This paper draws connections between the lived experiences of community-based stakeholders in the Northern Ireland peace process and dominant discourses and practices of political leaders to identify (de)legitimation processes and the concomitant reproduction of ethnopolitical identities. Findings reveal ontological planes animated by narratives about the so-called political policing of public disorder and disputes over the past which align the identities of otherwise quite different and conflicted intra-ethnic constituencies. Policing processes which become disputed, due to their historically central role in constituting and reflecting the contested logic of the state provide events or social and organizational ‘fields’ in which opportunistic actors can effectively reconstruct ethnopolitical boundaries, in ways which provide both rational (for political and organizational leaders) outcomes, and, inexplicable phenomenological or cultural ends of ‘groupness’. The implications of such processes on intercommunal and internecine conflict are discussed.

本文在北爱尔兰和平进程中基于社区的利益相关者的实践经验与政治领导人的主流言论和实践之间建立联系，以识别（取消）合法化过程，并伴随再现民族政治身份。调查结果揭示了由所谓的公共秩序的政治治安和过去的纠纷叙事所激发的本体论层面，这些层面使原本截然不同且相互冲突的民族内部选民的身份保持一致。由于其在构成和反映国家有争议的逻辑方面的历史中心作用而引起争议的警务过程提供了事件或社会和组织的“领域”，机会主义行为者可以在这些事件或组织中有效地重构种族政治边界，既可以提供合理的结果（对于政治和组织领导人而言），又可以提供“群体”的无法解释的现象学或文化目的。讨论了这种过程对社区间和相互之间的冲突的影响。