobilization: ideological support for the movement does not explain why some

people join while others do not. For example, Klandermans and Oegema find that 74 percent of

the respondents that they interviewed before a large Dutch peace demonstration in 1983

supported the goals of the rally. But when they reinterviewed respondents after the

demonstration, only 4 percent had attended. In his study of the 1964 Mississippi Freedom 31

Summer, Doug McAdam concludes that attitudinal and ideological support does not distinguish

participants from applicants who withdrew before the summer. Each group was equally

supportive of the goals of the project, thus ideology cannot explain differences in participation. 32

Ideological sympathy is clearly not enough. And Ziad Munson’s research on pro-life activists

demonstrates that people with a wide-range of attitudes toward abortion become active in the

movement, leading him to conclude that “beliefs about abortion do not generally lead people into

activism.” Even activists who considered themselves pro-life before they were mobilized often

held “thin beliefs” about abortion, as opposed to the “more robust ideological commitments” that

we expect to cause activism. 33

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Klandermans and Dirk Oegema, “Potentials, Networks, Motivations, and Barriers,” p. 524.31

McAdam, “Recruitment to High-Risk Activism”; and Doug McAdam, Freedom Summer (New York: Oxford 32

University Press, 1988).

Munson, The Making of Pro-life Activists, pp. 189, 186. 33

!Testing the Collective Action Hypotheses

Rather than looking at the respondent’s attitudes, the collective action approach looks to

the private costs and benefits of participation. In this section, I test three hypotheses: participants

receive selective material benefits, participants are socially pressured into parading, and

participants have more pre-existing social ties than nonparticipants.

SELECTIVE MATERIAL BENEFITS AND MOBILIZATION

Selective material benefits have long been seen as a way to overcome the free rider

problem and produce collective action. In contemporary parading, however, I found almost no

evidence that there are any selective material benefits directly available to participants. There is

limited evidence that indirect material benefits may be available to participants in the form of

loans, but for the overwhelming majority of participants, parading is a net financial loss. In this

section, I document that the vast majority of paraders do not have a material incentive to

participate; that those who have happened to receive economic gain are a minority, and that these

gains are too small and unreliable to realistically incentivize rational participation; and that

paraders in fact pay a direct cost to participate and open themselves to the risk of problems at

work. From this evidence, I conclude that Olson’s primary solution to the collective action

problem does not operate in loyalist parading.

Throughout my fieldwork I sought evidence that parade participants received selective

material incentives as predicted by the collective action approach to participation. I found almost

none, and that which I did find was unsystematic. Quantitatively, only three out of the seventy

paraders in my survey reported that being in a loyal order or band had ever helped him

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financially. The remaining 96 percent of participants responded that they had never received an 34

economic benefit from parading. Additionally, current parade participants were asked “Why did

you march last 12th?” and the interviewers noted their open-ended responses. Not one participant

mentioned anything even slightly related to material gain.

My interviews reveal the same pattern. Nearly every time I asked a parade participant if

there were any personal financial benefits the answer was an emphatic “no.” In fact, without

skipping a beat, most respondents would continue by saying that parading actually costs a lot of

money, a topic I will elaborate shortly. Time and again I heard from respondents that they have

never benefited economically from their participation, neither in the form of direct rewards nor

from preferential access to employment, contracts, or promotions. This is a big change from

generations past when membership in the Orange Order was a path to employment and

promotion in many industries. In some fields, such as unionist politics, membership was a virtual

requirement. The lack of tangible benefits, according to one member, even leads a number of

people to quit. “You get people joining and it’s not what they expected and then they leave,”

Howie told me.

“What do they expect?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I think they maybe expect financial benefits or other benefits.”

But even non-participants I spoke with know that parading costs participants far more

than it materially benefits them. And among non-participants I surveyed at random, only 11

percent reported that they thought that joining a parading organization benefited people

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The question read: “Did being in your Order/band ever help you financially, such as by helping you to get a small 34

loan, job, or promotion?” This question was only asked of men who had ever been parade participants, so it not included in the regression.

financially. So it seems unlikely expectations of financial gain are a major motive for joining a

parading organization.

That said, a limited number of participants did mention minor economic benefits

available to paraders. In particular, several told me that by joining a wide network, membership

can help people find employment. For example, Walter and Chris are bandmates who co-own a 35

small business and they hire three other fellow band members for casual work “a couple of days

here and a couple of days there.” Walter explains: “if you’re in a band and you become

unemployed and there are people in your band that are working, they’re going to be looking for

work for you.” But when I then asked if help in finding a job was a reason why people joined

bands, he cut me off: “No, no, no,” he made clear. Similarly, Albert suggests that if he needed to

hire a plumber or other tradesmen, he would hire one he knows through the Orange Order.

“Not,” he notes, “because we get it cheaper. Just to give them the job.”

In Walter and Albert’s comments, we see a feeling of wanting to help one’s own. This is

not specific to parading, but a general phenomenon of finding work through clubs and other

social organizations. As Howie says, “It would be the same as… if you were in a golfing society,

and you were an accountant and you said, ‘I’m out of work,’ a guy over there’s looking for an

accountant.” Though he emphasizes that while “it could happen… in my experience nothing like

that has ever happened.” Social connections formed through parading, therefore, occasionally

lead to work opportunities. But very few interviewees mentioned it and those that did only

discussed opportunities for odd jobs, not sustained employment. Additionally, these social ties

are not unique to parade organizations and are just as likely to exist through any potential

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Ray Casserly, “The Fyfe and My Family: Flute Bands in Rathcoole Estate,” Irish Journal of Anthropology, Vol. 35

13, No. 1 (2010), pp. 8-12, also finds that marching band members gain skills and job opportunities.

connection.

Two interviewees told me about financial benefits that were more directly related to their

parading activities. Nigel owns a company that does business all over Ireland and he believes

that his membership in the loyal orders actually helped him gain clients in the Republic of

Ireland. “It probably opened some doors for me, believe it or not, in the South of Ireland, not the

North,” he says. People there found his membership intriguing and it started conversations that

led to personal bonds with potential clients. Robby also mentions benefits that come specifically

from parading. He told me his Orange lodge runs a small private safety net for its members who

fall into financial trouble. His lodge collects funds that they give to charity but “if that arose that

you were having difficulties, you could apply to the charity for some money to help you

through.” More informally, Robby tells me that “if you needed a lend of a couple of hundred

quid for a week or two, there’s plenty of boys there that if they had it they’d give you it. At the

end of the day because we’re all friends.” Yet despite asking each of my interviewees if there

were financial benefits to parading, and often citing loans as an example of a benefit, Robby is

the only one who mentioned these formal or informal loan opportunities. This leads me to

believe that they are likely uncommon and certainly not on high people’s minds. So there is some

evidence that joining a band or loyal order can bring limited financial benefits in the form of

occasional employment or a loan. But these benefits are both small, apparently uncommon, and

vastly outweighed by the costs of participation.

Personal Economic Costs of Parading. The most common response when I asked if there were

personal economic benefits to parading was that it actually cost participants to parade. As Billy

!235

quipped, “The financial benefit is that it actually costs you money! There’s absolutely no

financial gain in being in the Orange Order or in the band.” Loyal order members have to pay

dues, membership fees, and other incidental expenses, but it is band members who really pay

dearly. Buying new musical instruments and uniforms can costs members hundreds if not

thousands of pounds, and these purchases are largely self-financed. Steven described some of his

band’s expenses: £700 for a flute, £600 for a drum, £250 to £400 for a uniform, and £25-30,000

for an upcoming trip for the whole band to the Somme battlefield in France. And for all those

expenses, he emphasizes, “We’re subsidized by no one… Everything we do we do ourselves.”

Bands like his can make some money by selling CDs, DVDs, performing at functions, and

hosting fundraising parades, but generally this generates a pittance compared to their expenses

and members have to pay a significant amount out of pocket. Some bands get an occasional grant

from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and other funding agencies (including the Irish

government), but it all goes to the organization, not the members. As Mikey tells me: “Any

grants that the bands get, they’re for something. They’re not just handing money over to them,

they’re for ten new flutes, new drums, uniforms. That all has to be counted for with receipts.” A

recent report estimated that the loyal orders and bands spend £15.4 million per year (roughly

$23.5 million at the time the report was released) on expenses such as uniforms and regalia,

catering, transportation, musical instruments, and capital projects. 36

!Problems at the Workplace. Besides these direct costs of membership, there are also the indirect

economic costs of parading. Specifically, many participants believe that their parading could hurt

!236

RSM McClure Watters, “The Socio-Economic Impact of the Traditional Protestant Parading Sector in Northern 36

Ireland,” May 2013, pp. 5-6.

them in finding employment or advancing in their careers. Seventy percent of current paraders in

the survey reported that they would not put a parading leadership position on a resume or job

application. Since their membership is a potential source of conflict at work, most participants

keep quiet about their parading at the workplace. The two general justifications for this silence is

that they would not want to offend Catholic colleagues or other co-workers who are upset by

parades and/or they believe that their membership might hurt their chances at advancement. Even

those who do not think that being a parader would necessarily hurt them at work tend to keep it

quiet. For example, Lee recalled a situation at his office where one female colleague—“I assume

she’s Catholic, I don’t really know to be honest”—was complaining about parades delaying

traffic throughout the city. A male colleague from England then mentioned that Lee was in those

parades, leading the first colleague to “shut up” about it. The English man tried to goad the

conversation a bit further, but the woman tried to end the conversation. Lee reflected that he

“wasn’t going to get into it in case I offended anybody.”

