The Objectives of Comparative Political Theory

As with many approaches to political theory, analysis of comparative political theory reveals multiple objectives and multiple methodologies. These have been classified by a number of commentators in different ways. For example, contrary to the view that comparative political theory should focus on the revelation of much greater diversity in the realm of political ideas, Fred Dallmayr suggests that the major problem in Western political thought has been the neglect of major traditions of non-Western thinking because it has precluded political theorists from developing fuller and more universalist accounts of the world and has limited “cross-cultural learning.”Footnote ³ Dallmayr sees comparative political theory as a “move in the direction of a more genuine universalism”Footnote ⁴ and assumes the possibility of “moral convergence” or a “Gadamerian fusion of horizons.”Footnote ⁵

Antony Black, on the other hand, has been highly critical of this pursuit of moral convergence and points to the many engagements that have taken place between Western and non-Western theories and the strengthening of difference after these engagements rather than convergent learning.Footnote ⁶ For others, such as Roxanne Euben, comparative political theory need not necessarily entail the belief that there are universal answers to complex problems, but it can generate better understanding of issues by highlighting the key problems and dilemmas which affect many societies despite their differences. This could still avoid “the conclusion that cultures are morally and cognitively incommensurable without imposing supposedly universal categories and moral rules.”Footnote ⁷ Therefore, where Dallmayr promotes new forms of universalism and Black focuses on even greater forms of diversity in non-Western traditions, Euben identifies as the value of comparative political theory its enabling of potentially transformative conversations without necessitating the occlusion of moral difference. This takes us beyond the bifurcation between universalism and the politics of difference and enables critique of perspectives that exaggerate the coherence of “political traditions” as if they are intrinsically and hermetically linked with a particular culture or nation-state or region.Footnote ⁸

These variations make clear that there is not a single way of conducting comparative political theory and that its advocates are pursuing quite diverse objectives as well as methods. Indeed, Freeden outlines several ways in which the study of political theory can be conducted comparatively and von Vacano identifies many others sorted into normative and interpretive approaches.Footnote ⁹ However, without wanting to gloss over this diversity, this article concentrates on two of Freeden's suite of comparative approaches, the conceptual and contextual methods, which—when employed together—are the most significant in the key task of understanding the relationship between interpretations of concepts and their influence on political action in different contexts.Footnote ¹⁰

To unpack this contextual-conceptual method of comparative political theory a little further, we need to answer three key questions: What are we analyzing? Why are we examining it? And what value is added by doing so? To address the first question, conceptual analysis—where concepts are conceived as units of analysis of a “sufficiently microscopic scale”—enables analysis that “grasps the subtlety of semantic differences resulting from minor shifts in argumentative architecture and ideational context.”Footnote ¹¹ This demands some delineation of the scale of the concept to enable worthwhile comparative theoretical analysis to take place. Arguably, the “scale” of many of the core concepts debated in grand narratives of political theory are not all that conducive to nuanced comparative analysis. After all, it will surprise no one that the meaning of “freedom” may be differently interpreted and constituted in China and in Australia, or that the institutions informed by the concept of “democracy” look rather different in Indonesia and in the United States. However, these higher-order concepts are usually constituted by relationships between a range of lower-order concepts, some of which can be quite particular to a given societal context. The higher-order concepts tend to rely on subtle combinations of these micro-level concepts which constitute the ideational framework of particular contexts.

In the example of conflict transformation in divided societies designed to move them towards conditions and structures that are perceived to be freer, more equal, more democratic, or more socially just, these processes are often underpinned by a range of smaller, micro-level concepts that are translated into particular policies or institutions that embody or uphold the desired macro-conceptual objectives. For example, the achievement of sociopolitical arrangements that can be described as free or just in divided societies often requires a subset of institutions and practices that pursue truth, encourage civility, facilitate reconciliation, punish perpetrators or provide amnesties, and so on. This suggests that there may be added value in looking at broad families of concepts—some of them potentially quite “microscopic” in nature—that can be linked together in a variety of combinations. Put simply, not all transitions from political conflicts and divisions will employ the same micro-concepts in the same combinations to enable transformation to take place. The particular combinations will be contextual because they will vary according to the specific divisions and sociopolitical conflicts that transformations seek to address.

