Legitimacy and Bargaining

In much of the social science literature, legitimation strategies are treated in one of two ways. Bargaining theories often view legitimacy as epiphenomenal: actors may “legitimate” their actions, but this is little more than window dressing; at most, this process reveals information about interests and type but has no autonomous causal effect.²⁶

Others, particularly constructivists, dispute this dismissal of legitimacy, arguing that actors may not be motivated by consequences, but rather by a “logic of appropriateness” that dictates a particular strategy.²⁷

Despite their obvious differences, these approaches share a strict dichotomy between interests and power on the one hand, and legitimacy on the other. I reject this dichotomy and see legitimacy as integral to strategic interaction. On the one hand, an actor's choice of legitimation strategies is a product of both ideas and interests. Following bargaining approaches, I argue that actors choose their legitimations strategically; they are, in Cruz's terms, effective “users” of legitimacy, deploying strategies likely to fulfill their political interests.²⁸

On the other hand, this use of rhetoric is deeply constrained by social and cultural context: the legitimation strategy depends not only on interests, but on Cruz's set of social and cultural ties with surrounding coalitions and institutions.

Although the approach here integrates ideas and interests, it also departs from rational choice studies. Legitimation strategies are more than cheap talk; they have structural effects—once used, they have causal effects not reducible to interests. Indeed, under some conditions legitimation strategies can have a “lock-in” effect that ultimately constrains actors from pursuing their interests.

The Strategy of Legitimacy

There are three ways legitimation strategies can give an advantage over an opponent. First, actors use legitimation strategies for coalitional outbidding. As Riker argues, actors may redefine “the political situation so that formerly unsympathetic competition wish to stand with the erstwhile disadvantaged.”²⁹

For instance, Milosevic's appeals to nationalism were designed to redefine a domestic debate to his advantage: by acting as the protector of the Serbs and steering the debate away from economic and political issues, Milosevic ensured electoral support.³⁰

Second, individuals choose legitimations designed to undermine or delegitimate the demands of his opponent. After World War II, for example, colonies used arguments of self-determination against imperial powers, arguing that powerful states such as Great Britain and France were undermining their legitimacy as liberal nations.³¹

By showing other claims are illegitimate, actors hope to undercut support for a position and ideally build a new majority coalition for their claim. Finally, legitimation strategies can serve as a rhetorical commitment device. By denouncing the legitimacy of an opponent's claim, actors try to appear irrevocably committed to a position, forcing their opponent to compromise.

The legitimation process is thus deeply political. One implication of this is that changes in legitimation strategies are likely when actors believe they can gain an advantage over opponents. Most notably, actors losing a debate are likely to reframe the issue if they believe it will change the outcome of negotiations: losers have “an incentive to repackage the issues so that they come together in a way that turns the tables.”³²

Each of these hypotheses is compatible with rational choice approaches. However, the theory goes beyond interest-based explanations in conceiving of an autonomous role for legitimacy in the bargaining process. First, as argued earlier, actors do not choose legitimations at will: their choice is not reducible to interests but depends on an actor's position in sociocultural institutions, which limit the range of legitimations and the flexibility of actors.

Yet despite these constraints, if the outcomes of bargaining remain consistent with rationalist explanations, legitimation strategies are still epiphenomenal, providing no additional explanatory power. In contrast, I argue that legitimation strategies have autonomous and unanticipated structural effects on bargaining, outcomes not adequately explained by rationalist approaches. Actors certainly try to foresee the long-term effects of their strategies and often produce reasonable calculations about outcomes. Ultimately, however, two factors hinder prediction and create unanticipated consequences. First, during the legitimation process actors often lack the necessary information needed to predict the long-term consequences of legitimation strategies. As argued by rationalists, there are cost-benefit tradeoffs to information searches; waiting to choose a strategy before gathering all possible information about long-term effects might simply be an irrational cost. These information problems are exacerbated in complex legitimation processes, where actors must gather information about multiple audiences.

Second, and more importantly, during bargaining actors may fail to predict the structural effects of their actions. Political agents use legitimation strategies in complex structures of coalitions, institutions, and culture. Within these complicated systems, legitimations resonate in ways that are structurally mediated, indirect, and often not understood by the actors themselves, creating “many paths to unanticipated consequences.”³³

In essence, legitimation strategies interact with extant structures in unpredictable ways—actors have no way to predict the myriad ways that structures will intervene in their interests, creating outcomes no one intended.