Avoiding this kind of awkwardness and uncomfortableness leads participants to keep

private. Scott, who plays a flute in a band, goes so far as to lie to his colleagues rather than tell

them about parades. He tells me that when people at his middle-class job ask him about weekend

plans, he says he is not doing anything or makes something up. The exception that proves the

rule is that when his band performed a prestigious concert at a major arts’ venue, he was willing

to talk about it at work. The acceptability of performing at a reputable concert hall, rather

through the raucous and liquored streets of working-class neighborhoods, made him feel

comfortable to even invite colleagues from his middle-class workplace to the show. He seemed

proud that several came to see him perform. In contrast, he was clear that he would not invite

!237

them to a regular band parade because he would not want people from work to make

assumptions and form the wrong opinions of him.

Besides not wanting to offend colleagues, participants also discussed that being in a loyal

order or marching band could hurt their career. Michael, for example, is a manager in an industry

that is “predominantly made up of Catholics.” As a result, he knows that for the sake of his

professional life, he needs to keep the fact that he is an Orangeman quiet. He chose his words

carefully as he told me the following: “I— I know my— I know my position. I know I can’t go

out and say, I’m— ‘Arms up, I’m in the Orange Order here.’ I know it might be detrimental to

my progression, so I just keep it to myself. You know, I’m not ashamed of it, but I don’t— I

don’t—”

He paused, so I began to ask, “Do you think it could affect your—”

“To answer your question, yes. There is a risk factor in my standing in my organization.”

That said, Michael told me that though their parading activities could be an issue at work,

he does not feel that he has ever actually been discriminated against. In fact in none of my formal

interviews did anyone feel that they had personally discriminated against. I kept hearing

complaints or rumors about people getting fired, but no one seemed to personally know anyone

who it actually happened to. The exception is that one very active participant I knew told me that

he had been forced out of his job because he was a member of the Orange Order. I was unable to

follow up with him about the details, but in my many interactions with this man, he struck me as

prone to exaggeration and quick to see anti-Protestant discrimination everywhere. So while his

story is quite possibly true, I cannot confirm it.

Both the interviews and the survey suggest that selective material benefits are not a cause

!238

of parade participation. Although Olson’s hypothesis is intuitive and others have found evidence

of selective incentives at work in a wide-range of collective action, including Orange parades 37

in previous decades, I find that they are unrelated to parades in Northern Ireland today. My 38

survey interviewers thought that even looking for financial benefits to parading was futile. The

survey instrument included the open-ended question “What attracted you to the specific lodge/

band that you joined first?” Interviewers were to mark any of the fourteen listed items that the

respondent mentioned. One of them was “financial/employment,” and on several times when

going over the survey with the interviewers during training, they laughed or told me that there

was no reason to have it as an option. I would insist that though it might be unlikely, I really

wanted to know if anyone mentioned it as a reason. In the end, my interviewers were of course

correct: in all of the surveys that they administered the box was never ticked.

!Social Sanctioning and Mobilization

The second hypothesis is that people are more likely to participate if they expect to pay a

social cost for not participating. I measure this variable, Social Pressure, by summing the level of

sanctioning expected from two sources: family and community. Pressure from the family is

measured by how much the respondent believes his Family Expected Participation. Pressure 39

from the community is measured by whether the respondent believes that his Community Thinks

!239


University Press, 1965); Samuel L. Popkin, The Rational Peasant: The Political Economy of Rural Society in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979); Mark I. Lichbach, “What Makes Rational Peasants Revolutionary?: Dilemma, Paradox, and Irony in Peasant Collective Action,” World Politics, Vol. 46, No. 3 (April 1994), pp. 383-418; and Mark I. Lichbach, The Rebel’s Dilemma (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995).

Bryan, Orange Parades.38

“Do you think that your family expected you to join a loyal order or band? Would you say definitely, somewhat, 39

not really, or definitely not?”

Less of Nonparticipants. Each component part is measured from 0 indicating no pressure to 3 40

indicating most pressure, and the sum, Social Pressure, ranges from 0 to 6. I find that my

measure of social sanctions is positively and significantly associated with participation in loyalist

parades. Substantively, if all other variables in Model 2 in Table 7.2 are held at their median

value, changing Social Pressure from its minimum to maximum increases the probability of

participating 10 percent. In Model 3, I disaggregate social pressure into its two components. 41

The results show that the correlation is substantively and statistically stronger with the measure

of community-based social pressure. Men who believe that their community thinks less of parade

nonparticipants are more likely to be paraders.

The interviews tell a somewhat different story about social sanctioning. Bar several

exceptions, the men I interviewed recall experiencing no social pressure to participate in parades

and they believe that their experience is the norm. There are two potential forms of sanctioning

from family, friends, or the community: direct and indirect. In the direct form, paraders pressure

an individual into joining, say by teasing them, constantly asking them to join, or even

threatening to stop socializing with them. In the indirect path, an individual feels that they need

to join a parading organization in order to maintain their status or reputation, specifically their

reputation as a “good Prod”—a loyal defender of the Protestant faith and stalwart of the Union.

Throughout my interviews I find occasional examples of both types of pressure, but overall my

informants agree that there is minimal to no social pressure on men to participate in parades.

Evidence of direct pressure in action comes most clearly from Samuel. Samuel is not a

!240

“Do people in this community think less of people who choose not to join loyal orders or bands? Would you say 40

definitely, somewhat, not really, or definitely not?”

Calculated using Clarify for Stata 10. The standard errors could not be clustered in the simulated model.41

member of any parading organization, and has no real interest in parades or parading culture. He

is “happy enough once a year, twice a year watch a parade, go to a bonfire and then I would be

happy enough not to mention it for another twelve months.” But, he is involved in unionist

politics and most of his close friends are members of the loyal orders. His friends tease him

about not joining and ask him join constantly: “I mean I have been asked, I don’t know how

many times to join the Orange Order, every single week for about the past three years,” he says.

“Do you feel pressure[d]?” I asked.

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Because they are friends or because—?”

“Yeah. Not because of anything else, just because they are my friends. Yeah, I do, no

doubt about it.”

One strategy that his friends use is to appeal to his sense of Protestantism and unionism.

When Samuel tells his friends that he simply has no interest in joining the loyal orders, he

“instantly get[s] a lecture, ‘Well you should have an interest, you know. You call yourself a

unionist, you call yourself a member of the unionist community, you’ll do anything you can

within peaceful means to maintain the union, well this is one way that we mark our territory.’”

And though it is just friendly teasing—a “bit of banter” in his words—it is directed at his self-

image and identity as a Protestant and unionist. “If I go on holiday [over the Twelfth of July],

[my friend] would send me a message, ‘Are you going again then, Seamus?’” By calling him by

a stereotypically Irish/Catholic name, his friend suggests that Samuel’s loyalty is in question.

Although these comments are delivered and received in jest they demonstrate that this is usable

material for a joke. If there was nothing wrong with skipping town during the Twelfth, calling

!241

Samuel “Seamus” would make no sense. But instead the quip makes complete sense both to

Samuel and his friend.

Despite the pressure that he has felt personally, Samuel does not believe that it is a

common experience. He explains that it is merely a product of who he socializes with:

“Obviously I associate with circles of people who are active in politics and who are in [loyal

orders], so obviously I am going to get that because that is who I choose to be friends with.” It is

clear from talking with him that he finds his friends’ incessant nagging annoying, but it is just

part of their friendships, as gentle teasing is common among many friends. So Samuel does

experience direct pressure, but it is specific to his particular social situation and more of an

irritation than anything else—and he has easily been able to resist it.

More common is the absence of direct pressure or social sanctioning. Even between

fathers and sons, the relationship where we would most expect it, I found little evidence. Many

men were asked by their fathers to follow in their footsteps and join them in a parading

organization, but felt no pressure from it. Several informants recall that was, in fact, their father

not asking them or pressuring them to join that inspired their decision. Alexander states that

“what kind of impressed me was I asked my dad should I join, and he says, ‘It’s your decision,

you decide.’ That encouraged me to join more, because I didn’t feel like I was being forced to

join, and I wasn’t.… And it impressed me more that he didn’t try and encourage me. He just said,

‘I’d like you to join, I’d like you to follow in my footsteps, but clearly it’s a decision for you.’

That made me really want to join.” The fact that his father made it clear that the decision was one

that he had to make for himself left a lasting impression on the informant and encouraged his

membership.

!242

Indirect social pressure is just as rare. This form of pressure is more general and not

directed at any particular individual, but present in the social atmosphere. It is about maintaining

one’s reputation in the community as loyal to the cause. Despite several exceptions, the general

experience of Protestant men does not appear to include diffuse pressure to parade aimed at one’s

reputation as a loyal member of the Protestant community. Mark, for instance, grew up in a “very

staunch Protestant area,” the exact place where we would expect young men to feel that they had

to join parades. But in his recollection, “There was no real drive that you had to do something

[join a lodge or band].”