The significance of this approach to concepts in comparative political theory is not only in unpacking the concept so that we can understand its malleability, but also in developing a stronger understanding of the work that particular concepts can do in informing political practices in specific cases. This implies a need for coupling micro-conceptual analysis with contextual analysis that compares shared patterns of language in which we are able to single out “both the unique and the overlapping in diverse cultural and ideological contexts.”Footnote ¹² Therefore, we can shed light on possible interpretations of political concepts by understanding the similarities and differences between the ways in which they are articulated in different circumstances. As we shall see, the marriage of the contextual and conceptual approaches to comparative political theory enables theorists to analyze key concepts through greater understanding of how they can be operationalized in different ways according to the contexts in which they are applied. This should also help to make clear the relationship between interpretations of political concepts and political actions aimed at achieving them within a particular set of sociopolitical dynamics. Thus, the added value of the contextualizing concepts approach to comparative political theory lies in its identification of various ways in which concepts are operationalized in different contexts and the differing ways in which political changes can take place despite the articulation of the same or similar concepts. Therefore, the “contextualizing concepts” approach can make a contribution to both ideational analysis and understanding of the empirical implications of political concepts.

This two-pronged approach enables theorists to better understand “ideational contexts” which in turn provide the environments in which concepts are interpreted and act as “constraints on” and “enablers of” political action.Footnote ¹³ This is valuable for political theorists because, although they may be concerned with general patterns, they are also “interested in the particular and the unique, a viewpoint that makes comparison richer, rather than in aggregative characteristics.”Footnote ¹⁴ This resonates with a method that combines the conceptual and the contextual approaches to comparative political theory and it also addresses Andrew March's demand that comparative political theory be much more systematic about what it means for “political theory as a practice to be comparative.”Footnote ¹⁵ In the next section we will address March's claims by examining the methodology of comparative political theory and the framework of a “contextualized concepts” approach before the remainder of the paper outlines a specific instance of the contextualizing concepts approach in action.

Methodology: What Is Comparative about Comparative Political Theory?

Comparative political theory has yet to develop a consistent or coherent method and it is only recently that methodology has begun to receive more systematic attention in the literature.Footnote ¹⁶ A charge frequently leveled at comparative political theory is that “it engages in parallelisms rather than comparisons; in side-by-side explorations that lack a given methodology and that do not draw analytically profound substantive insights from the juxtaposition of cultures or regions.”Footnote ¹⁷ While the major unifying characteristic of comparative political theory is the attempt to bring “non-Western political thought into conversation with the Western traditions that remain dominant in the political theory academy,”Footnote ¹⁸ the methodological dimension of this conversation is largely underdeveloped.Footnote ¹⁹ Importantly, advocates are often insufficiently concerned with informing us why a conversation between Western theoretical traditions and the non-West needs to be comparative at all.Footnote ²⁰ While “comparative work tends to give the impression that the traditions compared developed independently of each other,”Footnote ²¹ the reality is that many key non-Western theorists developed their perspectives through a fusion of ideas including, not insignificantly, the Western traditions that many of them were very well educated in.Footnote ²²

For this reason, there must be some justificatory basis on which to make comparisons, for example, to refine our understanding of a particular malleable concept, or to understand the ways in which concepts can be interpreted in very different ways over the course of time in different contexts. In this vein, Freeden and Vincent state that “when we study political thought in a comparative perspective, we study above all the nature of politics, long before we claim to study the thought and practices of a region, or state, or culture, or religion.”Footnote ²³ This is what distinguishes a political theoretic approach to certain questions from the stance that might be taken by the area specialist or the expert in a particular religion or culture. While we need the materials and insights that result from grounding theoretical investigation in particular contexts or empirical examples, anthropologists or area studies specialists might be better placed or methodologically equipped than political theorists to do this kind of work.Footnote ²⁴ Therefore, political theorists need to be explicit about what they add to these debates qua political theorists if comparative political theory is to be taken seriously as an alternative methodological approach.

The point of conducting comparative political theory is that it is generative of new dimensions of political concepts or systems of knowledge that would hitherto have been more difficult to identify if the comparison had not taken place. It does this by comparing similar theoretical phenomena across different contextual settings in order to generate important insights into the nature and meaning of concepts and ideas: comparative political theory needs “a specific common object of inquiry” and “distinction” between cases.Footnote ²⁵ This definition correlates with a contextualized concepts approach for three main reasons. First, it suggests that a comparative approach must go beyond parallels; the fact of identifying a variant of the same concept or a completely different concept in a different context does not make the analysis comparative. Second, the mere fact that different ideas and concepts are brought into engagement with each other by theorists does not mean that a universalist fusion of horizons will occur. Third, comparative political theory is never simply a matter of translation; the identification of similar issues and problems in various societies does not mean that concepts can be parachuted in to solve issues in different contexts or that they can simply be “adapted” to suit the requisite purpose of another society. Instead, a contextualized conceptual approach to comparative political theory highlights the following:

• — the existence of the same or different concepts in various contexts and the possibility that similar concepts may be applied in context-dependent ways that may be somewhat divergent;

• — the chance that contextual circumstances may either eliminate the possibility of applying a concept in a specific instance or may radically alter the meaning of a concept between different contexts;

• — that concepts can develop in one context and then get translated into another but that, in so doing, they are likely to be adapted to suit the problem they are supposed to address;

• — and, most importantly of all in methodological terms, the fact that we would not be aware of these possibilities if we had not undertaken comparative analysis.