In fact, depending on how legitimation strategies resonate within this system of coalitions, they can fundamentally transform bargaining, and in the process the divisibility of the issue. Most importantly, legitimation strategies' structural consequences can create a lock-in effect, trapping actors into positions where they can no longer treat other claims to territory as legitimate, even if actors have an interest in finding a settlement to a dispute. When this happens, all mechanisms of division are removed, constituting territory as indivisible.

Coalition Mobilization

Under some conditions, legitimation strategies lead to coalition mobilization.⁴¹

When an actor's legitimation resonates with a coalition, it activates and strengthens network ties between an actor and that coalition. As a result, coalition mobilization binds the actor more closely to the support of that group, strengthening the position of that coalition in negotiations.

Coalition mobilization is likely under three conditions. First, there must be cultural harmony between the legitimation strategy and the targeted coalition. Networks of coalitions are not only material, they are also imbued with different understandings, symbols, and collective memories.⁴²

As network theorists note, legitimation strategies are far more likely to mobilize when they incorporate the cultural content shared with a network of coalitions.⁴³

Second, coalition mobilization depends on network density: the more numerous and stronger the ties are between an actor and a coalition, the more likely the legitimation strategy will mobilize that coalition.⁴⁴

Increased density, as argued by network theorists, creates social capital, trust, and generally increases actors' influence over their audience. Finally, an actor's centrality in the network affects mobilization. If an actor has exclusive influence over a coalition, it is more likely a legitimation strategy will transform the structure of the game; in contrast, if multiple actors can sway a coalition, then countervailing appeals can undermine the legitimation strategy.

Coalition mobilization, therefore, depends on specific network conditions, a view that creates expectations that diverge from rational choice theories. For example, if legitimations lack cultural harmony, they will fail to mobilize a coalition even if it is in that coalition's interest to support the actor. Likewise, empirically one should find cases in which actors accept arguments as legitimate despite their interest to the contrary. Similarly, coalitions react not only to the argument, but also to the person making the claims—accordingly, a legitimation's success should vary depending on who is using it. From a network perspective, finally, coalition mobilization need not have been anyone's intention. For reasons described above, actors cannot fully predict when and where legitimation strategies will resonate. Because of this, mobilization depends not only on the intent of the actor, but on the complex interplay between claims and network structures.

Ultimately, these consequences have profound effects on indivisibility. By increasing an actor's dependence on a coalition, mobilization can decrease flexibility at the bargaining table. Previously embedded in multiple coalitions, an actor becomes restricted to a single claim, and any deviation will appear to undermine his legitimacy. For example, Milosevic's use of inflammatory rhetoric over Kosovo ultimately locked him into a coalition of extreme Serbian nationalists; as a result, he perceived that deviance from this strategy would lead to his delegitimation as a political actor. In sum, by locking actors into single and incompatible claims, coalition mobilization can construct conflict as indivisible.

Polarization

Legitimation strategies can also produce polarization, a switching effect that severs ties between coalitions.⁴⁵

Legitimation strategies that fail to resonate with a coalition—when they appear illegitimate—destroy network ties, widening “the political and social space between claimants in a contentious episode.”⁴⁶ For example, after 1916 Sinn Fein's militant republican legitimations appeared illegitimate to several audiences and thus severed the party's ties with British Liberals and moderate nationalists within Ireland. In doing so, Sinn Fein locked itself into a coalition composed only of revolutionary Irish republicans, a situation that ultimately and unexpectedly constrained Sinn Fein's position when bargaining for Ireland's independence.⁴⁷

Not surprisingly, the conditions that produce polarization are practically the opposite of those that cause mobilization. First, legitimation strategies polarize networks of coalitions if they are culturally dissonant. If actors legitimate their claims through limited sets of cultural symbols—through rhetoric and history not shared by the coalitions—the strategy is likely to appear illegitimate. Second, network sparseness makes polarization more likely. When ties between an actor and another coalition are few, sporadic, and informal, it is likely that legitimations can undercut these ties.

Finally, polarization is likely when there are peripheral coalitions—when actors have strong and central ties with one coalition, but weak and informal ties with another. Such structural imbalances are likely to induce “peripheral pulls,” where actors' legitimacy depends more on one coalition than another. Under these conditions, actors will appeal to the more closely tied actor, even if this comes at the expense of other coalitions in their network.

Each of these structural conditions produces unique hypotheses about legitimation strategies and polarization. For example, legitimations that are dissonant can sever ties with coalitions that would have otherwise supported the actor. Similarly, this structural view suggests why bargaining can become polarized around small extremist coalitions that seem to represent a minority interest. While lacking majority power, extremists often integrally bind themselves to ruling parties, forcing moderates to peripheral positions within a network of coalitions. In these cases, even if moderates constitute a majority, they may be marginalized—it is the weaker ties, and not the weaker actors, that are polarized in these disputes.