Among participants, I did not even find agreement about whether paraders are respected,

high-status members of the community. Many interviewees believe that paraders do gain

recognition and respect through their membership: the community admires them for the

commitment they have made to represent and defend Protestant culture. But many others

reported that they do not feel that parading brings them any additional respect among their peers

and neighbors. Billy claims that Orangemen are “not put on a pedestal against somebody in the

community that’s not in the Orange.” Tom agrees, saying that “there’s no particular kudos [for

parading]…. You’re not elevated” by the community. “Like everything,” he tells me, “some are

[respected], some aren’t.”

Nonparticipants I spoke to agree. Sophie, for example, told me that paraders are “just

ordinary fellows. Just [guys we] went to school with, worked with, grew up with. We all know

each other.” Even Sophie, a massive parade supporter, sees participants as completely ordinary

because they are so embedded in the community. It is hard to see someone as particularly special

or esteemed when you have known them your whole life through school, work, and the

!243

neighborhood.

Some of the clearest instances of social pressure that I heard in my interviews were

people who felt pressured not to participate in parades. Most commonly, this is sons whose

parents did not want them to parade. Some parents wanted their children to avoid bands

altogether. As a youth, Michael liked the bands and followed the bands, but his “mom would

never have allowed [him] to join a band” because, he believes, “people would associate bands

with alcohol.” For a similar reason, Rachel was “a wee bit apprehensive about telling [her]

parents that [she] was in a band.” Her family had a “very strong Christian background” where

“sometimes bands are seen as being alcoholic monsters.” Other parents were concerned about

violence associated with parades. For example, Matt recalls that when he was younger “there

was a lot more trouble… around parades,” so his mother did not want him to join a band.

Similarly, Jamie states that “back then bands were very, very associated with paramilitaries” and

so his father “wouldn’t let me join until I was a bit older.”

There are also cases where the parents are not opposed to bands in general, but object to

their son joining a specific band. Scott, for instance, saw a particular band play well and really

wanted to join. His father could see his son’s interest, and told him that he could not join because

of the band’s purported association with a paramilitary. As a result, Scott had to wait until he was

18 to join the band. Lee’s band does not have any paramilitary affiliations, but is a blood and

thunder style band, which his father objects to. For his father, who has been a member and

instructor of high quality marching bands for many years, blood and thunder bands are a sonic

disgrace. “If he had his way, I wouldn’t have joined my band,” Lee says between laughs.

A final point that suggests that social sanctioning is not a significant cause of

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participation is that parading organizations are not structured to coerce people into them. The

loyal orders, despite having large nationwide memberships, have very small professional staffs.

They do not have the resources to pressure individuals into joining. They don’t even succeed in

maintaining the members they have. Of the 70 respondents who have paraded as adults, only 40

percent are currently members of a parading organization. Fully 60 percent have withdrawn from

parading. In fact, several interviewees explained that men who join without being fully

committed to parading are likely to quit anyway, thus invalidating the logic of pressuring people

to join.

Regarding the role of social sanctioning, then, the quantitative and qualitative evidence

diverge. The statistical analysis suggests that men who report social pressure are more likely to

participate. The semi-structured interviews, conversely, suggest that social pressure plays little to

no role in motivating participation. Both forms of evidence have their problems. For the

quantitative data, participants could be more likely to believe retrospective that their family

expected them to participate, since they see participation as a good thing. Similarly, they could

more likely to report that their community thinks less of nonparticipants, because it reflects their

thinking or desires. For the qualitative evidence, people telling the narrative of how they joined a

beloved organization that is central to their self-image may wish to downplay the possibility that

joining was not entirely voluntary. I do not believe they are misrepresenting it to me, but rather

that the story they tell themselves emphasizes free choice over outside pressure. When 42

explaining positive personal developments, agency is more appealing than structure.

Overall, the data on social sanctioning is contradictory and inconclusive. Pressure can

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The discourse of volunteerism is a common theme in mobilization narratives throughout the interviews I 42

conducted. Perhaps it is related to the virtue of voluntary faith in some Protestant theology.

work through multiple channels and in multiple directions, and the data do not provide a clear

answer. Rather than simply accept the data which is more conducive to my ritual argument—the

qualitative—I believe it better to recognize the complexity and give the benefit of the doubt to

the more troubling evidence. Thus I conclude that there is tepid support for the collective action

approach’s hypothesis that social sanctioning causes mobilization.

!Social Ties and Mobilization

A second major approach to participation in collective action looks to social ties. The

general hypothesis is that people are more likely to participate if they have members of their

social network who participate. In the survey, I measure two specific social ties for each

respondent: Family Marched measures whether or not family members were paraders and Close

Friends (Age 16) measures how many of their close friends at age 16 were paraders. This 43

variable is retrospective since current friends are clearly endogenous to parade participation.

Third, I measure whether or not a respondent has Been Asked personally to join a parading

organization. None of these measures are statistically associated with loyalist parade 44

participation. This is a striking finding, given the robustness of the result across a range of

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Family Marched takes the value of 0 if no family marched, 1 if either the father or other family members 43

marched, and 2 if both the father and other family members marched. Close Friends (Age 16) ranges from 0 for none or almost none to 4 for all or almost all.

See David A. Snow, Louis A. Zurcher, Jr. and Sheldon Ekland-Olson, “Social Networks and Social Movements: A 44

Microstructural Approach to Differential Recruitment,” American Sociological Review, Vol. 45, No. 5 (October 1980), p. 795; Sidney Verba, Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Henry E. Brady, Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995); Schussman and Soule, “Process and Protest”; and Stefaan Walgrave and Ruud Wouters, “The Missing Link in the Diffusion of Protest: Asking Others,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 119, No. 6 (May 2014), pp. 1670-1709.

studies on mobilization, including loyalist parading. A problem with the research on parades, 45 46

in particular, is that they fail to sample nonparticipants thus they cannot compare the social

networks of participants to those of nonparticipants. Consequently, they fail to realize that while

participants did know many participants prior to joining, nonparticipants also know many

participants. This is a reflection of how deeply parading organizations are embedded in

Protestant communities. It is hard not to know a member of a loyal order or band. Among men

who have not participated as an adult, 69 percent have family who march, 62 percent have

current friends who march, and 22 percent have been asked to march. These figures are even

higher in working class neighborhoods, where parading organizations are stronger (77, 78, and

28 percent, respectively).

Although the statistical evidence demonstrates that having social ties to participants does

not increase one’s likelihood of participation, those who do choose to join generally do so

through social ties. Pre-existing social ties, therefore, remain a central pathway to mobilization. 47

We can see this both quantitative and qualitatively. Among men who have ever paraded, 77

percent cited social ties as what attracted them to the specific parading organization that they

joined (59 percent said friends, 17 percent said their father, and 20 mentioned other family; they

could list more than one attraction). It is, therefore, unsurprising that 93 percent of them already

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For reviews, see James A. Kitts, “Mobilizing in Black Boxes: Social Networks and Participation in Social 45

Movement Organizations,” Mobilization, Vol. 5, No. 2 (October 2000), pp. 241-57; John Krinsky and Nick Crossley, “Social Movements and Social Networks: Introduction,” Social Movement Studies, Vol. 13, No. 1 (2014), pp. 1-21.

James W. McAuley and Jonathan Tonge, “‘For God and for the Crown’: Contemporary Political and Social 46

Attitudes among Orange Order Members in Northern Ireland,” Political Psychology, Vol. 28, No. 1 (February 2007), p. 37; Northern Ireland Youth Forum, Sons of Ulster: Exploring Loyalist Band Members Attitudes towards Culture, Identity and Heritage (Belfast: Northern Ireland Youth Forum, 2013), p. 14.

My survey and interviews show that there are rare cases of men joining with no pre-existing social ties to other 47

parades, but they are exceptional.

knew a few (37 percent) or many (55 percent) members in the group at the time of joining.

The interviews confirm these trends. Jamie is typical when he relates that he chose the

band to join because he “wanted to be in a band that was more home. And the [band] has quite a

few of my family: one, two, three, four family members in it, cousins and stuff like that. And

then all the other guys in it, there’s quite a few I used to go to school with.” The band is the only

band from the neighborhood that he grew up in, so it draws it members from the community of

his childhood. Even though he now live in a different part of East Belfast, Jamie says that joining

the this band was a “no-brainer.” George, too, is typical, if perhaps a bit eager. When he retired

from the British army, buddies from his unit approached him about joining the loyal orders that

they belonged to:

I was asked to join the Apprentice Boys. I had an idea what it was all about, but I said certainly. So I joined that. And within three weeks I was asked if I wanted to join the [Orange Order] lodge that the lads were in. I said, I would. So I joined that. And within three months, I was asked if I wanted to join the [Royal] Black that they belonged to. I said, I would. !

As George illustrates, just knowing participants is often insufficient to spur mobilization.