If March is correct in his description of the methodology of comparative political theory as being about common objects of inquiry and distinction between cases, then there is nothing intrinsic to the approach—in methodological terms—which suggests that it has to be solely concerned with comparisons between Western and non-Western theoretical traditions. Indeed, comparative political theory would only require similarity in terms of the object of inquiry and a means of differentiating between the cases in which that object was analyzed. In methodological terms, then, there is nothing inherently comparative about broadening the canon; what matters is how that broadening is able to make better sense of the concepts we use in similar but different contexts through comparison.

Methodologically, then, contextualized comparative political theory need not be concerned with non-Western contexts at all.Footnote ²⁶ From a political theoretic perspective, the point is to demonstrate the malleability and morphology of the political concepts we use as well as the implications of these developments for how we operationalize concepts in political practice in different contexts. Comparative political theory is not just an exercise in filling in the gaps created by the myopia of dominant traditions. It also enables us to understand the morphology of the dominant interpretations of the concepts we employ. Therefore, comparative political theory can demonstrate the ways in which semantic and structural constraints affect the manner of translation of concepts into practical politics and hence the empirical evidence which is subsequently observable.Footnote ²⁷ There is nothing here to suggest that for a political theory to be comparative, it needs to compare concepts, ideas, or thinkers in Western and non-Western contexts.Footnote ²⁸

The argument thus far suggests that a fusion of conceptual and contextual approaches is a particularly useful way of conducting comparative political theory within the standard parameters that have been established. However, I contend that the contextualizing concepts approach also opens up space for further kinds of comparative analysis that have not been prominent until recently in comparative political theory.Footnote ²⁹ These include temporal comparative analysis and comparative problem-based theory. Let us look first at how the contextualized concepts approach enables theorists to understand the implications of temporality and temporal change.

As it has emerged, comparative political theory has often been focused on comparisons across spatial, religious, and cultural difference; less attention has been directed towards temporal comparisons.Footnote ³⁰ Thus, one of the most valuable ways of understanding the morphology of concepts is to map their development over the course of time. As conceptual historians such as Reinhart Koselleck argue, “every human being and every human community has a space of experience out of which one acts, in which past things are present or can be remembered, and… one always acts with reference to specific horizons of expectation.”Footnote ³¹ This enables theorists to analyze the different implications of political concepts by placing their use within specific historical contexts. It also helps to explain the morphology of concepts and the way in which practices and problems of a given period have influenced the mutation of political concepts over the course of time. Moreover, debates on temporality are not just about the fact of change in the use of concepts and their application. Temporality also refers to differing perceptions of the nature and pace of change such that there will be a variety of uses of the same concept contemporaneously within a given context. This highlights the problem of simple diachronic understandings of conceptual change over the course of time that can lead to the perception that once “x meant y” but now “x means z.” Temporal change involves perceptions of the meaning of concepts and the ideational contexts in which they are embedded evolving at different speeds, and therefore the likelihood that multiple (and sometimes conflicting) interpretations of concepts will always coexist.Footnote ³²

Greater focus on the temporality of concepts in different contexts can also assist in the development of a more bottom-up, problem-oriented approach to political theory. This approach is one that sees the role of theory as grounding analysis in practical problems and the development of theory from the ground up rather than the technique of moral theorizing in the abstract and then application to political practice.Footnote ³³ A similar argument is advanced by Shapcott, who states that “comparative political theory must remain practically engaged in solving or addressing political issues if it is not to become historicism anew. The dialogue of understandings needs to be self-consciously oriented towards questions of ‘application’ and practice.”Footnote ³⁴ Likewise, Williams and Warren contend that as with all “problem-attentive political theory, ideas filter up from political practices and situated debates to the level of theory, and filter down again from theory into practice when they have resonance for people seeking to address new or newly recognized problems of living-together.”Footnote ³⁵

A problem-centered approach to political theory implies that there is value in analysis of the ways in which the same problems and discourses emerge in different contexts. It can not only shed new light on the problems themselves, but also elucidate the ways in which these different contexts can influence the development of political concepts. This demands that we conduct “empirical analysis of the contexts within which political ideas do their work of orienting action and structuring relations of power.”Footnote ³⁶ In other words, there is a need to intertwine analysis of the ideational context in which concepts do their work and the role of material structures in the generation, development, and reproduction of ideational contexts. This focus on materiality and empirical problems contrasts sharply with some of the most prominent comparative political theorists, such as Dallmayr, who rejects “instrumental” approaches focused on “policy studies” and solving “political crises” to concentrate instead on the shared horizons of ideas or “moral convergence” that could come about through processes of “cross-cultural learning” embodied in engagement between Western and non-Western ideas.Footnote ³⁷ On the contrary, I suggest that addressing practical political problems is precisely the area where comparative political theory might have its most significant impact (especially when it is conducted through a contextualized concepts approach).