Indeed, at these extremes, polarization changes the range of legitimation strategies and leads to indivisible conflict. As argued above, actors' ability to make legitimate claims depends on their position—the number and type of coalitions in which they are embedded. When these ties are cut, actors have fewer options of legitimation strategies and less flexibility at the bargaining table. When actors become locked into a single coalition, their legitimation strategy is all but determined—actors cannot recognize the legitimacy of other positions without undermining their own claims.

Yoking

A third switching mechanism is actor creation, known in the sociological literature as yoking.⁴⁸

With yoking, legitimation strategies go beyond resonating with existing coalitions. Rhetoric instead provides a focal point around which new identities can form and coalesce: actors themselves can be created and transformed during the course of strategic interaction. For example, Tilly argues that rhetoric can reconfigure social ties, demarcating new fault lines of ethnic identity and collective violence. Similarly, Nexon and Jackson propose that legitimation strategies both reproduce and change the boundaries of modern states.⁴⁹

Yoking is possible only under two conditions. First, the actor must be an identity bridge: the actor must have strong ties to otherwise disparate elements and thus be able to influence the identities of his audience. Without this bridging position, an actor will have little influence, and inventive legitimation strategies are likely to fall on deaf ears. However, this structural position, while necessary, is not sufficient to explain yoking—actors may occupy a structural bridge and speak to multiple coalitions without ever suggesting these groups share an identity. To achieve yoking, the legitimation strategy must also be culturally inventive, combining existing symbols, histories, and rhetoric into new legitimation strategies. In doing so, these legitimation strategies can appeal across traditional boundaries and invoke entirely new identities.

When both of these conditions hold legitimations can yoke together new actors. For example, before unification, nationalists and conservatives in Germany were deeply divided. After 1871, however, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck's bridging position allowed him to strategically combine nationalist and conservative rhetoric, binding together a novel conception of nationhood that would shape the course of modern German history.⁵⁰

Similarly, as discussed in detail below, “Ulster” did not always exist as a coherent actor. It was the British deployment of “Ulster Protestantism” to legitimate their Irish policy that yoked together this identity in the late nineteenth century.

Yoking processes most clearly diverge from conventional approaches to bargaining. In suggesting that the very actors involved in negotiations can change during strategic interaction, network theorists contend that it is not just that actors define the terms of the conflict; the conflict can transform the actors themselves. Moreover, as with the other mechanisms discussed here, these processes cannot be reduced to actor's intent. Bismarck could not have predicted that conservative nationalism would redefine the identity of the German people any more than the British believed “Ulster” would become a dominant actor in Anglo-Irish politics. Rather, it is the complex interplay between legitimation strategies and networks that produced these yoking effects.

Finally, by creating new actors at the bargaining table, yoking can have a lock-in effect. New actors change the balance of power and interests, creating different constraints on what can be considered legitimate. It is this process of building and severing ties that transforms the structure of the game and leads to indivisible conflict. At the extremes, actors come to depend on a single coalition for their legitimacy, and as a result they are restricted to a single claim. When this happens, actors are unable to recognize other claims to an issue as legitimate without undermining the validity of their position, creating indivisible conflict.

In sum, network theory provides a structural explanation of how legitimation strategies create indivisible conflict. Whether legitimation strategies polarize, mobilize coalitions, or create new actors altogether depends on the actors' position and the content of the legitimation strategy, not on interest or ideology. Empirically, one should see legitimation strategies polarize coalitions, even when their interests appear compatible. Similarly, there should be evidence that coalitions mobilize based on the legitimation strategy—that apart from the use of the strategy, the coalition would have failed to appear. Most importantly, lock-in should occur even when the material interests of the party are conducive to settlement. Whether or not the actors' bargaining sets overlap is inconsequential; what matters is which claims they can consider legitimate.

Legitimacy Strategies and the First Home Rule Bill, 1886

In 1886 the first Home Rule bill was introduced to the House of Commons. Four coalitions drove the Home Rule debate.⁵⁶

Liberals and Conservatives (or Unionists)⁵⁷ dominated British politics. Liberals were largely sympathetic to Irish grievances. Although some opposed a separate parliament for Ireland, most, if not all, Liberals believed the empire had treated its Irish subjects unfairly and had accorded the nation unequal rights, and that some form of self-government of Ireland was necessary to ensure that the Irish remained loyal subjects. In opposition to the Liberals at Westminster, Conservatives believed a separate parliament for Ireland was untenable and was likely to undermine the integrity of the empire. Yet while opposed to full “Home Rule,” many Conservatives held that some devolution of power to Ireland, in the form of a federal system, was acceptable and indeed would strengthen the Empire.⁵⁸