It requires being asked. In George’s case, parading was not even on his radar when his friends

asked him; for others, they might have been thinking about joining for some time and then

finally decide to do it when they are approached. For example, Robert was a big supporter of

parades—“I would have went out to every parade”—but had never taken the next step to actually

parade himself. Then “some of the men said to me, ‘Boy, it’s about time you joined.’ And I

joined.” The importance of being asked is a common finding in studies of participation in

collective action. Schussman and Soule, in their study of protests in the United States, find that

being asked to participate is such an important factor in explaining participation that they posit a

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two-stage model where first a person is asked to participate or not and then they decide to

participate. In loyalist parading, participants are more likely to have been asked to march than 48

nonparticipants (54 percent versus 22 percent), but among men who have been asked to march,

only 51 percent actually did.

Social ties, despite not affecting the likelihood of initial mobilization, clearly still matter

greatly for those who are mobilized. This becomes especially apparent when we focus on the role

of family. Family ties are often mentioned as a big motive for joining. It is common for

participants to explain their own participation by stating simply that it is a “family tradition.”

Participants often place themselves in a lineage that traces back several generations of marchers.

For example, Billy states proudly, “My grandfather was an Orangeman, my father was an

Orangeman, and I’m an Orangeman.” And though he has no sons, he hopes that his grandsons

will be Orangemen one day.

The most lauded family tie is between father and son. It is celebrated in perhaps the most

popular Orange tune, “The Sash.” The song can be heard many times in a single parade, often

with spectators singing along to the familiar refrain, “The sash my father wore.” Parading can be

a way to literally follow in one’s father’s footsteps, and many sons do. But many sons do not. In

the survey, 86 respondents had a father who marched. Of them, 50 percent have marched

themselves and 50 percent have not. For example, Lee relates how he and one brother chose to

follow in their father’s footsteps and join the Orange Order, while his other two brothers did not.

One of his brothers will occasionally go to watch a parade, but otherwise does not care; the other

brother could not be bothered to leave his Xbox.

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Schussman and Soule, “Process and Protest.”48

Thus, even men with strong social ties to participants often do not participate. In fact, as

noted earlier, a majority of nonparticipants have friends and family that march. Gary’s story

illustrates one possible path away from parading. Gary grew up in working-class Protestant East

Belfast, where Orangeism and band culture were the way of life. His family, too, was heavily

involved: “My family were up to their neck and beyond in the Orange [Order] and the [Royal]

Black [Institution],” he recalls. His father was the past Master of his lodge and a lay chaplain; his

uncle was a chaplain to the Grand Lodge. And it rubbed off on him as well. He says, “As a kid,

the two biggest days in the year for me were Christmas and the Twelfth… It was a big, big part

of my year. I mean, my birthday was two days before it, and I looked forward to the Twelfth

more than I ever looked forward to my birthday. Massive, absolutely massive in my young life.”

But then two things changed in his life. He was admitted to a grammar school and had an

evangelical conversion, and suddenly his social world was flipped upside-down. His new friends

and peers at “church and school, were not part of that Orange culture. They were part of a

middle-class culture,” where parading less acceptable. So he never joined.

We must also recognize that social ties do not always push people toward participation.

As McAdam and Paulsen correctly note, “Individuals are invariably embedded in many

organizational or associational networks or individual relationships that may expose the

individual to conflicting behavioral pressures.” People live in complex social worlds with lots 49

of social ties to all sorts of people. So even those who have many ties to parade participants

likely also have ties to those who do not participate in parades. As I demonstrated earlier, some

interviewees felt pressured to not participate. There is no ex ante reason to believe that the ties to

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McAdam and Paulsen, “Specifying the Relationship between Social Ties and Activism,” p. 641.49

participants should matter more than the ties to non-participants. Or that pressure from friends

and family to participate should outweigh pressure from other friends and family to not

participate.

Contrary to the findings of many prominent and diverse studies, I find that social ties 50

are not a correlate of mobilization in collective action. The three quantitative measures of ties are

statistically insignificant in the regression analysis and interview data show that people with ties

to participants choose both to participate and to not. But the data do suggest that social ties

remain an important part of the story, just not a causal one. Rather, social ties are the major

pathway through which people choose to participate. When people do participate it is generally

because of family or friends and their connections influence which specific organizations they

join. Also, when participants decide to move to a new band or lodge (because their old one

disbanded, personal disagreements, looking for something new, etc.), they move to one where

they have friends or family.

!Control Variables

The models in Table 7.2 also all include six control variables. Marched as Youth is an

ordinal variable which captures prior participation. It takes a value of 0 if the respondent never

marched in a parade before he turned 16, a value of 1 if he marched as a young boy but not as a

formal member of a parading organization, and a value of 2 if he marched as a member of a

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For example, McAdam, “Recruitment to High-Risk Activism”; McAdam, Freedom Summer; Nepstad and Smith, 50

“Rethinking Recruitment to High-Risk/High-Cost Activism”; Schussman and Soule, “Process and Protest”; and Alexandra Scacco, “Who Riots? Explaining Individual Participation in Ethnic Violence,” Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 2010.

junior loyal order or band. Consistent with previous studies, I find that prior participation 51

increase the likelihood of current participation. Education takes 0 for no qualifications, 1 for

qualifications less than degree level, and 2 for degree level. I do not find any relationship

between education level and participation. The coefficient is negative, as expected, but it is not

significant. Church Attendance ranges from 0 for never attending church to 6 for attending more

than once a week. This proxy for religiosity is positively related to participation: paraders attend

church more frequently than non-paraders.

Three variables measure biographical availability. The biographical availability

hypothesis claims that people are more likely to participate in contentious politics at points in

their lives when they have fewer competing claims to their time, such as families or careers.

Research on the effect of biographical availability is inconclusive with studies pointing in

opposite directions. In my survey, Children under 18 and Full-Time Job are dummy indicators 52

and Age is recorded in years. These variables deliver mixed results about biographical

availability. I find that men with young children are less likely to be participants, but men with

full time jobs are more likely. And though the young are generally thought to be more available, I

find that age is not significantly associated with the likelihood of participation.

Finally, though no measure of income is included in the analysis, we can still say

something about it. Income seems to be negatively correlated with likelihood of participation. 53

Other model specifications were run with a dummy indicator that takes the value of 1 if the

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Corrigal-Brown, Patterns of Protest; and Wolfgang Rüdig and Georgios Karyotis, “Who Protests in Greece: 51

Opposition to Mass Austerity,” British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 44, No. 3 (July 2014), pp. 487-513.

McAdam, “Recruitment to High-Risk Activism”; McAdam, Freedom Summer; and Nepstad and Smith, 52

“Rethinking Recruitment to High-Risk/High-Cost Activism.”

Only 65 percent of respondents answered the income question.53

respondent lives in a middle-class neighborhood and 0 for a working-class neighborhood (not

shown). The variable had to be dropped, however, because living in a middle-class area perfectly

predicts not participating in parades. Sixteen percent of working-class residents are paraders, 54

while only 4 percent of middle-class residents are. Finally, education is a reasonable proxy for

income (Pearson’s r = 0.51; p = 0.000), and, as previously mentioned, education is negatively

associated with propensity to participate, although not significantly so.

!Robustness Checks

In this section, I test the robustness of the quantitative results of the previous section by

accounting for potential problems with the data. First, I account for the low proportion of

“positive cases” (participants) in the dependent variable using a rare events logit. Second, I

account for missing data in the dataset using multiple imputations.

!RARE EVENTS LOGIT

The first issue is that only 12.4 percent of the dataset are current participants. Given the

small number of observations, this low proportion of “positive cases” or “events” in the binary

dependent variable can cause standard logistic regressions to malfunction. Specifically, logistic

regressions can underestimate the likelihood of the rare event. Twelve percent is not considered 55

considered “rare” (King and Zeng suggest under 5 percent), but given the small number of

observations, it is worthwhile to compare the original results to results that correct for the rarity.

!253

In fact, three middle class residents are participants, but they are dropped from the analysis for missing variables.54

King and Zeng, “Logistic Regression in Rare Events Data.”55

The results are robust to the correction in the rare events logistic regression. There are no

significant differences between the original results in and the results in Table 7.3. As before, the

measures of the ethnic rivalry and social ties are not significantly related to the probability of

participation. Social pressure remains significant, though the coefficient is reduced.

!

!

