An Expert in Violence Explains the Path to Peace (with Lord John Alderdice)

The Rip Current with Jacob Ward

When I was writing my book The Loop, I was looking for experts in the degree to which we misunderstand one another, and several people pointed me at this week’s guest. He and I had an hourlong phone conversation, and while he undoubtedly doesn’t remember it (but is too polite to say so), for me it was a deeply formative experience.

Lord John Alderdice grew up the son of an Irish presbyterian minister in and out of Belfast, and has been a psychiatrist, a politician, and a researcher into violence and peace. His work on the Good Friday Accords helped to end the troubles in Northern Ireland, and he’s been a trusted source of insight and scholarship for those seeking an end to violence in dozens of conflicts around the world ever since.

In this week’s episode, he discusses the deeply misunderstood power of really and truly listening, over long periods of time, in correcting disturbed historic relationships and setting them back on a path toward peace, and our conversation is a very interesting accompaniment to my interview with John Patty and Elizabeth Penn about the frailty of democracy from a few weeks back.

Here are three recent pieces of research from Lord Alderdice about the "how" of negotiation and why we're in such global disorder, as he puts it.

Alderdice, John, Lord (2021) "Conflict, Complexity, and Cooperation," New England Journal of Public Policy: Vol. 33 : Iss. 1 , Article 9. Available at: https://scholarworks.umb.edu/nejpp/vol33/iss1/9

Alderdice, John, Lord, (2023) New insights into the psychology of individuals and large groups in a world of changing conflicts (2023) International Political Science Review, 1–12, https://doi.org/10.1177/01925121231177444

Alderdice, John, Lord (2010) “Off the couch and round the conference table”. Chapter 1 in Off the Couch – Contemporary Psychoanalytic Applications, Eds Alessandra Lemma and Matthew Patrick, Routledge.

Lord Alderdice is refreshing not just for his optimism that we can find a way to peace, but because that optimism is based in decades of hard experience pursuing it. I hope you enjoy it.