Re-conceptualising competitive victimhood in reconciliation processes: the case of Northern Ireland

Abstract

The literature on competitive victimhood (CV) tends to be guided by a dichotomous interpretation based on a crude binary distinction between CV and inclusive/common victimhood, with the former referring to conflict and the latter to reconciliation. For a fine-grained interpretation of CV, this paper aims to show that actors’ use of victimhood narratives can be understood through a richer conceptualization of CV. Observing that actors tend to use victimhood narratives with varying intensity of competitiveness, I propose a CV typology to illustrate narrative variation in conflict-to-peace transition. The typology is developed in a two-staged process, firstly, by analytically distinguishing five categories of CV and, secondly, by putting these categories into practice in the case of Northern Ireland through an analysis of party manifestos and personal interviews with local actors conducted in Belfast in 2018. The empirical results show that the typology is helpful for capturing the transitions of competitiveness in intergroup reconciliation.