The contextualized concepts approach to comparative political theory suggests that the tendency of theorists to focus on particular texts and thinkers can draw attention away from political concepts and the contexts in which they are put to work. This is one of the reasons why comparative political theory can lapse into parallelism. If there is insufficient effort to find points of similarity between particular thinkers or key texts and greater focus on their differences, then it is more difficult to identify the ways in which concepts have developed in relation to each other and their practical implications in different contexts. Arguably, textual approaches do not require comparative analysis at all or, at best, the kinds of comparison they employ are inhibited by insufficient attention to similarities between cases. In his analysis of comparative political theory, March claims that “there have to be not only distinct units, but their differences also have to be somehow enduring and generative of knowledge or insights greater than what is derived from treating them in noncomparative ways.”Footnote ³⁸ This is the major shortcoming, as he sees it, in comparative political theory; its determination to open the canon to non-Western ideas has sidelined proper discussion of what it means in methodological terms for political theorists to conduct comparative research.

To summarize then, the contextualized concepts approach to comparative political theory grounds conceptual analysis in empirical contexts by focusing on the ways in which concepts are articulated within ideational contexts that are created through the recursive interaction of political ideas and material structures. This recursive interaction does not mean that concepts are static but rather that subtle changes in the material context and the relational environment in which political concepts are articulated occur as concepts evolve in an interactive engagement with the contexts in which they are articulated. A contextualized concepts perspective brings a new dimension to comparative theoretical analysis of the morphology of political concepts by tracing their evolution in different contexts and clarifying the political choices that are available and unavailable when problems are addressed in particular contextual circumstances. In other words, the contextual-conceptual approach sheds light on not only the malleability of political concepts, but also their partial dependence on social structures and interpretations of the structural constraints within which they are understood and translated into courses of political action.

In the remainder of the article I deploy this contextualized concepts approach to evaluate the politics of reconciliation and conflict transformation in divided societies. I argue that a comparative approach helps to make clear both the ambiguities of the concept of reconciliation and the ways in which this conceptual indeterminacy can lead to very different implications in varied conflictual circumstances. Therefore, this comparative approach helps to make clear how political concepts can be operationalized in multiple ways and how possibilities for political action can be constrained by our interpretations of political concepts in particular contextual circumstances. In particular, by examining the ways in which the same concepts are articulated in relation to different contexts, a variety of resultant policies become more evident. In the case of reconciliation, this can reveal the different policy options available to societies trying to deal with a range of injustices or wrongdoing under the auspices of the same contextual terms.

The Politics of Reconciliation in Conflict Transformation: South Africa and Northern Ireland

The predominance of the idea of reconciliation in many conflict transformation processes in divided societies in the last thirty years provides a useful case to focus on in developing a more grounded analysis of the contextualized concepts approach to comparative political theory. This is especially the case because reconciliation remains such a complex and yet ill-defined concept.Footnote ³⁹ My argument examines the emergence of the concept in three somewhat different contexts in the early 1990s: in South Africa in the transition from apartheid to the negotiated settlement in 1994, in Northern Ireland during the peace process leading to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, and in Australia where the debate about Indigenous-settler relations and the role of the Australian state was reignited thirty years ago in terms of reconciliation and continues unabated today despite several major developments in the intervening period.

The comparative analysis is designed to demonstrate the multiple meanings of the concept of reconciliation that can coexist both within and between different contexts. While the concept is imagined to be doing similar work in attempting to bridge ruptures in divided societies, the reality is that the nuanced articulations of reconciliation can have very different meanings and implications for scholars and practitioners. By investigating the relationship between reconciliation and conflict transformation in a comparative light, not only are new understandings developed around the different meanings of reconciliation in contemporary politics, but also the varying implications these meanings have when we try to operationalize them in practical conflict transformation processes become clearer. The contextualized concepts approach treats concepts and practices as intertwined. While this does not preclude the isolated use of either conceptual or contextual analysis, the argument above suggests that there is greater value in studying the relationship between the concept and different contexts if we are to develop a better understanding of the concept of reconciliation.

