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BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND: When colleagues hear that I am spending two years in Belfast, Northern Ireland, the first question is "why" - as in, "Why would you go to there?" and "Isn't it dangerous?" My flip response was "Hey! You're talking to someone who works in Newark, New Jersey and has actually taught in Bogotá! How bad could it be?"

Actually, I asked myself the same question when someone suggested I apply for the fellowship at Queen's University of Belfast (QUB). Why put myself in harm's way for the honor of becoming a Fulbright fellow? After all, I had never stepped foot in the UK or Ireland, and all I knew about the place was what I saw on TV news and read in newspapers. The pervasive media-driven image of Belfast and Northern Ireland we all have is of bombings and patrolling soldiers walking along streets with weapons drawn as locals taunt them from behind overturned vehicles and other makeshift barricades. All the political news I recall from this region consisted of demonstrations and speeches where leaders respond to peace proposals by with shouts of "Never! Never!"

But I did apply for the fellowship, and eventually received enough support from the Fulbright Commission, Rutgers-Newark and QUB's Institute of Governance, Public Policy and Social Research to keep me in Belfast for two years. It was only at that point that I engaged in a self-taught "crash course" on Northern Ireland and the infamous events of the past 35 years that they call the 'Troubles'.

So I came to Belfast expecting Beirut - and what I found was Boston. This is a relatively small city of about 300,000 people (it was at one time half a million; and today the metro area is home to nearly 750,000) nestled among hills and situated along the confluence of two rivers and a major deep water harbor known mostly for its history of shipbuilding (the Titanic was built in Belfast). It is also a vibrant city - a city centre that seems always busy, restaurants that require bookings each night, crowded and smoke-filled pubs and wine bars, coffee houses where it is difficult to find seating, traffic that seems always backed up, concerts and plays at a variety of venues across town, and people who seem always on the move.

The only thing I did not notice at first was any sign of the Troubles. In my first few weeks in Belfast I saw nothing of the military and very few police -- and they were doing little else than issuing parking tickets. People were exceedingly friendly, and I found that only the weather (it is constantly changing from hour to hour) and the various "Irish" accents proved difficult to adapt to. In fact, if you paid no attention to the accents or the direction of traffic (a dangerous thing to ignore by the way), you would think you were in an American city with its ever present McDonalds, Burger Kings, KFCs and shopping malls.

Of course, my initial impressions were the result of limited exposure to the more infamous areas of Belfast such as Falls Road and Shankill Road. The University is located in a part of town that has no sectarian identity, and the walk to city centre from there is through a wide corridor that lacks the flags, murals and other markings of sectarianism. Over time I have become acquainted with the sectarian neighborhoods, sometimes by stumbling into them and other times with the help of local residents who came to the conclusion that I needed to be shown the "real" Belfast. Some of the neighborhoods I visited were indeed quite bleak (as is true with any urban area), but none seemed to be like "armed camps" as one would imagine from the news coverage. Other areas were "bustling" with traffic and shoppers. Some flags and Troubles-related murals mark these areas, and there are empty homes along blocks that stand as the current borderlines between the Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods. But these signs of past and current animosities needed to be pointed out - they are not obvious to the outsider who (like myself) is uninformed about the violence that took place on THIS street corner or the bombs that killed and maimed dozens in THAT shopping area several years (or even decades) ago. The Belfast of the Troubles is not evident to the naked naive eye; rather it is present in the memories of its residents.

Just as I've had to overcome my "Troubles" image of Belfast, I've had to overcome the idea that the political issues at the heart of the Troubles were simply a matter of Catholics versus Protestants or nationalists versus unionists. The history and current situation are much more complex than the simple narratives we see on the news, and I have yet to read an analysis that does justice to the complicated relationships and passions underlying the current politics of Northern Ireland.