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Table 7.3. Robustness Check: Rare Events Logit



Model 3 (Disaggregate social

pressure)

Ethnic Rivalry

Protestant Identification 0.02 [0.10] -0.09 [0.12] -0.09 [0.12]

Anti-Catholicism 1.64 [1.20] 1.80 [1.76] 2.07 [1.71]

Collective Action

Social Pressure 0.61 [0.15]*** 0.58 [0.16]***

Family Expected Participation 0.44 [0.29]

Community Thinks Less of Nonpartic. 0.76 [0.36]**

Social Ties

Family Marched 0.24 [0.88] -0.07 [0.74] -0.01 [0.76]

Close Friends at Age 16 0.29 [0.29] 0.22 [0.35] 0.19 [0.35]

Been Asked to March 0.42 [0.51] 0.18 [0.85] 0.25 [0.82]

Control Variables

Marched as Youth 0.73 [0.43]* 0.71 [0.45]

Age -0.04 [0.03] -0.03 [0.03]

Education -0.84 [0.86] -0.80 [0.83]

Children under 18 -1.06 [0.68] -1.05 [0.65]

Full-Time Job 1.84 [0.76]** 1.75 [0.73]**

Church Attendance 0.28 [0.14]** 0.26 [0.14]*

Constant -4.34 [0.86]*** -3.09 [1.97] -3.34 [2.24]

Number of observations 174 160 160


MULTIPLE IMPUTATIONS

To account for the loss of observations due to missing data, I reestimate the main model

using the AMELIA II program. The program imputed values for missing data in the 56

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Table 7.4. Robustness Check: Multiple Imputations



Model 3 (Disaggregate

social pressure)

Model 4 (With income)

Ethnic Rivalry

Protestant Identification 0.19 [0.12] 0.11 [0.15] 0.13 [0.16] 0.13 [0.14]

Anti-Catholicism 1.27 [1.14] 2.14 [1.40] 2.53 [1.38]* 2.38 [1.80]

Collective Action

Social Pressure 0.84 [0.19]*** 0.76 [0.22]*** 0.76 [0.24]***

Family Expected Participation 0.57 [0.20]**

Community Thinks Less of Nonpartic. 0.75 [0.34]**

Social Ties

Family Marched 0.25 [0.82] 0.13 [0.70] 0.29 [0.61] 0.09 [0.74]

Close Friends at Age 16 0.21 [0.32] 0.10 [0.33] 0.01 [0.33] 0.11 [0.34]

Been Asked to March 0.63 [0.52] 0.49 [0.55] 0.49 [0.49] 0.46 [0.57]

Control Variables

Marched as Youth 0.71 [0.33]** 0.70 [0.28]** 0.74 [0.35]**

Age -0.02 [0.02] -0.02 [0.02] -0.02 [0.02]

Education -0.26 [0.66] -0.36 [0.68] -0.33 [0.66]

Children under 18 -1.01 [0.52]* -0.88 [0.50]* -1.07 [0.46]**

Full-Time Job 0.96 [0.66] 0.80 [0.55] 0.81 [0.98]

Church Attendance 0.25 [0.09]*** 0.27 [0.10]** 0.25 [0.08]***

Income 0.10 [0.27]

Constant -5.71 [0.83]*** -5.42 [1.27]*** -5.55 [1.25]*** -5.88 [1.87]**

Number of observations 227 227 227 227


James Honaker and Gary King, “What to Do about Missing Values in Time-Series Cross-Section Data,” American 56

Journal of Political Science, Vol. 54, No. 3 (April 2010), pp. 561-81; and James Honaker, Gary King, and Matthew Blackwell, “AMELIA II: A Program for Missing Data,” Harvard University, 2012.

independent variables, but I deleted the one observation that was missing the dependent variable.

I then used the new imputed datasets to estimate the logistic regressions. As we can see in Table

7.4, the results with the five new datasets are largely similar to the original results, increasing the

confidence in the initial estimation. Participants remain undistinguished by their ethnic attitudes

and social ties, but do report greater social pressure.

There are two points to notice in Table 7.4. The first is that Anti-Catholicism is

statistically significant at the 90 percent level for the first time in Model 3. This clearly conflicts

with my argument and the evidence in the rest of the chapter. I acknowledge this discrepancy, but

believe that the preponderance of the evidence favors the argument that sectarian attitudes do not

differentiate participants from nonparticipants.

In several other of this chapter’s regressions, however, Anti-Catholicism is close to

statistically significant at the 90 percent level. To further examine what is driving this near-

significance, I disaggregate the variable in the Appendix (Table A2, Model A4). Breaking the

measure into its four component parts is revealing. The results show that parading is perhaps

about expressing grievances, but not about expressing deep-seated hatred. Paraders are not more

likely than nonparticipants to express concern about a close family member marrying a Catholic,

express the belief that Catholics sometimes need to be reminded that they live in the United

Kingdom, nor the belief that Catholics are primarily responsible for the sectarian tension in

Northern Ireland. Rather, they more likely to state that they agree that “over the past few years,

Catholics have gotten more economically than they deserve.” All four of these variables capture

a dimension of bias against Catholics, but the former two focus on bias against Catholics as

people (i.e., I wouldn’t want them in my family and they are inherently traitorous) while the

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latter two focus on bias against Catholic behavior or outcomes (i.e., raising the level of sectarian

tension and succeeding economically). The one measure that is statistically significant captures

the latter form of bias: a negative view of Catholic economic outcomes. So paraders remain

undifferentiated by bias directed at Catholics qua Catholics. Rather, they express high levels of

economic-based grievances against perceived Catholic success.

The second point is that Model 4 includes a measure of Income. The variable is not

significantly related to parade participation, a finding that substantiates my earlier suspicion.

Thus, participants are no wealthier or poorer than nonparticipating neighbors.

!Conclusion

This chapter used original survey and interview data to assess hypotheses derived from

prominent explanations for participation in ethnic conflict. Care was taken to collect data from

both participants and comparable nonparticipants in order to properly test these arguments. And

though addressing these methodological concerns proved laborious and costly, the resulting data

challenge the scholarly and popular conventional wisdoms. Where the ethnic rivalry approach

expects that participants identify with the in-group and are prejudiced against the out-group more

than nonparticipants, I find that they are not. Widely-held opinions in Northern Ireland mirror

these arguments. Many Protestants hail paraders as “super Prods”—staunchly loyal and

dedicated members of the Protestant community—and many Catholics denounce paraders as

extreme sectarians, but my data dispute these characterizations. I do not argue that participants

are not loyal Protestants nor biased against Catholics. I simply claim that they are no more so

than their neighbors who choose not to parade. In this way, paraders are similar to other social

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movement participants who tend to not be differentiated by ideological sympathy for the

movement. 57

The collective action approach provides three specific explanations for individual-level

participation, of which I find thin support for one. There is robust quantitative evidence that

participants are more likely to report social pressure, but the interview data strongly suggest that

social pressure play no significant role in mobilization. Thus any conclusion is perforce

inconclusive. The data on selective material rewards and the role of social ties, however, are in

agreement. Parade participation is not motivated, or even correlated with, the receipt of material

rewards. I found no systematic evidence that parade participants gain economically as a result of

their actions. On the contrary, they pay—monetarily and in perceived risk to job security—for

the chance to parade. Social ties, too, do not increase the probability of participation. Prior

research and the conventional wisdom are partly true: paraders do have many social ties to other

participants at the time of joining. But I found that nonparticipants also have many social ties to 58

parades. So much so that social ties do not statistically differentiate participants from

nonparticipants.

The variation is large part explain by variables outside the parameters of the dominant

theories of ethnic conflict. Participants do not follow a logic of extreme sectarianism or of

precise cost-benefit analysis, rather the regression analysis shows that the factors associated with

participation are participating as a youth, church attendance, having full-time employment, and

not having children under 18 years old. The latter two variables provided mixed support for the

!258

See, for example, Klandermans and Oegema, “Potentials, Networks, Motivations, and Barriers”; McAdam, 57

“Recruitment to High-Risk Activism”; McAdam, Freedom Summer; and Munson, Making of Pro-Life Activists.

McAuley, Tonge, and Mycock, Loyal to the Core?58

biographical availability explanation, with absence of young children supporting the explanation

and working full-time opposing it.

!259

Chapter Eight Conclusion !

In a speech less than three years after the Agreement was signed, British diplomat David

Goodall stated: “Peace, in short, is within reach of becoming a habit which no one wants to

break.” Though largely true, many people in Northern Ireland appear willing to test the habit’s 1

breaking point on a regular basis. This dissertation has examined why that is. Rather than simply

assume that large-scale challenges are the product of elite spoilers to the peace process, I

examined the choices made by ordinary people to participate or not in loyalist parades. I argued

that people choose to take part in loyalist parades because they are a ritual. I found that

participants are most interested in the benefits intrinsic to participation in parades, rather than

selective material gains or the chance to intimidate Catholics. As a result, people make decisions

to participate in contentious parades without consideration of their actions’ profoundly political

consequences. The ritual nature of parades severs the expected connection between participation

and the external, often negative, consequences, thus creating the environment for sustained

conflict.

!Review of the Argument and Main Findings

Contentious rituals, such as loyalist parades, present several puzzles for scholars of ethnic

conflict and collective action. First, since contentious rituals produce collective outcomes, they

face the free-rider problem. Second, the outcomes that contentious rituals produce are often

!260

David Goodall, “Hillsborough to Belfast: Is It the Final Lap?” in Marinne Elliott, ed., The Long Road to Peace in 1

Northern Ireland: Peace Lectures from the Institute of Irish Studies at Liverpool University, rev. ed. (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007), p. 132.

socially harmful, with participants among the most likely to suffer. And third, contentious rituals

are characterized by distinctive aspects of ritual such as repetition and goal demotion. Given

these features, why would anyone decide to participate? Dominant existing explanations do not

provide compelling answers. Elite manipulation arguments do not account for mass participation.