So, in the ensuing argument, I follow March's counsel on what is required for comparative political theoretic analysis to take place, that is, commonality and difference. The common feature of the comparison is the use of discourse around the concept of reconciliation to frame debates about conflict transformation in divided societies at roughly the same time. The main difference is that reconciliation was interpreted in highly divergent ways in the context of the comparator countries I discuss depending on the differing dynamics of the three conflicts. Thus, reconciliation has been pivotal to the discourse of conflict transformation processes in one (the transition from apartheid in South Africa), evident but soon almost invisible in another (the elite political accommodation of the peace process in Northern Ireland), and is still part of a rather confused political narrative in the ongoing development of the third (the negotiation of Indigenous-settler relations in Australia). This comparison demonstrates both the malleability of the concept but also the highly varied implications it can have for political practice. The capacity to show this is dependent on a mode of comparative political theory that binds conceptual and contextual analysis together.Footnote ⁴⁰ By examining the ways in which reconciliation has developed and been applied in the South African and Northern Irish contexts, Australian policymakers can make informed decisions about how to operationalize it in the ongoing debates on how to improve relationships between the Australian state and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

There is now a wide literature on reconciliation and the role it has played in a range of conflict transformation settings.Footnote ⁴¹ This literature usually alludes to the contested nature of reconciliation with variations between scholars seeking maximalist accounts whereby social actors are genuinely committed to processes that imagine a fully integrated society after rectifying the mistakes of the past, and others—often described as minimalist—who are more focused on forms of political accommodation that facilitate societal relations that are nonviolent but still permit contestation about the past and competing conceptions of political futures for a given society. Verdeja uses this maximalist/minimalist distinction but expands on it by distinguishing between what he calls communitarian (that is, more maximalist) and agonistic (that is, more minimalist) approaches.Footnote ⁴²

These competing variants of reconciliation all too often coexist within the same context. Therefore, it is not a simple matter of one society being more reconciled than another as individuals and groups will have differing views on the relationship between reconciliation and practical matters such as the pursuit of truth or the need for justice and potentially retribution. Political actors within divided societies will be more or less reconciled and more or less persuaded of the value of particular institutions that are supposed to engender reconciliation. The meaning of reconciliation and the best ways of achieving it will be controversial issues in any divided context. While maximalist versions have often received more attention through, for example, Desmond Tutu's religiously inflected promotion of forms of reconciliation grounded in forgivenessFootnote ⁴³ or the literature on transitional justice,Footnote ⁴⁴ I would argue that minimalist—and indeed agonistic—accounts are both more realistic and more normatively desirable because the structures, attitudes, and practices that generated social division and injustice cannot easily be swept away.

The examination of how a concept is operationalized in different contexts helps to demonstrate the malleability of concepts and the ways in which they can be employed for very different ends. To take reconciliation as a case in point, the dominant use of the term to reflect processes directed towards greater contact between conflicting groups, working collaboratively towards forgiveness, building partnerships, cohesion, and greater consensus, and so forth can be contrasted directly with alternative readings. For example, it could be argued that to promote reconciliation is to reject the capacity of orthodox liberal democratic institutions—parliaments, elections, constitutions, and so forth—to provide sufficient engagement with the wounds of the past to bring cohesion to societies looking to move beyond their conflicts.Footnote ⁴⁵ In other words, reconciliation here could be viewed as a form of resistance to standard forms of liberal democratic organizations.

On the other hand, resistance to reconciliation is usually articulated not as a way of promoting these kinds of orthodox institutions, but to suggest that models of reconciliation do not go far enough in understanding the structural divisions that need to be overcome and the depth and longevity of the wounds that have been opened. This criticism implies that reconciliation needs to go beyond the establishment of institutions that enable the conduct of “politics as usual” to also think in institutional terms about dealing with historical injustices in a way that facilitates forms of truth, remorse and apology, or justice and punishment, or reparations in one form or another. This might lead us down an agonistic pathway of trying to find ways of living together nonviolently (with or without a form of reconciliation), or it could lead to a complete rejection of models of peaceful transition altogether. The simple point is that it is when we look at attempts to use the same concept in relation to different practices in a variety of contexts that these theoretical concerns about the malleability of concepts come properly to the fore.

Let us now turn to the development of the concept of reconciliation in each of our three cases to exemplify the ways in which reconciliation can be pursued in many different ways. Reconciliation was a highly prominent motif in the South African negotiated settlement that brought an end to the apartheid regime that had been formally established in 1948.Footnote ⁴⁶ As noted above, prominent individuals such as Desmond Tutu were advocates of a substantive form of reconciliation based on forgiveness, while others such as Nelson Mandela supported the idea in his pursuit of the rectification of the structural injustices that were experienced by nonwhite South Africans on an ongoing basis. As commentators such as Doxtader have made clear, there was sufficient rhetorical flexibility but also political substance in the concept of reconciliation that it could provide space for a number of different social and political objectives.Footnote ⁴⁷ In effect, reconciliation became an emblem or a signature term for the transition that was taking place in South Africa rather than a refined conceptual underpinning for the process.Footnote ⁴⁸