On the Irish side, two coalitions dominated the Home Rule debate: the Constitutional Nationalists and the Republicans. The Constitutional Nationalists formed the bulk of the Irish Parliamentary Party, Ireland's representative party at Westminster. From the party's formation in the 1870s to 1916, the party was the legitimate voice of the Irish nation. Most of the party's members supported Home Rule, believing England should accord Ireland its own parliament and some control over domestic affairs. However, both the goals and the methods of the parliamentary party upheld the legitimacy of Empire. Constitutional Nationalists had no desire to secede and in fact believed succession from British rule to be illegitimate. Moreover, their methods of obtaining Home Rule were strictly parliamentary, seeking independence through legislation and not revolution.

Operating outside of Westminster, the Republicans included groups such as the Irish Republican Brotherhood (the IRB or Fenians), their U.S. counterparts, various agrarian reform movements and, after 1917, Sinn Fein. While Republicans were the most radical nationalists in Ireland, there was a spectrum of preferences within the movement. Some, particularly the U.S. diaspora, wanted the Act of Union abolished and full Irish independence. Most Republicans, however, had goals much like the Constitutional Nationalists, namely the pursuit of self-government within the Empire. They differed with the Nationalists in their methods: legislation, they believed, would do little to solve the Irish question and was often considered blatant pandering to the British.⁵⁹

Given this range of interests, it is hardly surprising that bargaining was contentious; indeed, earlier attempts to achieve Home Rule had failed miserably. But to political contemporaries and historians alike, the conflict over Home Rule in 1886 was decidedly divisible. As the legitimation theory suggests, both the Nationalists' position and the content of their legitimation strategy was necessary to create divisible conflict.

First, as Figure 1 illustrates, the Constitutional Nationalists occupied a structural bridge between critical parties in Anglo-Irish politics. Earlier actors pressing for Home Rule had been aligned with either the Republicans or with the British parties; as a result, these actors were dismissed as illegitimate by their opponents. In contrast, under Charles Stewart Parnell the Nationalists both maintained their extant ties with British parties as well as built strong ties with Republican groups in Ireland and the United States.⁶⁰

Second, the content of the Nationalists strategies accomplished a politically adroit balancing act. To appeal to both British parties as well as republicans within Ireland, the Nationalists adopted rhetoric that would appear legitimate to both coalitions simultaneously. The party used language that seemed almost revolutionary to republicans, but was interpreted as constitutional and imperial by the British. For example, in a 1885 speech in Cork, Parnell stated, “I do not know whether England will be wise in time and concede to constitutional arguments and methods the restitution of that which was stolen from us towards the close of the last century…. We cannot, under the British Constitution, as for more than the restitution of Grattan's Parliament. But no man has the right to fix the boundary to the march of a nation.”⁶¹

As argued by the historian Lyons, “The calculated ambiguity of these sentences needs no stressing. To some of those who heard or read him he seemed to have left the road to full independence wide open. To others, although their knowledge of Grattan's parliament might be rusty, the phrases in which he described it sounded agreeably constitutional and that could not be bad.”⁶²

Along with appeals to the British constitution, Nationalists also legitimated their claims in the language of British liberalism. Home Rule, in this framing, was justified by Britain's failure to act justly in Ireland. In an 1885 speech in Dublin, for example, Parnell explained he “had done [his] utmost … to direct the minds of the people to a constitutional issue, but if the constitution was forbidden to them it would not have been their fault if constitutional methods … failed.”⁶³

More bluntly, he charged Britain with being a “good liberal on the Continent and a bad liberal at home.”⁶⁴

Evidence suggests these legitimation strategies were critical in ensuring the divisibility of Home Rule in 1886. Republicans, for instance, had rejected earlier attempts to work with the Nationalists. Even though an alliance was in their interest, they viewed earlier Nationalists as wholly illegitimate representatives of Ireland's claims.⁶⁵

With the creation of new social ties and the adoption of an ambiguous legitimation strategy, however, Nationalists convinced Republicans to accept Home Rule.

