Channels, Fall 2018

Channels • 2018 • Volume 3 • Number 1 Page 41 before the referendum, which would decide the fate of the agreement. On May 22, 1998 two referendums were held simultaneously in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland to decide upon the agreement. In Northern Ireland, seventy-one percent of the population voted in favor of the agreement, while in the Republic of Ireland, ninety-four percent backed the agreement (Mac Ginty, & Darby 2002) In The Conflict Resolution Quarterly article, Hancock, Weiss, and Duerr, discuss how the peace deal in Northern Ireland was framed. Political leaders utilized prospect theory, which says, “Individuals overvalue losses, the certainty effect means that people will engage in more risk to avoid losses viewed as certain than to secure gains viewed as merely probably” (Hancock, Wiess, & Duerr, 2010). The framers of the Good Friday Agreement essentially took advantage of human nature. Since people are risk adverse, they framed the Good Friday Agreement as the best way to avoid continued violence (Hancock et al., 2010). Northern Ireland was experiencing a type of war weariness. Thus, they were able to use the idea of “ripeness”, an idea that is central to the structuralist paradigm mentioned in Herding Cats ( Crocker et al., 1999). Third-party actors also played an important role in the Northern Irish peace process. One of the actors was United States’ President Bill Clinton. In his article “The United States, Irish Americans and Northern Ireland Peace”, Guelke provides a thorough background on the United States’ involvement in the peace process in Northern Ireland. He examines how Irish Americans lobbied for peace in Northern Ireland. He discusses various groups of Irish Americans that formed during those years and how those groups were able to get President Clinton involved in the peace process (Guelke, 1996). This article gives some concrete examples of what third-party mediation, as discussed in Herding Cats, looks like in a peace process. It helped prove the point that third-party actors are important to modern day peace processes, which is what Herding Cats is all about. When thinking of long, violent wars, Colombia does not immediately spring to mind. Sadly, for decades Colombia was the location of a bloody conflict between Left-Wing armies and the Colombian government (See Figure 3). The major Left-wing armies were Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia–People’s Army (FARC-EP) and the National Liberation Army (ELN). In their article “Colombia’s Civil Conflict”, Claire Felter and Danielle Renwick give a detailed background on this conflict. The roots of this conflict trace back to a time known as La Violencia , which is Spanish for violence. This period lasted from 1948-58—eventually coming to an end with a power sharing agreement. However, those who embraced a left- leaning political ideology were completely left out of the power-sharing. For this reason, the FARC and the ELN were founded. From the start, both groups were essentially guerilla groups; however, their composition was slightly different. FARC was dominated by militant communists and peasant self-defense groups. ELN, on the other hand, tended to be more elitist, composed of students, Catholic radicals, and Left-wing intellectuals. While the ideology and composition of the two groups varied, both were opposed to the privatization of natural resources, and both claimed to represent the poor of Colombia. Notably, both groups were classified as terrorists by the United States Department of State. In response to the creation of FARC and ELN, the 1980s saw the creation of the right-leaning groups. These Right-wing groups had ties to the state military. The largest of these groups was the