Of course, reconciliation was not merely a symbolic factor in the transition, but a concept that inspired a particular institutional formation in the creation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.Footnote ⁴⁹ As such, reconciliation was regarded as fundamental to the transition into the “rainbow nation” that would be established in the wake of the years of violence that had characterized apartheid. It was the concept which enabled the development of a “moral imagination” to help impel the transitional process towards a more desirable future.Footnote ⁵⁰ While this demonstrates the very real practical political work that concepts can do, it also sowed the seeds of future political contestation as the incongruence between the hope for a broad social reconciliation and the limitations of the institution that symbolized it—because it was focused on individual victims and perpetrators—became more apparent. Ultimately, the aspiration towards rectifying structural injustice had to be decoupled from an institution that was driven by the need to find reconciliation between individual victims and perpetrators.Footnote ⁵¹ Ultimately, it was not at all surprising that a body such as the TRC could not deliver structural transformations that would deal with collective injustices. As South Africa continues to struggle with its structural injustices and social inequalities, it needs to be more widely recognized in comparator countries that the TRC was never going to be able to achieve this objective.

A different story emerges concerning reconciliation in the Northern Ireland peace process that began in the early 1990s and would lead to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. The dynamics of the context differed considerably from South Africa with a more evenly balanced conflict between the two sides rather than the oppression of a substantial majority by a minority as in South Africa. Moreover, in Northern Ireland there was recognition outside of the conflict that both sides of the argument had a degree of political legitimacy in terms of their aspirations—even if the ways in which terrorist acts were perpetrated and the response from the governments and security forces were sometimes seen to be illegitimate—whereas the international pressure in South Africa was based on the widely perceived illegitimacy of the apartheid regime and the policies pursued under it. Therefore, where South Africa's transition was one of establishing a completely new system that left behind the ruins of the past, the Northern Irish peace process was more a means of finding accommodation, learning to live with one other (and the competing narratives of the past), and ensuring that political differences did not manifest in violence by paramilitaries or the state. Where the South African transition was focused on finding a settlement to conflict, Northern Ireland's peace process concentrated on a political accommodation to prevent violence.

Whereas reconciliation had been instrumental in the South African transition, it was postponed for another day in Northern Ireland. Having been discussed in the mid 1990s, the term was set aside as potentially divisive and one-sided (especially as Irish republicans aligned themselves with black South Africans in their own discourse) and instead the goal of political change was to become “parity of esteem.”Footnote ⁵² There was a view expressed by some politicians that reconciliation was something that might filter down from political elites above to the masses as unionists and nationalists worked with each other in government and built trust and respect.Footnote ⁵³ Although there has now been nearly twenty years of intermittently working together in the grand coalition of the Northern Ireland Executive, it is hard to say that such reconciliation has occurred. Northern Ireland remains seriously blighted by sectarian divisions—some of them seemingly worse than during the TroublesFootnote ⁵⁴ —and the political means of dealing with “legacy issues” remains one of the most divisive issues in Northern Irish politics today despite multiple efforts to find a way through the logjam.Footnote ⁵⁵

The temporal dimension of the debate on reconciliation is also important in understanding the comparative use of the concept in the South Africa and Northern Ireland contexts. In South Africa the concept was pivotal to the negotiated settlement in both a rhetorical senseFootnote ⁵⁶ and also in the process of designing and developing institutions. The TRC as an institution was set up as a mechanism to deal with individual victims and individual perpetrators in pursuit of the truth about events that had taken place during the apartheid years. However, rhetorically, reconciliation had a much broader meaning focused on the healing of the nation with a view to addressing the historical and structural injustices that had blighted the lives of the majority population. Thus, long after the TRC had finished its work, reconciliation remained a prominent motif for transition in South Africa, even if much of that debate focuses on the extent to which reconciliation has not taken place in more than two decades since the negotiated settlement. In this sense, some of the frustrations with the work of the TRC in fulfilling its institutional mandate are reflected in continuing discussions of how unreconciled contemporary South Africa is and the well-documented social, economic, and political problems that the country continues to endure.Footnote ⁵⁷ Therefore, while one of the key institutions ran its course, the conceptual driver underpinning it remains very much alive in South African political discourse today.

In temporal terms, the Northern Ireland case was one of postponing reconciliation in the hope that a more immediate political fix could provide the conditions in which the environment could change into one where reconciliation became more feasible. While the 1998 Good Friday Agreement contained provisions requiring considerable change such as the disbandment of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the release of paramilitary prisoners, and the decommissioning of paramilitary weapons, these were changes forced by the needs of political accommodation and compromise rather than reconciliation. Indeed, in one interview in an earlier phase of this project,Footnote ⁵⁸ a unionist politician explained how reconciliation could only come about gradually through processes of living and governing together over the course of time. Here reconciliation was imagined as a long-term process rather than a specific event or something that could be established in an institution. Without stating it bluntly, the implicit position of this politician was that reconciliation was something that had to be deferred to allow political change to take place. Northern Ireland was not ready for it. The implication of this notion of deferral is not that reconciliation could not work in Northern Ireland, but that it would need to take place on a different temporal schedule than in cases where it had been the primary motif of political change. The more pressing need following the Good Friday Agreement was to bring about political accommodation to ensure no return to political violence.