Though these theories assume that ethnic elites are clever and calculating, they fail to give any

agency to ordinary people. What is more, I presented survey data from Northern Ireland showing

that there is not one elite opinion for the masses to just follow.

Perhaps participants share the goals of conflict-seeking elites. Theories of ethnic conflict

suggest that participants hold extreme ethnic attitudes: participants should be in-group

chauvinists and hate the out-group. But my survey of randomly selected participants and

comparable nonparticipants suggests that participants are not distinguished by their attachment to

other Protestants or their feelings toward Catholics.

Rather than seeking the collective outcomes for the in-group and against the out-group,

participants might be most interested in themselves. Theories of collective action suggest that

people are more likely to participate when the personal benefits of participation are higher than

the personal costs. But again, the evidence refuted the claim. The survey and interviews showed

that paraders do not receive material incentives, but pay to be able to take part. The evidence

regarding social sanction was more mixed. There was some quantitative data suggesting that

participants are more likely to experience pressure to parade; but the interview data suggested no

such pressure. Finally, pre-existing social ties to other participants, a robust predictor of

participation in collective action, also did not distinguish paraders from non-paraders. Parading

organizations are so embedded in Protestant communities that even non-participants have friends

!261

and family involved in them.

The data I collected in Northern Ireland do not support these prominent theories premised

on instrumental logics. This is because existing theories do not account for contentious rituals as

rituals. My argument, in contrast, rests on two fundamental insights from multi-disciplinary

research on rituals. I argued that rituals provide participants with process benefits intrinsic to the

very act of participation and that rituals are multi-vocal and their meaning is ambiguous.

Together, these claims explain why people participate in contentious rituals that produce

collective and divisive outcomes.

To substantiate my argument, I provided qualitative and quantitative evidence that

showed that participants primarily understand their behavior non-instrumentally. They are

interested in the internal processes, not the external consequences, of participation. Specifically, I

identified five process-oriented reasons for acting: collective identity expression,

commemoration, tradition, defiance, and the pleasures of participation. External communication

with Protestants and Catholics is a key instrumental reason for acting, but did not appear to

motivate participation on its own.

To explain how participants seem to ignore the serious external political consequences of

their parades, I argued that they understand parades as anti-political. I showed that participants

define culture against politics and place parades firmly in the culture category. Their beliefs are

sustained by the ritual nature of parades, which provides participants with process-oriented

reasons and symbolic ambiguity to maintain their own interpretations.

In sum, the empirical evidence presented in this dissertation supports the view that

contentious rituals must be understood as rituals. The importance of loyalist parades in

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perpetuating sectarian conflict and violence in Northern Ireland shows that rituals have

significant material effects on political life. Though I suggested that contentious rituals have

similar effects in other divided societies, I did not prove it. In what remains of this dissertation, I

will provide short accounts of divisive processions in Jerusalem and India and reflect on the

comparisons.

!Expanding the Horizon

The cases of contentious rituals in Jerusalem and India provide fruitful comparisons to

Northern Ireland. In all three places, processions have long histories of fusing nationalism,

religion, territory, power, and violence. They also all continue to polarize communities and ignite

conflict to this day.

!Israeli Processions in Jerusalem

The most prominent disputed procession in contemporary Jerusalem takes place on

Jerusalem Day (Yom Yerushalayim). On this day, Israeli Jews celebrate the capture of the Old

City and the reunification of Jerusalem during the 1967 Six-Day War. The victory for Israel,

however, is understood as a defeat for the city’s Arab residents, who live as second-class citizens.

In recent years, the day’s celebrations include the “Flag Dance” (rikud degalim), a march by tens

of thousands of primarily right-wing, religious-nationalist teenagers waving Israeli flags through

!263

the city. Since 2011, the parades route has included Arab neighborhoods in the Old City and 2

East Jerusalem. Each year since, the parade has been marked by violence between Jews and 3

Arabs. Fights have also broken out between right-wing and left-wing Israeli Jews. Issawi Freij, 4 5

an Israeli Arab Knesset Member, has called the Flag Dance “nothing but a euphemism for a

parade of hatred and provocation on the part of thousands of radical right-wing activists in the

midst of the Arab neighborhoods,” claiming, “It’s not Jerusalem that celebrants are happy about;

it’s belligerence, arrogance and provocation.” During the celebration, Palestinian shopkeepers 6

are ordered by the police to close their shops during the march to “prevent friction.” Parading 7

past shuttered Arab shops and homes, the celebrants chanted “let your village burn,” “death to

!264

Joel Greenberg, “Celebration or Provocation? A Stroll Through the Old City on Jerusalem Day,” Haaretz.com, May 2

21, 2012. Available at: http://www.haaretz.com/news/features/double-take-celebration-or-provocation-a-stroll-through-the-old-city-on-jerusalem-day-1.431791; and Mitch Ginsburg, “Jerusalem’s Annual Liberation Party Degenerates, Again, From Sweet Fervor to Mini-Rioting,” Times of Israel, May 21, 2012. Available at: http://www.timesofisrael.com/the-biggest-party-of-the-year-national-religious-teens-march-to-the-western-wall/. Accessed March 28, 2015.

Rachel Busbridge, “Frontier Jerusalem: Blurred Separation and Uneasy Coexistence in a Divided City,” Thesis 3

Eleven, Vol. 121, No. 1 (April 2014), p. 77.

Omri Efraim, “Violent Clashes Erupt During Jerusalem Day Parade,” Ynetnews.com, June 1, 2011. Available at: 4

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4077124,00.html; Omri Efraim, “Jerusalem: 30,000 Take Part in ‘Flag Dance’ Parade,” Ynetnews.com, May 20, 2012. Available at: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4231760,00.html; Gavriel Fiske, “On Jerusalem Day, Clashes and Arrests in Old City,” Times of Israel, May 8, 2013. Available at: http://www.timesofisrael.com/on-jerusalem-day-clashes-and-arrests-in-old-city/#ixzz3VQhmhXlD; and Jonathan Lis, “Left and Right Play Tug-of-War over Jerusalem Day,” Haaretz.com, May 28, 2014. Available at: http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/.premium-1.595780. Accessed March 28, 2015.

Omri Efraim, “Jerusalem: 30,000 Take Part in ‘Flag Dance’ Parade,” Ynetnews.com, May 20, 2012. Available at: 5

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4231760,00.html. Accessed March 28, 2015.

Jonathan Lis, “Left and Right Play Tug-of-War over Jerusalem Day,” Haaretz.com, May 28, 2014. Available at: 6

http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/.premium-1.595780. Accessed March 28, 2015.

Joel Greenberg, “Celebration or Provocation? A Stroll Through the Old City on Jerusalem Day,” Haaretz.com, May 7

21, 2012. Available at: http://www.haaretz.com/news/features/double-take-celebration-or-provocation-a-stroll-through-the-old-city-on-jerusalem-day-1.431791. Accessed March 28, 2015.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/features/double-take-celebration-or-provocation-a-stroll-through-the-old-city-on-jerusalem-day-1.431791

http://www.haaretz.com/news/features/double-take-celebration-or-provocation-a-stroll-through-the-old-city-on-jerusalem-day-1.431791

the Arabs,” and “death to all leftists.” 8

In addition to the Flag Dance on Jerusalem Day, other contentious rituals reverberate

across the city. For instance, to mark the first day of each Hebrew month, hundreds of nationalist

religious Israelis circumambulate the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif during the “circling the

gates” ceremony. During the ritual, which necessitates the closing of streets in the Old City’s

Muslim Quarter, participants dance, sing, and pray for the rebuilding of the Temple. There are 9

also the many contested ritual performances in holy places claimed by multiple religious groups.

Attempts at Jewish prayer atop the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif have the most consequential

political ramifications, but even disputes between Christian denominations over the location of

rituals inside the Church of the Holy Sepulcher have erupted in brawls. 10

Conflicts over public religious rituals in Jerusalem date to at least the early twentieth

century, when significant numbers of Jews began to immigrate. Wasserstein comments that the

“calendar of communal violence in [Mandatory] Palestine was closely bound up with the

calendar of religious festivity.” It was always especially dangerous when multiple religions 11

celebrated holidays on the same day. The crowds gathered to performed the required holiday

!265

Noam Sheizaf, “Watch: Jerusalem Day’s Racist March, Escorted by Police, +972, June 1, 2011. Available at: 8

http://972mag.com/watch-jerusalem-days-racist-march-escorted-by-police/15554/; Nir Hasson, “Right-Wing March to Pass through East Jerusalem, Despite Past Spats,” Haaretz.com, May 15, 2012. Available at: http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/right-wing-march-to-pass-through-east-jerusalem-despite-past-spats-1.430568. Accessed March 28, 2015.

Yizhar Be’er, Dangerous Liaison: The Dynamics of the Rise of the Temple Movements and Their Implications 9

(Jerusalem: Keshev and Ir Amim, 2013), pp. 43-44.

Ron E. Hassner, War on Sacred Grounds (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009), p. 76; and Michael Dumper, 10

Jerusalem Unbound: Geography, History, and the Future of the Holy City (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), p. 112.