At the center of all the turmoil is a government-in-suspension that has placed the public administrators of Northern Ireland in a precarious circumstance they all find challenging and none find desirable - or, for that matter, especially rewarding. While technically they "govern" the region in lieu of an elected assembly or executive (some of their harshest critics compare them to a colonial administration taking orders from Whitehall), the civil servants of Northern Ireland are in fact native born Ulsterites who are as sensitive to political criticism as any representative body of elected officials. And there is plenty of criticism to be sensitive to, for while Northern Ireland's government may be suspended, its politics are not. Elections are hotly contested, but the results lead to stalemate. There are at least a half dozen political parties capable of winning seats in the erstwhile Northern Ireland Assembly (although not all do) and they represent a range of perspectives that belies the simplistic picture of the Troubles as a two-sided controversy between those who seek to join the Republic and those who would retain their status within the United Kingdom. The civil service must not merely "govern", they must also actively engage in building and maintaining the programmatic bridges that have emerged over the past several years. They accomplish this under considerable and constant pressure, and in spite of being viewed with suspicion by almost everyone involved in Northern Ireland's political turmoil.

And here lies the gist of why Northern Ireland is so interesting to a student of public administration. The governance of these six counties and the one and one-half million who live there is a case study in public service professionalism and the norms of democratic accountability. At the same time it is a story of managing diverse and often conflicting expectations as they simultaneously contend with growing demands for public sector involvement while facing pressures for administrative reforms aimed at reducing direct delivery of public services.

I suspect that the one rationale for creating the Fulbright fellowship in Belfast was to bring some additional expertise on public administration to the changing and challenging situation in Northern Ireland. In reality, those of us who come to Belfast will probably learn a great deal more about our field than we will teach.

Mel Dubnick
March 1, 2004

UPDATE ON THE VOLCKER

Congratulations to the first class of winners of the Paul A. Volcker Endowment for Public Service Research Junior Scholar Research Grants, awarded by Chairman Volcker himself at the 2003 APSA Annual Meeting in Philadelphia. They are:

• Laura Evans, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Michigan, for "Political Disadvantage and Policy Spillovers: The Interactions of Tribal Governments and Nearby State and Local Authorities"

• Yilin Hou, Assistant Professor, Rutgers University-Newark (now University of Georgia), for "Budgetary Decision Making in Reforming Countries: Mechanisms, Theory, and Rationale - The Case of China"

• Kimberly Johnson, Assistant Professor, Barnard College and Columbia University, "Stateways: Public Administration in the Jim Crow South, 1930-1954"

Where/when do I sign up, you ask? Applications are due April 15 for the second round of Volcker Grants.

To be eligible, one must be a junior scholar researching public administration issues affecting governance in the United States and abroad.

Proposals are judged based on their potential to shed new light on important public administration questions, their scholarly and methodological rigor, and their promise for advancing practice and theory development.

Grants are expected to total $2,000-$3,000 and can be used to cover a wide variety of research-related project expenses.

For more details, see the full Volcker Update posted at Volcker Update (pdf or Word format) (or bombard the ever-responsive Bob Durant with e-mail at rdurant1@verizon.net.

The Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management is holding its annual research conference on October 28-30, 2004, in Atlanta, GA. Proposals to participate as a presenter, chair, or discussant are due March 7. For details, visit http://www.appam.org.

The American Political Science Association Centennial Annual Meeting will convene in Chicago, September 2-5, 2004. The proposal deadline has long passed and applicants should be notified soon regarding the disposition of their proposals. We are hoping for a strong turnout by Public Administration Section members, lest the Association somehow forget the influential role that PA has played in the political science discipline over the past century. For details, go to http://www.apsanet.org/mtgs/.

The Midwest Political Science Association 2004 Annual Meeting is just over the horizon, on April 15-18. It will take place in French Lick, Indiana. Just kidding - it will convene at its usual locale, the Palmer House Hilton in Chicago. Information is available at http://www.indiana.edu/~mpsa/.