The Meanings of Peace a Conceptual Model of Different Concepts of Peace in Academic Literature

The meanings of peace A conceptual model of different concepts of peace in academic literature

Gijsbert van Iterson Scholten, MA PhD researcher VU University, Department of political science and public policy

Abstract Academic debates about peace, including recent ones about liberal peace, almost invariably focus on how to reach peace, not on what it is that is to be reached. By systematically studying the different concepts of peace that authors propose, it turns out that the ‘what’ of peace is as important as the ‘how’ in understanding contemporary academic debates on peacebuilding. This article proposes a four- dimensional conceptual model of peace as a way to draw out the distinctions between different authors. Peace is, first of all, located in a certain domain, as e.g. a political, psychological or legal phenomenon. Secondly, peace is conceptualized at a certain level: usually as either a personal phenomenon, a societal phenomenon or an interstate phenomenon. Thirdly, as a normative concept, peace is associated with one or more values. Finally, concepts of peace differ in various ontological respects, e.g. whether peace is thought of as a stable state of affairs, a dynamic process or a relational property. Applying this conceptual model to present day discussions on liberal and post-liberal peace allows us to discern how exactly proposed alternative conceptions of peace, including so-called ‘local’ ones, are different from the liberal peace consensus.

Introduction Peace is, arguably, one of the central notions in Peace and Conflict Studies. However, from its inception as a separate field of study within the social sciences, Peace and Conflict Studies has been more about conflict than about peace (Gleditsch, Nordkvelle et al. 2014). Consequently, peace is usually defined as an absence of armed conflict, with a caveat that it could include more, but for practical reasons does not (see e.g. Fortna 2004, 270). In recent years, however, the proliferation of peacebuilding activities in post-conflict areas has led to renewed attention for broader definitions of peace (see e.g. Richmond 2005). If peace is to be more than the absence of war, we have to study it ‘as a phenomenon in and of itself’ (Rasmussen 2010, 177). This was done to some extent by the early pioneers of the discipline of peace and conflict studies

(see below), but largely dropped as a topic in the 1980s and 1990s (Calließ and Weller 2003, 7). Recent criticisms of peacebuilding practice do offer some new insights into the meaning of peace, but are also criticized themselves for failing to specify how their proposed alternatives exactly differ from the ‘liberal peace’ they are criticizing (Paris 2010, 356, 362-363). Moreover, most conceptual work on peace is geared towards one understanding of peace that the author either wants to endorse (Banks 1987; Dietrich 2012) or to criticize (Richmond 2005). Authors that do allude to the possibility that peace might have different meanings in different contexts (e.g. Mac Ginty 2011), again fail to specify how these different forms of peace differ from one another. This paper is a theoretical contribution to the conceptualization of peace as a positive concept. It develops a four-dimensional model for conceptualizing peace, based on a review of previous studies that deal with the question of what peace is. With the help of this model, different concepts of peace can be compared to each other, without integrating them into one large container notion of ‘sustainable positive peace’ or some such term. This is a useful exercise, because proponents and opponents of specific concepts of peace (like the liberal peace mentioned above) have very different ideas of what constitutes peace, which makes any subsequent argument for or against a certain method to arrive at peace liable to criticism that it does not lead to ‘real’ peace (see e.g. Richmond and Franks 2009, 184). The paper proceeds in two steps. First, some classical authors from peace and conflict studies are dealt with. From their work emerges a series of dichotomous or single-dimensional conceptions of peace. Starting in the 1980’s, some authors develop classifications of peace that mix different dimensions. From these early studies the four ways in which concepts of peace can differ from one another are distilled: level, domain, values and ontology. Second, various incarnations of the so-called ‘liberal peace’ as well as proposed alternatives to it will be analysed and compared along these four dimensions. This analysis will provide an answer to Roland Paris’ poignant call for more precision about proposed alternatives to the liberal peace (Paris 2010, 356). The conclusion summarizes the concepts of peace that have been discussed and gives some suggestions for future research into positive concepts of peace. Because, to paraphrase a classical motto: if you want peace, at least be specific about what exactly it is that you want.