Nationalist legitimation strategies swayed Liberals as well. It may be tempting to explain the coalition between Nationalists and Liberals as a simple alignment of preferences: both parties, after all, believed Home Rule was in everyone's best interest. Despite this, Liberals rejected earlier appeals for Home Rule as illegitimate calls for absolute independence. As long as Home Rule appeared “republican” in its tone, it seemed a challenge to imperial rule.⁶⁶

In contrast, Nationalist appeals to imperial integrity and constitutional legitimacy resonated strongly with British Liberals, especially with the party's leader, W. E. Gladstone. So effective were Nationalist claims that many Liberals feared denying Home Rule would appear illegitimate, that “when full expression is given to Irish opinion there will be declared to the world … that we hold Ireland by force and by force alone.”⁶⁷

As Matthew argues, as “Irish demands were becoming systematized in a call for constitutional reform and institutionalized in a Home Rule party which was assimilable within the ideology of British politics,” this “was bound to put the Liberals on the spot … the demands might be disliked but they were not instantly incompatible with the assumptions of contemporary policy makers, unless, that is, ‘Home Rule’ came to be seen as an aspect of Fenianism.”⁶⁸

It is perhaps the Conservative reaction that provides the strongest evidence for the legitimation theory. In terms of both ideology and interest, Conservatives should have rejected the legitimacy of Nationalists' claims. Although Conservatives were not against compromise—as noted above, many believed a federal system was an appropriate middle-ground between imperial and self-rule—they remained deeply opposed to Home Rule, arguing that it would undermine British governance. Conservatives, as British member of Parliament Joseph Chamberlain argued, could “give assent to no measures that would tend to impair the unity and the integrity of the Empire.”⁶⁹

Legitimation strategies, however, resonate not because of shared interests, but because of the content of the strategy and the position of the speaker. On these grounds, Conservatives were forced to accept Nationalist claims as legitimate, even if this defied their own interest. On the one hand, Nationalist arguments undermined Conservative claims that Home Rule would place the Empire in jeopardy. Rather, as Gladstone argued, “Home Rule is … a source not of danger but of strength—the danger, if any, lies in refusing it.”⁷⁰

Moreover, as leaders of an Empire that ostensibly championed liberalism, how could Conservatives legitimately reject a majority demand for Home Rule? As Chamberlain admitted, the Irish “have shown that as far as regards the great majority of them, they are earnestly in favour of a change in the administration of their government, and of some system which would give them a larger control of their domestic affairs. Well, we ourselves by our public declarations and by our liberal principles are pledged to acknowledge the justice of this claim.”⁷¹

Nationalist arguments, in sum, backed Conservatives into a rhetorical corner, where they were forced to accept the legitimacy of Nationalist claims even though they opposed Home Rule. So powerful were Nationalist strategies that by the mid-1880s, Home Rule appeared unavoidable.⁷²

Yet, as argued above, when actors find themselves in a losing position at the bargaining table there are incentives to choose different legitimation strategies, reframing an issue to create a new advantage in negotiations.

Playing the “Orange Card”: The Conservative Change in Legitimation Strategies

During the 1886 debate over the Home Rule bill, Conservatives played the Orange Card, altering their legitimation strategy from one that justified opposition on the grounds of imperial integrity, to a strategy framing the policy as an attack on Protestant rights in Ulster. Although the alliance between Conservatives and Protestant nationals might appear ideological, historical evidence undercuts this view: while supporting the idea of a “Protestant Ascendancy,” Conservatives saw little ideological overlap with these Ulster Protestants, believing the nationalists of Ulster were too militant and extreme to be effective allies.

Legitimation theory provides a more convincing explanation of the change in legitimation strategies. As the theory suggests, when actors find themselves in a losing position, there are incentives to choose new legitimation strategies; if the actors' structural position allows, they will reframe an issue in ways that create an advantage in negotiations. Conservatives had both the position and interest in adopting a new legitimation strategy. On the one hand, Conservatives had well-defined cultural and social ties to the “Protestant Ascendancy,” a history of acting as the guardian of Protestant rights and principles within the United Kingdom.⁷³

With these historical connections, Conservatives had established themselves as the legitimate representative of Protestantism. This position raised the possibility that Conservatives could marry this Protestant rhetoric with the Home Rule issue: using cultural invention, Conservatives could legitimate their opposition to Home Rule on the grounds of protecting those Protestants concentrated in Ulster from tyrannical Catholic rule.⁷⁴

Moreover, once backed into a rhetorical corner, Conservatives saw two strategic reasons for playing the Orange Card. First, Conservatives hoped a Protestant legitimation strategy would delegitimate the Nationalist and Liberal position on Home Rule. For one, a focus on Ulster would render the question of imperial integrity moot. Redefined as an attack on Protestant rights, the issue would now be not whether the Empire could survive, but whether England was abandoning its Protestant kin in Ulster. Moreover, by framing Home Rule as an attack on Ulster rights, Conservatives now charged it was the Nationalists and Liberals that were patently illiberal. As Lord Hugh Cecil argued, “What right have you to say to the people of Ulster, ‘We are going to create a nation, and, much as you dislike it, you shall belong to that nation?’ Has any Liberal statesman ever used language of that kind before today?”⁷⁵