Bernard Wasserstein, “Patterns of Communal Conflict in Palestine,” in Ada Rapoport-Albert and Steven J. 11

Zipperstein, eds., Jewish History: Essays in Honour of Chimen Abramsky (London: Peter Halban, 1988), p. 611.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/right-wing-march-to-pass-through-east-jerusalem-despite-past-spats-1.430568

rituals often met in combat. The “clash of dates” continues to cause problems in the city 12

today. 13

!Hindu Processions in India

The role of ritual processions in producing conflict and violence is most pronounced in

India. According to one anthropologist, the “direct connection between ritual performances in

public space and riots [in India] seems… obvious.” Episodes of violence erupting from 14

religious processions can be found throughout the last three centuries, but the connection 15

between ritual and riot deepened in the 1980s. Starting then, Hindu nationalists promoted the use

of yatra processions for political mobilization and to unify the Hindu nation. In the years that 16

followed, “the religious element almost disappeared from them; they were converted into

demonstrations of strength, pure and simple.” Jaffrelot argues that since processions build 17

Hindu solidarity by (momentarily) erasing internal caste boundaries, claim space on behalf of the

Hindu community, and clearly demarcate the in-group in contrast to the out-group, they are “one

!266

Ibid.12

Dumper, Jerusalem Unbound, p. 231.13

Peter van der Veer, “Riots and Rituals: The Construction of Violence and Public Space in Hindu Nationalism,” in 14

Paul R. Brass, ed., Riots and Pogroms (New York: New York University Press, 1996), p. 155.

C. A. Bayly, “The Pre-History of ‘Communalism’? Religious Conflict in India, 1700-1860,” Modern Asian 15

Studies, Vol. 19, No. 2 (1985), pp. 177-203; and Anand A. Yang, “Sacred Symbol and Sacred Space in Rural India: Community Mobilization in the ‘Anti-Cow Killing’ Riot of 1893,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 22, No. 4 (October 1980), pp. 576-596.

Jackie Assayag, “Ritual Action or Political Reaction? The Invention of Hindu Nationalist Processions in India 16

during the 1980s,” South Asia Research, Vol. 18, No. 2 (1998), pp. 125-146; and Arafaat A. Valiani, “Processions as Publics: Religious Ceremonials and Modes of Public Sphere Intervention in Western India,” unpublished manuscript, Williams College, 2011, p. 5.

Christophe Jaffrelot, “The Politics of Processions and Hindu-Muslim Riots,” in Amrita Basu and Atul Kohli, eds., 17

Community Conflict and the State in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 71.

of the institutions Hindu nationalists are most eager to exploit.” 18

Hindu processions are a common occurrence in India, but two are especially notable in

the recent history of nationalist politics. The Ekatmata Yatra (“Pilgrimage of One-Soulness”)

was invented in 1983 with the explicit goal of uniting India’s Hindus behind “an undiluted

version of Hindutva,” or Hindu nationalism. Massive processions left different parts of India 19

heading toward the geographic center of the country, carrying water from the sacred Ganges

River that they distributed along the way. The processions were at once displays of religious

devotion drawing on elements of traditional Hindu rituals and demonstrations of the political

strength of the nationalist movement. The Rath Yatra (“Chariot Pilgrimage”) undertaken in 20

1990 by L.K. Advani, president of the nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, from Sommath,

Gujarat, to Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, 10,000 kilometers away, is probably the most well-known

case. The pilgrimage, which was timed to coincide with religious festivals and whose vehicles

were adorned with Hindu symbols, was designed to gather support for the campaign to demolish

the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya, which was believed to sit on the birthplace of the Hindu god

!267

Christophe Jaffrelot, “The Hindu Nationalist Reinterpretation of Pilgrimage in India: The Limits of Yatra 18

Politics,” Nations and Nationalism, Vol. 15, No. 1 (2009), p. 9. Also Steven I. Wilkinson, Votes and Violence: Electoral Competition and Ethnic Riots in India (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004). On the political implications of the relative egalitarianism of religious rituals in India, see Pradeep K. Chhibber, Religious Practice and Democracy in India (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014).

Jaffrelot, “The Hindu Nationalist Reinterpretation of Pilgrimage,” p. 10.19

Assayag, “Ritual Action or Political Reaction?” p. 135; Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement in 20

India (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), pp. 360-362; and Jaffrelot, “The Hindu Nationalist Reinterpretation of Pilgrimage,” pp. 9-11.

Rama. Advani’s Rath Yatra triggered many communal riots along its path. 21 22

Beyond these two famous, one-time national processions, there are many local

processions across India. This being India, local does not mean small. In the Gujarati city of

Ahmedabad, for example, one annual procession (the Jagganath Rath Yatra or “Chariot

Pilgrimage of Lord Jagganath”) alone has had upwards of 200,000 participants in recent years. 23

Each year, the ritual passes through Muslim neighborhoods with heavy security and a curfew on

residents. According to ethnographic research by Valiani, participants “seemed to take 24

advantage of the thick police cover which surrounded them and taunted the Muslims with

catcalls and slogans.” This pattern of unwelcome Hindu religious processions entering Muslim 25

neighborhoods is a major trigger of ethnic riots in India. 26

!Concluding Thoughts

A counterintuitive pattern emerges from the comparison of processions by Protestants in

Ulster, Israelis in Jerusalem, and Hindus in India. In all three cases, the provocative rituals are

!268

Advani never reached Ayodhya, he was arrested along the way. But 40,000 activists continued without him and 21

stormed the mosque. Thirty people died in ensuing violence. The ashes of the dead were then carried on processions that triggered more riots. Jaffrelot, “The Hindu Nationalist Reinterpretation of Pilgrimage,” p. 13.

Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement, pp. 416-419; Assayag, “Ritual Action or Political Reaction?” pp. 22

137-138; Jaffrelot, “The Politics of Processions,” pp. 81-84; Thomas Blom Hansen, The Saffron Wave: Democracy and Hindu Nationalism in Modern India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp. 164-165; and Jaffrelot, “The Hindu Nationalist Reinterpretation of Pilgrimage,” pp. 11-13

Valiani, “Processions as Publics,” p. 29.23

Ibid., pp. 50-52. At times, the procession has even defied requests by the police and army to avoid Muslim areas. 24

Ornit Shani, Communalism, Caste and Hindu Nationalism: The Violence in Gujarat (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 100.

Ibid., p. 56.25

Jaffrelot, “The Politics of Processions”; Wilkinson, Votes and Violence; and Paul R. Brass, The Production of 26

Hindu-Muslim Violence in Contemporary India (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005), esp. pp. 364-365.

performed by members of the majority ethnic group. We might assume that symbolic 27

aggressions are weapons of the weak, something a group does when it lacks material power. But

symbolic confrontations are not a substitute for strength; they require strength. As these cases

reveal, the ability to carry out mass provocations in public space is a luxury of the powerful. This

is because “ritual rights,” like all rights, are not self-enforcing. They “ultimately depend on the

authority and coercive capacities of the state.” In particular, parading through an hostile area 28

generally requires the permission and protection of the state. In Jerusalem and India, that

includes imposing curfews on minority residents; in all three it requires significant policing

operations.

Thus one of the ways that provocative processions project dominance is by embodying

dominance. They are performed with the state’s sanction and with state-provided security. 29

Subordinate groups seeking to provoke are generally granted neither permission nor protection.

As a Palestinian journalists writes: “Imagine for a moment that Palestinians decide to celebrate

their heritage in West Jerusalem and march through Jaffa and Ben Yehuda streets! Would they be

given full police protection? Would the police dare to ask shops in West Jerusalem to close their

doors to reduce tension?” 30

This is not to say that minorities in divided societies do not engage in symbolic

!269

Though Protestants are no longer the majority in Northern Ireland, they remain the largest group. But parading 27

developed when they demographically and political dominant.

Roger Friedland and Richard Hecht, “The Bodies of Nations: A Comparative Study of Religious Violence in 28

Jerusalem and Ayodhya,”History of Religions, Vol. 38, No. 2 (November 1998), p. 112.

Dominic Bryan, Orange Parades: The Politics of Ritual, Tradition, and Control (London: Pluto, 2000), p. 95, 29

argues that during the Troubles, opposition to parades mounted not only because of what parades represented to Catholics, but because their performance meant the presence of the reviled police forces.

Aziz Abu Sarah, “Palestinians Asked to Close Their Shops for Jerusalem Day,” +972, May 20, 2012. Available at: 30

http://972mag.com/palestinians-asked-to-close-their-shops-for-jerusalem-day/46355/. Accessed March 28, 2015.

provocations. They do, but they tend to antagonize through non-collective actions. Prevented

from large-scale, mass provocations, minorities use smaller-scale, but no less inflammatory, acts.