However, in the intervening twenty years since the Northern Ireland peace process, there is scant evidence of this kind of reconciliation taking place at a broad social level, especially around contested legacy issues. Part of the reason for this is that the interpretations of those issues vary and the revelation of the “truth” of a particular matter potentially challenges the foundations of one or other of the contested political traditions. This makes the failure to deal with the legacy issues more than a temporary deferral of reconciliation; it appears to be more a cancellation of reconciliation in favor of elite political accommodation (and, of course, reduced political violence). However, legacy issues do not disappear and continue to be hotly contested in Northern Ireland's political discourse. As legacy issues are continually brought into political discourse, they challenge the elite settlement.Footnote ⁵⁹ Ironically, then, processes of reconciliation become a threat to the established order rather than a means of establishing order. What we witness is the endless deferral of that which cannot be deferred—dealing with the past—and therefore a political order predicated on an inherently unstable and disorderly foundation.Footnote ⁶⁰ Therefore, if reconciliation is still to play a role in Northern Ireland, it will be as part of the longue durée of politics, rather than something which can be ensured through the formation of a particular institution to deal with legacy issues (significant though that may be).

The experiences of the cases of the politics of reconciliation in South Africa and Northern Ireland can inform the debates in other countries such as Australia (and vice versa). The comparison here is not just about the particular contexts but also the meaning of the concepts that are deployed to navigate through transitional processes. In other words, the comparative analysis of the cases demonstrates the malleability of political concepts and the particular morphology that has taken place in different contexts over the course of time. This goes beyond the particular institutional manifestations of a concept as in the TRC or the failure to build a reconciliatory institution in Northern Ireland's case; it points to the way in which key concepts inform the basic foundations of political life. Within the discourse of each concept, however, there are many definitions and more possibilities still in how a particular definition can be operationalized. Furthermore, contexts are not isolated from each other so practices in one context may influence how concepts develop in others. This is the critical juncture of morphological possibility and contextual constraint that makes the fusion of conceptual and contextual analysis so pivotal to the development of comparative political theory.

While comparative analysis of reconciliation processes is a very useful explanatory tool in terms of making sense of concepts and the constraints within which they are operationalized, a further use is to inform discussions and decisions about the creation of new institutions and processes. That is, by examining the strengths and weaknesses of decisions taken in other contexts on the basis of the role of specific concepts within their ideational framework, we can make sense of the differing ways in which concepts can be understood and the work they can do in institutional settings. This knowledge can then inform political choices around the use of particular conceptual configurations in other societies addressing structural change (albeit within the particular contextual constraints that prevail within them). Locating this point within the methodological paradigm of comparative political theory, I do not mean that we merely translate instances of the use of concepts from one case to another, as if concepts are internally coherent and determinate enough to be portable between cases and simply implemented unencumbered in different settings.Footnote ⁶¹ Rather, it suggests that there is useful comparison to be made where there is sufficient correlation between the use of concepts in specific cases or contexts (or the problems to be addressed) to enable knowledge to be exchanged between the cases using comparative analysis. In this vein, our analysis of South Africa and Northern Ireland can inform the ongoing debate in Australia about how to reconcile Indigenous peoples and the settler state through particular legal and political institutions.

Reconciliation in Australia

In light of these conceptual and contextual issues, the next step in the argument is to compare the contextualization of concepts in South Africa and Northern Ireland with the contemporary debates taking place in Australia around Indigenous-settler relations. While this issue is clearly very different from both of the other cases,Footnote ⁶² like the other two examples, the issue of reconciliation came to the fore politically in the early 1990s with the report of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody,Footnote ⁶³ the notable Redfern Park speech by Prime Minister Paul Keating in 1992,Footnote ⁶⁴ and the establishment of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation (CAR) from 1991 to 2000. In the ensuing years, we have seen major events affecting Indigenous-settler relations, such as the abolition of the Indigenous representative body, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Commission (ATSIC), in 2005 by the John Howard administration,Footnote ⁶⁵ the Northern Territory Emergency Response in 2007,Footnote ⁶⁶ and the Apology to the Stolen Generations issued by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in 2008.Footnote ⁶⁷ Since 2010 however, the debate has been largely focused on the idea of constitutional reform to better recognize Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the Australian constitution. This initiative was described by the former government minister for Indigenous affairs Jenny Macklin as an “act of reconciliation.”Footnote ⁶⁸ As in the case of South Africa, then, the example of Australia shows that the rhetoric of reconciliation has broader ramifications in terms of describing a general social process in the longue durée rather than merely being confined to time-bound institutions such as the CAR or the TRC that are designed to advance it.