Similarly, in 191l an editorial in the Times derided Asquith's plans for Home Rule, arguing “How can Home Rule be the charter of an Irish nation if one-third of the Irish people decline to accept it…. How can it be a triumph for freedom, an act of liberation, if Ulster has to be coerced, whether morally or physically?”⁷⁶

Second, Conservatives gambled a legitimation strategy of Protestant rights would resonate more strongly with the British public than had the rhetoric of imperial integrity. Through their liberal commitments, Liberals and Irish Nationalists had captured the British public's sympathy for Home Rule. Conservative leaders such as Randolph Churchill now called for British public support, telling Ulster's Protestants that “there will not be wanting to you those who on all hands in England are willing to case in their lot with you.⁷⁷

By showing the domestic audience that Home Rule was a broader attack on Protestant rights, Conservatives hoped to shift public opinion against Irish self-government.⁷⁸

For these reasons, the Conservatives chose the “Orange Card” as their new legitimation strategy, not to reject compromise with the Liberals and Nationalists, but to force a settlement in keeping with Conservative concerns. Despite fierce language, Conservatives sought negotiation, not deadlock, and had no intention of abandoning a negotiated settlement to the Irish question.⁷⁹

In essence, Conservatives hoped to use the Orangemen as a rhetorical commitment device: by undermining the legitimacy of the Liberal and Nationalist position and building support for their own, Conservatives intended to persuade Nationalists and Liberals to move closer to their position.

The Conservative strategy, however, had little immediate effect. Indeed, Liberals and Nationalists secured a majority for Home Rule, and a successful Home Rule bill was perceived as inevitable.⁸⁰

But as argued above, legitimation strategies can have unintended structural consequences. Although the strategy failed to resonate in the short-term, over time the Orange Card would dramatically transform Anglo-Irish politics. In its appeal to Protestant rights, Conservatives would lock themselves into a position where the issue of Home Rule—and more specifically, the issue of Ulster—was no longer open to compromise.

Ulster, Indivisible: Legitimation Strategies and Switching Effects

From 1886 to 1913, the map of Anglo-Irish politics changed dramatically. As seen in Figure 2, new coalitions were mobilized, alliances shattered, and perhaps most profoundly, an entirely new actor—that of a unified Ulster—appeared at the bargaining table.

It was the unintended structural consequences of the Conservative strategy that transformed this network of coalitions and, in the process, constructed Ireland as indivisible. First, the Conservative legitimation strategy had a yoking effect: it actually created Ulster as a political identity. Now the British certainly did not invent Ulster's grievances or the demographic fact that Protestants were concentrated in Ulster. Yet while there was strong support for the Union among Protestants in Ireland, before 1886 “Ulster” itself was fragmented by religion and class. The “Ulster Unionists” for example, were largely composed of the landed elite; the party remained isolated from the Orange societies' professional and manufacturing class and was viewed with suspicion by tenant farmers and laborers.⁸¹

Nor was there a coherent “Protestant” identity—Ulster was rife with religious divisions, particularly among Anglicans and Presbyterians.

In the years after 1886, however, Ulster would emerge as a cohesive and powerful identity, a unity neither nationalism nor interests can explain. One could suggest that Ulster's appearance was a simple reaction to threat, for example, an attempt to preserve Protestant identity in the face of the Nationalists' challenge. Yet Protestants in Ulster had perceived such threats before and had failed to respond with any unity. Moreover, even during the Home Rule debate, not all Protestants unified against Home Rule; as argued below, many Protestants in southern Ireland continued to negotiate a devolution of power with Irish Nationalists.⁸²

Yoking, instead, was contingent on Conservative legitimation strategies—Ulster appeared only once Conservatives articulated its existence as a political identity. Two conditions in particular made yoking possible. First, the Conservative “Orange Card” was a cultural invention, merging historical appeals to Protestant rights and identity with the Unionist fight against Home Rule. Earlier Conservative strategies had reinforced these boundaries—appeals to imperial integrity, for example, resonated strongly with the landed elite but garnered little interest among tenant farmers and professionals.⁸³

In contrast, framing opposition to Home Rule as Ulster's fight against Catholic tyranny obliterated those boundaries, portraying all Protestants within Ulster as a singular, threatened identity.