‘Classical’ conceptions of peace in the field of peace and conflict studies With the introduction of a discipline called peace research, conflict studies or polemology in respectively Scandinavia and Germany , the United States, and France and the Netherlands in the 1950s and 1960s, ‘peace’ became a separate topic for social scientific research. Unfortunately, in keeping with the general

2 philosophical and political climate of the time, the founding fathers of this line of research defined the object of their study through a series of dichotomies. Peace was either one thing or another, usually accompanied by the normative claim that one part of the dichotomy was to be preferred over the other. The most influential of these dichotomies was introduced by Johan Galtung, who conceptualized peace as being either negative or positive (Galtung 1964; 1969). Negative peace denotes the absence of direct, physical violence (or of war), whereas positive peace came to mean the absence of structural violence, or structural limitations on the fulfilment of human potential (Galtung 1969, 168). Alternatively, positive peace is conceptualized as the presence of social justice (Galtung 1969, 171), a common legal order (Röling 1973, 85) or the fulfilment of all human needs (Burton 1990). Kenneth Boulding, the founding father of the American branch of peace and conflict studies, kept to negative peace. His primary binary distinction is between unstable and stable peace. An unstable peace is a situation of peace in which there is still a threat of the resumption of war. In a situation of stable peace, even the possibility of war with the former adversary is no longer considered to be realistic (Boulding 1978, 13). In a thorough analysis of changes in the meaning of (interstate) peace during the twentieth century Mikkel Rasmussen argues that this is exactly what happened in Western Europe after the Second World War: European integration made the very idea of going back to war unthinkable, leading to a stable peace based on the idea that all European states were part of an international ‘society of civilized states’ (Rasmussen 2003). This distinction is closely related to another classical distinction in peace studies, also originating from Galtung: that between dissociative and associative peace. A dissociative peace is an exclusive peace, based on the separation between two conflicting parties. An associative peace is inclusive, a peace in which both parties overcome their differences and form a new community (Galtung 1967, 306- 307; Röling 1973, 87). A final classical distinction is between peace as a static or a dynamic concept (Röling 1973, 87). According to the static conception, peace should be conceptualized as a state of the world, either in the past or in the future, in which the world is, or was, ‘at peace’. If peace is seen as a past, or even as the natural state of affairs, peacebuilding implies a restoration of the status quo ante and ‘peace’ becomes a conservative ideal (Richmond 2005, 89-92). Alternatively, a peace that is seen as a future state of the world, is often used as a reason to go to war now, in a final ‘war to end all wars’. Richmond calls this notion of peace a ‘Platonic Ideal’: an ideal image (of a future state of the world) that guides the thinking of policymakers, but cannot ever be achieved in practice (Richmond 2005, 16). The ideal itself however, is stable over time. Fukuyama’s ‘end of history’ (Fukuyama 2006), Kant’s ‘perpetual peace’ (Kant 1976

[1796]) or biblical notions of the Kingdom of Heaven (Revelation 21:1-27) are all examples of such an ideal image of peace. Instead of thinking about peace as a (desired) state of the world, Röling proposed defining peace as a dynamic concept, a process instead of a past or future end-state (Röling 1973, 87). This conception of peace allows for change as long as it takes place in a non-violent way. Rasmussen calls this ‘peace as a policy’ (Rasmussen 2003, 9) and argues that it is this policy, adopted by Western states vis-a-vis other Western states, which constitutes the social fact of the democratic peace. Likewise, present-day scholars working on conflict transformation (e.g. Lederach 1995; Galtung 2007), also use a process- definition of peace. This ontological dimension (whether peace is a process or a state of affairs) will prove to be the first important dimension along which concepts of peace differ from one another.

Classical thinking about war and peace can be summarized according to the table below. ‘Empirical’ in this table stands for how peace scholars saw peace was defined by practitioners. ‘Normative’ stands for the kind of peace that ought to be promoted, according to these same authors.

Empirical Normative Negative peace Positive peace Unstable peace Stable peace Dissociative (exclusive) Associative (inclusive) Static Dynamic Table 1: classical dichotomies in thinking about peace

These dichotomies point to interesting dimensions of the concept of peace that will be further elaborated on below. However, they do not tell us anything very specific about the content of a (stable, positive and inclusive) peace. Moreover, by defining peace in this dichotomous way, the possibilities for nuanced views and hybridity are lost. As the discipline of peace studies progressed, some attempts were made to classify the different conceptions of peace that researchers found. Usually, this was done by ranking them by the normative concern of how much violence they would tolerate. In this vein Martin Caedel proposed a fivefold distinction of all theories of war and peace (Caedel 1987, 4-5) and Anatol Rapoport a sixfold (Rapoport 1992, 141-161). Both of these classifications range from a peace that is imposed by the victor on the loser of a conflict (dubbed ‘peace through strength’ by Rapoport, ‘militarism’ by Caedel, and a victor’s peace by Richmond (Richmond 2005, 30)) to some form of pacifism that rejects the use of all forms of (physical) violence.