For example, in 1982, Sikh militants placed two severed cow heads outside a Hindu temple in

Amritsar, India. The act, performed before dawn, likely took no more than a few people acting

under the cover of darkness. But it worked as intended: the desecration triggered rioting. 31

Another tentative conclusion we can draw from the comparison is that successful

symbolic provocation is the product of “intimate enmity.” Effectively antagonizing the other 32

group requires knowing them well: what they hold dear, what is taboo, where is sacred, when

they are particularly sensitive to insults. Without this knowledge, attempts to enrage could fall

flat—desecrating a profane place will prompt little more than a shrug. But with the right

knowledge—gained from the continuous interaction that comes living in close proximity

—“symbolic challenges… can rapidly spawn a spiraling tornado of violence.” Like an unhappy 33

married couple, groups in divided societies know how to push each others’ buttons like no one

else. So in addition to rioting after discovering the cow heads, Hindus flung cigarettes into Sikh

holy places, knowing that tobacco is taboo for Sikhs. 34

While these actions are characterized by intimacy, they lack empathy. Despite, or perhaps

because of, the proximity of the ethnic communities in divided societies, many people seem

!270

Stanley Tambiah, Leveling Crowds: Ethnonationalist Conflicts and Collective Violence in South Asia (Berkeley: 31

University of California Press, 1996), p. 236.

I have seen the term in Meron Benvenisti, Intimate Enemies: Jews and Arabs in a Shared Land (Berkeley: 32

University of California Press, 1995), p. 82; and Naveeda Khan, “The Acoustics of Muslim Striving: Loudspeaker Use in Ritual Practice in Pakistan,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 53, No. 3 (July 2011), p. 579. Without using the term, Marc Gaborieau, “From Al-Beruni to Jinnah: Idiom, Ritual and Ideology of the Hindu-Muslim Confrontation in South Asia,” Anthropology Today, Vol. 1, No. 3 (June 1985), pp. 9-10, describes the concept in great detail.

Tambiah, Leveling Crowds, p. 236.33

Ibid.34

unable or unwilling to empathize across the ethnic boundary. There is an unwillingness to

recognize that a ritual that is so wonderful for you may be so terrible for someone else. Returning

to Northern Ireland, neither Protestant paraders nor Catholic protesters seem prepared to imagine

the significant pain they impose on the other. Most paraders are unprepared to accept that

marching by Catholic homes and churches causes real hurt for many Catholics, for whom

parades are degrading symbols of hate. Most protesters are unprepared to accept that stopping

parades causes real hurt for many Protestants, for whom parades are a deeply meaningful ritual

inseparable from collective and personal identities, as well as cherished moments in life. A

degree of empathy might break the cycle of mutual antagonizing and create the conditions for

true and lasting peace.

!271

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Appendix

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!!!!!

Table A1. Robustness Check: Alternative Measures of Protestant Identification

Main Model (Table 7.2, Model 2)

Model A1 (Disaggregate

Prot ID)

Model A2 (British)

Model A3 (Unionist)

Ethnic Rivalry

Protestant Identification -0.09 [0.12]

Strong Ties to Other Protestants -0.02 [0.56]

Feel Like other Protestants 0.25 [0.29]

Proud to Be Called Protestants -0.21 [0.32]

British -0.82 [1.20]

Unionist 1.39 [1.31]

Anti-Catholicism 1.80 [1.76] 2.26 [1.95] 1.95 [1.59] 2.14 [1.58]

Collective Action

Social Pressure 0.58 [0.16]*** 0.78 [0.16]*** 0.72 [0.24]*** 0.83 [0.24]***

Social Ties

Family Marched -0.07 [0.74] -0.15 [0.83] -0.11 [0.89] -0.17 [0.86]


Been Asked to March 0.18 [0.85] 0.25 [0.89] 0.61 [0.73] 0.00 [0.90]

Control Variables

Marched as Youth 0.73 [0.43]* 0.96 [0.47]** 0.53 [0.38] 0.84 [0.54]

Age -0.04 [0.03] -0.05 [0.03] -0.05 [0.04] -0.06 [0.04]*

Education -0.84 [0.86] -1.09 [0.90] -0.72 [1.01] -0.83 [0.81]

Children under 18 -1.06 [0.68] -1.42 [0.73]* -1.52 [0.91]* -1.23 [0.84]

Full-Time Job 1.84 [0.76]** 2.50 [0.82]*** 2.30 [0.78]*** 2.16 [0.70]***

Church Attendance 0.28 [0.14]** 0.37 [0.14]*** 0.33 [0.13]** 0.32 [0.12]***

Constant -3.09 [1.97] -4.21 [2.26]* -3.91 [2.48] -5.32 [2.25]**



!305

!!!!!

Table A2. Robustness Check: Alternative Measures of Anti-Catholicism and Family Ties

Main Model (Table 7.2, Model 2)


Anti-Catholicism)

Model A5 (Anti-Cath. w/o Econ Deserve)


Family Marched)

Ethnic Rivalry

Protestant Identification -0.09 [0.12] -0.05 [0.17] -0.05 [0.14] -0.08 [0.13]

Anti-Catholicism 1.80 [1.76] 2.58 [1.95]

Caths. Cause Sectarian Tension 0.27 [0.64]

Oppose Family Marrying Cath. 0.41 [0.45]

Caths. Gained More Econ 1.48 [0.61]**

Caths. Need Remind. Live in UK -0.91 [0.78]

Alternative Anti-Catholicism 1.66 [1.89]

Collective Action

Social Pressure 0.58 [0.16]*** 0.79 [0.24]*** 0.82 [0.17]*** 0.82 [0.17]***

Social Ties

Family Marched -0.07 [0.74] -0.35 [0.79] -0.09 [0.72]

Father Marched -0.35 [1.43]

Other Family Marched 0.12 [0.59]


Been Asked to March 0.18 [0.85] -0.16 [0.83] 0.30 [0.92] 0.27 [0.85]

Control Variables

Marched as Youth 0.73 [0.43]* 0.86 [0.52]* 0.94 [0.47]** 0.94 [0.48]*

Age -0.04 [0.03] -0.07 [0.04]* -0.06 [0.03]* -0.05 [0.03]

Education -0.84 [0.86] -1.79 [1.27] -1.23 [1.00] -1.08 [0.90]

Children under 18 -1.06 [0.68] -2.06 [1.16]* -1.53 [0.70]** -1.56 [0.75]**

Full-Time Job 1.84 [0.76]** 3.06 [1.13]*** 2.49 [0.88]*** 2.63 [0.90]***

Church Attendance 0.28 [0.14]** 0.47 [0.20]** 0.35 [0.16]** 0.34 [0.14]**

Constant -3.09 [1.97] -3.38 [1.87]* -3.94 [2.33]* -4.77 [2.23]**



!306

Table A3. Interviewees Quoted in Dissertation. (OO is Orange Order, RBI is Royal Black Institution, ABOD is Apprentice Boys of Derry;

Leadership role means senior leadership within a parading organization)

“Name” Parading Afflilation OccupationInterview

Date

Albert OO, RBI retired factory worker Aug 20, 2012

Alexander OO retired clergy and politician Jul 19, 2013

Ben OO, ABOD politician Aug 13, 2013

Billy OO, band truck driver Aug 6, 2013

Chris Band small business owner Jul 31, 2012

Craig Band politician Dec 12, 2012

Dan Band bricklayer Aug 18, 2012

David Bands, ABOD community safety worker Jul 30, 2013

Edward OO politician Jul 27, 2012

Frankie OO community center management Dec 4, 2012

Gary N/A clergy Dec 4, 2012

George OO, RBI, ABOD; Leadership role works for parading organization Aug 14, 2012

Howie ABOD, OO factory worker Aug 13, 2012

Ian Parade attender security guard Jun 13, 2014

Isaac OO clergy Aug 12, 2013

Jack N/A clergy Jul 30, 2013

Jamie Band unemployed Dec 13, 2012

Jesse OO politician Aug 19, 2013

John OO; Leadership role clergy Jul 25, 2013

Joseph Band bar tender Jun 11, 2014

Kenny Band factory worker Dec 12, 2012

Kyle Band skilled mechanic Jun 11, 2014

Lee Band, OO civil service Dec 13, 2012

Mark OO small business owner Jul 11, 2013

Matt Parade attender maintainence May 3, 2013

!307

Michael OO health & safety supervisor Aug 19, 2013

Mikey OO, RBI, ABOD truck driver Aug 27, 2012

Nigel ABOD, OO, RBI retired business owner May 1, 2013

Rachel Band student Aug 8, 2013

Rich ex-OO clergy Nov 20, 2012

Robby OO, RBI, ABOD tattoo artist Aug 1, 2013

Robert OO retired factory worker Nov 28, 2012

Sammy OO, ABOD, Band youth worker Jul 9, 2013

Samuel Parade attender public relations Aug 19, 2013

Scott Band arts and culture Jul 23, 2012

Sophie Parade attender healthcare Aug 20, 2012

Steven Band, OO, RBI retired retail manager Dec 5, 2012

Tom OO; Leadership role clergy Aug 14, 2012

Tommy N/A ex-paramilitary prisoner Nov 26, 2012

Walter Band small business owner Jul 31, 2012

“Name” Parading Afflilation OccupationInterview

Date

!308

jonathan s. blake - columbia university · ireland at queen’s university belfast, the columbia...

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