Conservatives' position—and specifically, the position of Churchill—is also critical in explaining Ulster's yoking. Earlier appeals had been made to Ulster's unity, most notably by landed Ulster Unionists. This rhetoric, however, had little effect—with few connections to Orange factions and laborers, Ulster Unionist rhetoric had little legitimacy. In contrast, Churchill occupied an identity bridge. He had ties not only with landed elites, but had also built a network with professionals in Orange societies and church leaders of all denominations and thus occupied the position necessary for yoking.⁸⁴

These structural conditions, in short, allowed the Conservative legitimation strategy to unite fragmented units into the actor of Ulster, an outcome the British neither intended nor foresaw.⁸⁵

As early as 1886, elites in Ulster used British rhetoric as a basis for Ulster solidarity. Led by Colonel Edward Saunderson—a member of the House of Commons—Ulster factions were told to overcome their numerous divisions and organize against Home Rule on a firmly sectarian basis. Members were urged to “stand by our colours ‘the orange and the blue,’ with the good union jack and let us drive popery and radicalism before us.”⁸⁶ In December 1904, these factions organized into a single political actor, with the leaders of the Ulster Unionists and the Orange Lodges agreeing to form “an Ulster union for bringing into line all unionist associations in the province of Ulster with a view to consistent and continuous political action.”⁸⁷ By the early twentieth century, therefore, Conservative legitimation strategies molded what had been a fragmented set of Protestants into a coherent Ulster identity.

Second, the Conservative legitimations produced coalition mobilization. Now yoked into the single actor of Ulster, these elites further used Conservative rhetoric to gain influence in the British party and firmly tie the fate of these coalitions. This mobilization is puzzling from the perspective of either interests or ideology. On the one hand, Conservatives had little material interest in uniting with Ulster. As a coalition, Ulster was financially and politically weak; it was southern Unionists that “possessed exaggerated parliamentary and financial resources.”⁸⁸

Indeed, the Conservative alliance with Ulster initially produced a decrease in electoral support.⁸⁹ Nor can the coalition can be explained as an alliance forged to defeat Home Rule. While both the Conservatives and Ulster wanted to defeat Home Rule, Conservatives still hoped “to support gradualist reform for Irish government, and consequently doubted whether this would be compatible with the immobile Unionism of the new League [the Ulster Unionists].”⁹⁰ Ulster might be useful in the short-term, but after 1886 Conservatives fully intended to “tell Ulster to go to the devil,” as Churchill so bluntly stated.⁹¹

Coalition mobilization was rather an unintended structural effect of Conservative legitimation strategies. First, by using Ulster rhetoric, Conservatives created cultural harmony with the movements. Without this cultural harmony, earlier attempts to mobilize had failed: throughout the 1870s and early 1880s, for example, Orange factions in Ulster had appealed to the Conservative Party for support against Gladstone's policies with little result. But now, the “significance of Ulster in British Unionist rhetoric provided loyalist representatives with influence.”⁹²

Moreover, while Ulster lacked material power, it now had strong and central ties with the Conservative Party. In the 1880s, for example, Ulster elites used extensive personal and professional ties to increase Ulster's influence in the Conservative Party, demanding powerful positions in governance be given to Ulstermen. By 1911 ties between Ulster and the Conservative Party were firmly secured when Andrew Bonar Law, an Ulsterman, was appointed as head of the Conservative Party. In short, Ulster cemented its ties with Conservatives based on legitimacy, despite Conservatives' reluctance to “be connected with … the extreme ‘Orange’ position.”⁹³

Third, the Conservative legitimation strategy polarized the network of coalitions: it severed Conservative ties with moderates—composed primarily of landed Protestants in Southern Ireland—and Irish Nationalists. Three conditions produced this polarization. First, the Conservative “Orange Card” was dissonant with British Liberals, moderate Conservatives, and Nationalists alike. Gladstone dismissed the notion of Ulster as a separate identity, arguing that “the great majority of the people who are opposed to Home Rule will, when Home Rule is granted, forget past differences…. Considerations of common interests will make them join with their fellow-countrymen in carrying on the government of Ireland.”⁹⁴

Moderates, too, viewed the idea of a separate “Ulster” as anathema: their commitment was to the preservation of the British Empire, not to some parochial identity in the North. To Nationalists, needless to say, the content of the Orange strategy was entirely dissonant. Rather than see Ulster resistance as a legitimate expression of Protestant concerns, Nationalists believed divisions between Irish Protestants and Catholics were unnatural, fostered by the British to keep the nation stratified: any attempt to suggest Ireland was not a coherent national identity, therefore, was simply illegitimate.

While causing momentous conflict, Conservative's dissonance did not entirely polarize relations with Liberals; networks between the British parties were too strong and institutionalized for the strategy to destroy these ties. But the legitimation strategy did polarize relations with both the moderates and Nationalists. On the one hand, the strengthening of Ulster moved moderates to a peripheral position in the Conservative network. Despite the fact that Conservatives shared the moderates' interests and ideology, they found themselves pulled toward Ulster's demands.

