Democracy, Governance and Governmentality: the Role of the Voluntary Sector in the Democratic Renewal of Northern Ireland
by John Morrisson
From: Human Rights, Equality and Democratic renewal in Northern Ireland edited by Colin Harvey
Hart Publishing 2001
The evolution of the voluntary sector in Northern Ireland
There is a long history of voluntary activity in Ireland from the end of eighteenth Century.1 Some have speculated that this degree of development was caused by a politics of exclusion from the formal state which had the result that alternative structures among the Nationalist community grew up, and this in turn caused a response in the Protestant community.2 Certainly there is now a belief that voluntary activity is highly developed in Northern Ireland with, for example, a former Secretary of State on record as estimating the sector to be 25% larger than in Great Britain.3 The Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action (NICVA) maintain a list of some 5000 organisations on their data base.4 Of course it is now customary everywhere for former opposition politicians in power to acknowledge links with the bodies who may have nurtured them at earlier stages and claim that the voluntary sector in their jurisdiction is particularly developed.5 Nevertheless, it is probably true that in the recent past the voluntary and community sector performed a different and wider role in Northern Ireland than its counterparts in Great Britain and this ranges through service provision to a more engaged policy development role.
Voluntary sector as an adjunct to direct rule - "civil servants without ties"?
The system of "direct rule" which continued for more than 25 years, with only a limited interruption caused by the brief restoration of devolution in 1973-4, offered particular opportunities to the voluntary sector in Northern Ireland. Characterised as it was by an absence of a nexus between the local political process and mechanisms of government, direct rule in some ways allowed the sector to act as an alternative site of politics and as an unofficial opposition. In the absence of a local assembly and with only very limited local council involvement6 direct rule was characterised by a number of negative features. Legislation was made by orders in council with the effect that law that was primary in substance was made by means that were secondary in terms of the level of scrutiny and debate involved.7 Much legislation was passed as a "read across" from Great Britain and arguably did not benefit from local input. Phrases like "helicopter rule" or "consular government" capture something of the flavour of a mechanism of government whereby a Secretary of State from the Westminster administration, holding a seat in an English Parliamentary constituency, was brought in to head up a governing structure that depended for local information on the Northern Ireland Civil Service rather than local politicians.
To counter these negative features, and the perceived democratic deficit
that they brought, the voluntary sector was to some degree encouraged to
become involved in government. In part the sector could bring a degree of
local expertise and knowledge. To an extent also the sector may have brought
a degree of legitimacy to state action particularly in politically sensitive
areas such as, for example, the work of the Northern Ireland Association
for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders with regard to prisoners' families.
From the sector's point of view, such a relationship with government had
certain advantages. General efforts at depoliticising service delivery by
removing it from both local government control and distancing it from direct
rule mechanisms provided an opportunity for the sector to become involved
in a service delivery role.8 Some parts of the sector, particularly those
staffed by individuals who might well elsewhere have entered political life
but who were not attracted by the local political scene, may also have welcomed
an opportunity to become more closely involved in a policy development role.
Indeed there are suggestions that successive Secretaries of State, even
those drawn from the Conservative Party, may have found voluntary sector
personnel more familiar and easier to deal with than local party politicians.9
Sweeney has argued that political fall-out from the Anglo-Irish Agreement
in 1985 provided an important additional opportunity for strategists from
the community and voluntary sector to influence government and, he maintains,
"a cadre of senior civil servants were equally determined to experiment with bold new approaches to tackling community differences".10 The role
of the sector was enhanced further through the establishment of structures
to deal with urban disadvantage such as the Belfast Action Teams and Making
Belfast Work in 1987 and The Londonderry Initiative in 1989 which were subsequently
re-cast with even further voluntary sector involvement. The Department of
Agriculture developed a community-based rural development programme in the
early 1990s leading to the establishment of the Rural Development Council
and, subsequently, a series of local area-based rural regeneration strategy
groups. The sector itself initiated the Community Development Review Group
in 1989 to review community action and development and this led to government
responding through the publication in 1993 a Strategy for the Support of
the Voluntary Sector and for Community Development in Northern Ireland 11and
the establishment of a Voluntary Activity Unit to facilitate interdepartmental
consideration of issues affecting the voluntary sector and those involved
in community development.12 |