The current debate on constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia is one such case where comparative political theory can be used to make sense of the different options that are currently being discussed and to assess their potential implications. Indeed, comparative study is particularly useful because Australia has spent the last eight years stumbling towards a referendum on the matter of recognition without an explicit process and with little clear sense of why a process of reconciliation might be necessary.Footnote ⁶⁹ The entire enterprise has been characterized by a lack of conceptual clarity about what the government is trying to achieve and a clear pathway for doing so. Indeed, understanding of the conceptual stakes of the current discussion in Australia is damaged by the failure to recognize that the Australian issue is even a conflict and that debates on reconciliation pertain to contemporary Indigenous-settler relations just as much as they need to address historical aberrations.Footnote ⁷⁰ Without such basic awareness of the issues at stake, it is not surprising that there is an alarming absence of acceptance of responsibility for wrongdoing among contemporary non-Indigenous Australians and the reconciliatory focus has concentrated on acts in history. Meanwhile, the contemporary debate on Indigenous issues in Australia focuses mainly on practical policy measures of “closing the gap” to address inequalities in the health, education, and criminal justice systems rather than issues concerned with Indigenous-settler relations.

Despite the longevity of the debate in Australia over the nature of colonization and its impact on Indigenous peoples,Footnote ⁷¹ the country still appears to be in something of a quagmire in thinking through Indigenous-settler relations. There is still a distinct possibility of a referendum on constitutional recognition at some point in the near future in which we are unable to ascertain the views of Indigenous peoples or with no clear position on the form of political representation for them afterwards. Moreover, millions of dollars of public money have been spent on an organization promoting a Yes vote in a referendum despite the fact that the population does not yet know when it will be or what question will be asked.Footnote ⁷² In these somewhat disorderly circumstances, interrogation of comparable processes may be valuable in helping to guide choices about how to enact change in Australian society in a more structured and beneficial way than seems to be the case in the current “process.” As things stand, there is certainly considerable doubt over whether the current drive towards a referendum on constitutional recognition can be construed as a reconciliatory process given the degree of opposition to the process from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.Footnote ⁷³ In the current climate, where a range of Indigenous leaders issued the Uluru Statement from the Heart in May 2017Footnote ⁷⁴ focusing on an Indigenous representative body and a demand for pathways towards treaties for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nations, the idea of a maximalist form of reconciliation encapsulated in an amendment to the constitution looks to be a busted flush.

The examination of comparable cases of managing transformation in South Africa and Northern Ireland (even though the actual conflicts in the three cases are very different) through modes of reconciliation is not designed to show Australia the “right” way to achieve its objectives. The processes developed in Australia will have a distinctive flavor that will be heavily influenced by its contextual circumstances. However, the experiences of South Africa and Northern Ireland can help to make clear some of the ramifications of particular courses of action and, indeed, may be a guide as to what not to do by illuminating particular pitfalls from certain types of political action. For example, the endless deferral of reconciliation processes in Northern Ireland in favor of a continuous process of prioritizing elite political accommodation vis-à-vis the focus on the individual victim-perpetrator nexus in South Africa's TRC and its transmission onto a broader social process of reconciliation may demonstrate the pitfalls of particular courses of action that try to deal with structural injustice and collective inequalities in the Australian context. In particular, the two comparator cases suggest that it is not productive to shelve processes of reconciliation in the hope that dealing with historical transgressions gets easier over the passage of time (as in Northern Ireland), but that we also cannot expect processes focusing on specific events and misdemeanors to provide a healing function for wider society (as in South Africa).

Therefore, the comparative examination of processes in other cases may help to mature the Australian debate on reconciliation and constitutional recognition by establishing a clearer view of what is at stake in deciding between options on how to deal with future political developments in Indigenous-settler relations. Comparative analysis of the ways in which the concept of reconciliation has been deployed in different cases can help to illuminate the variety of possibilities, choices, and actions that may be taken in addressing structural conflicts and make clearer the implications of these decisions. For example, the comparative method in this article can highlight the failings of attempts to defer dealing with the past to focus more on political institutions as in Northern Ireland or, as in South Africa, the shortcomings of investing too much hope in a truth and reconciliation commission (focused on individual victims and perpetrators) rather than addressing broader social justice concerns and tackling structural injustice.Footnote ⁷⁵ Ultimately, the comparative evidence would suggest that a combination of institutions focused on truth and justice with institutions directed towards political representation and influence may be the best recipe for the future development of Indigenous-settler relations in Australia. Of course, as in any specific context, the precise nature of these institutions will depend on the particular conflictual demands that these institutions are designed to address.