In the process, Conservative ties with moderates were literally severed. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, these moderates dominated the Conservative Party, and were integral in pursuing compromise over Home Rule, even presenting a plan for devolution that Nationalists declared “the most substantial victory gained for centuries by the Irish race for the reconquest of the soil of Ireland by the people.”⁹⁵

But the moderates were met by fierce mobilization in Ulster. While Ulster's opposition to reform was nothing new, their importance within the Conservative Party was: Conservative reliance on Ulster to oppose Home Rule bound the party's legitimacy to the support of the Ulster minority.⁹⁶ Conservatives were forced to bow to Ulster's demands, removing moderates from leadership posts and replacing them with Ulster's elites. By the end of the devolution crisis, moderates and Conservatives were effectively polarized.⁹⁷

The Conservative legitimation strategy also polarized relations with Nationalists. Not only was the Orange Card dissonant to Nationalists, the ties between Nationalists and Conservatives had always been tenuous and informal, and with moderates marginalized, the strongest links between Nationalists and Conservatives were eliminated. In this structural context, the Conservative's legitimation strategy swiftly severed any link with the Nationalist party.

In short, the Conservative legitimation strategy had unanticipated switching effects. It created Ulster as a unified political actor, and at the same time shattered ties with moderates and Irish nationalists. Each of these switching effects ensured structural lock-in: when Nationalists and Conservatives negotiated the Third Home Rule bill in 1912, they came to the table trapped in strictly incompatible positions. On the one hand, Conservatives were now tied to a single coalition, that of Ulster, and they could not recognize any deal that would give Nationalists sovereignty over Ulster as legitimate. Shared sovereignty, in other words, was no longer an acceptable mechanism by which to divide the Irish question. Instead, the Conservatives now demanded the partition of Ireland, the exclusion of Ulster from the proposed Home Rule.

Neither interest nor ideology explains the Conservative bargaining position. Conservatives, simply put, were against partition. Conservatives believed the salient issue the integrity of the empire, not the protection of Ulster.⁹⁸

Partition would mean implicitly accepting Home Rule and, as a result, abandoning the Conservative commitment to preserve the empire. Rather, evidence shows that the Conservative position was borne of legitimacy, not of interest. The Conservative use of Ulster to resist Home Rule had them caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place. While Conservatives opposed partition, Ulster supported their exclusion from Home Rule; given Ulster's strength within the party, Conservatives could hardly abandon the region now without destroying their legitimacy. When the Home Rule bill came the floor in 1911, therefore, Conservatives could only propose that Ulster be separated from the rest of Ireland and remain under direct British Rule.

Partition may have seemed an acceptable division for Conservatives and even some British Liberals.⁹⁹

But the Irish Nationalists could not accept this division without undermining their legitimacy as representatives of the Irish nation. Indeed, the Nationalists' structural position was becoming increasingly intractable with the strengthening within Ireland of the Republicans, who warned that the Irish Parliamentary Party would betray the Irish nation by giving in to Ulster's demands.¹⁰⁰ Thus Nationalists claimed partition was illegitimate; any “demand for the exclusion of Ulster was incompatible with the first principle of the Irish demand,”¹⁰¹ a compromise to which, as the head of the party argued, “Irish Nationalists can never submit.”¹⁰²

Yet neither Nationalists nor Conservatives were driven by blind nationalism. As a final piece of evidence that this lock-in was one of legitimacy and not a clash of ideology or interests, it is astounding to note that Conservatives and Nationalists recognized the overlaps in their preferences. In negotiations over the Home Rule bill, Conservatives and Constitutional Nationalists suggested the same solution—that Ireland be given Home Rule, with the condition that Ulster have autonomy, known as “Home Rule within Home Rule.”¹⁰³

In this scenario, Ulster would remain an integral part of the Irish nation but would be given some form of local government to safeguard the Protestant minority.

But even with a substantive agreement on the table, rhetorically the two sides were trapped in what they could accept as legitimate. Conservatives, contrary to what commitment or reputation explanations would expect, were willing to devolve power to Ireland; however, they could not accept Ulster being treated symbolically as part of the Irish nation, no matter how much independence the region would have in practice. Nationalists could accept autonomy for Ulster, but not when it was legitimated as recognition of an “Ulster nation.” Here then were two parties with compatible interests now locked into incompatible positions, unable to accept each others' positions as legitimate. By 1913, far from being a matter of “politics as usual,” the politics of Ulster had become indivisible, a construction that haunts Anglo-Irish relations through the present day.