Interestingly, Rapoport mixes in his ranking both political approaches (a balance of power), legal approaches (‘revolutionary pacifism’) and moral approaches to peace (‘personal or religious pacifism’). This points to a second important dimension of conceptions of peace: the domain to which peace is thought to belong. A legal peace, outlawing the use of war as an instrument of policy, is different in kind from a political peace, coming from e.g. a balance of power. And both are different from the psychological peace that comes from the personal rejection of using violence. The charter of the United Nations abolished the right to wage war and thus established world peace in the legal sense of the word. This did not, however, prevent the Cold War, which meant that politically speaking, peace still hung in the balance. Which in turn did not directly affect many people in the West (and perhaps also in the East), who experienced a psychological state of ‘inner peace’, until peace movements worrying about nuclear destruction shattered this peace in the 1980s. A third important dimension alluded to, but not explored by Rapoport, nor by other classical authors of peace studies, is the level at which peace is operative. Personal pacifism is a long way off from world peace, even if world peace might eventually come about if everyone became a personal pacifist. If we want to understand the differences between different concepts of peace, we have to look at the level on which they locate peace. A basic distinction here would be Antony Adolf’s distinction in individual, social and collective peace (Adolf 2009), although I would prefer to speak of and individual, community, national and international level, in order to stress the fact that these are peaces at different levels. More intricate systems of ‘spaces’ in which peace can take place have also been proposed (see e.g. Galtung 1996, 29-33), but these mix levels (personal, social and world) and domains (nature and culture) and are thus not helpful for our present analysis. One of the most explicit attempts to define different conceptions of positive peace is Michael Banks’ 1987 essay Four conceptions of peace. According to Banks, peace can mean either ‘harmony’, ‘order’, ‘justice’ or ‘conflict management’. Three of these four equate peace with another value (harmony, order or justice). This value-dimension is the fourth way concepts of peace can differ from each other. His final approach, peace as conflict management, focuses on peace as a process, the non- violent settlement of conflict. In the words of Banks, peace is not a condition, ‘but rather a network of relationships full of […] conflict which is nevertheless kept under societal control’ (Banks 1987, 269). Thus, it differs in an ontological way from the other three conceptions, taking us back to the first dimension identified. From this analysis of Cold War thinking about war and peace four ways to differentiate different concepts of peace emerge. First, theories of peace assign peace to a certain domain. Peace can be

5 conceptualized as a political, legal, moral, economic or psychological phenomenon, with other unspecified options, as well as combinations of these five thinkable. Secondly, peace can be conceptualized as embodying one or more values, e.g. order, justice, harmony or inclusivity (the value underlying associative peace). Again, these values might be thought compatible (peace as a just and harmonious order), but need not be. A realist would accept an unjust order as peace, whereas Banks advocates overturning the present order to achieve justice (Banks 1987, 268). The third dimension is its ontological status: peace is either a (dynamic) process or a (static) goal. The final dimension is the level at which peace is operative.

Dimension Elements Political Legal Domain Moral Economic Psychological Order Justice Values Harmony Inclusivity Static goal (or state of affairs) Ontological status Dynamic process Individual Community (subnational) Level National International Table 2: dimensions of peace

Of course these dimensions of conceptions of peace are related to each other, but the specific relationships have, as far as I can tell, never been charted and are conceived differently by different authors. Thus, it might very well be that there is not one political peace, but two, three or perhaps even more, depending on whether peace as a political phenomenon is thought to come about through military victory or through association in joint supranational institutions and whether such a peace will bring first and foremost order or justice. For now, we should just keep in mind that any concept of peace must assign peace to one or more domains, just as any concept of peace implicitly or explicitly relates it to certain values. If we assign peace to different domains, or attach different values to it, we end up talking about different peaces. Some of the problems this leads to will be explicated below in a discussion of present day conceptions of liberal and post-liberal peace.

Post-cold war theories of peace: the liberal peace debates The end of the cold war, the insight that wars might have changed in character (Kaldor 2006) and the rise in UN-sponsored peacebuilding missions, led to a renewed debate on the character of peace. This so-called ‘liberal peace debate’ more or less started with the publication of two books, in 2004 and 2005: At war’s end by Roland Paris (Paris 2004) and The transformation of peace by Oliver Richmond (Richmond 2005). The subsequent debates between these (and many other) authors, have often been framed in terms of a debate between problem solvers and paradigm shifters (Pugh, Cooper et al. 2008, 391; see also Paris 2010, 337-338; van Leeuwen, Verkoren et al. 2012, 293). Only recently authors have started to question this divide and point at the ways in which both sides are arguing for the same form of peace, merely disagreeing over the way in which it should be brought about (van Leeuwen, Verkoren et al. 2012, 293). In order to understand what is at stake in the liberal peace debate, we should analyse very carefully what the liberal peace consists of, before turning our attention to various proposed ‘post- liberal’ alternatives to it. In many ways, the liberal peace is the national-level equivalent of the ‘Kantian peace’ that is thought to explain the absence of interstate war through a combination of democratic governance, trade interdependence and joint membership in international organizations (Russett and Oneal 2001). The liberal peace tradition sees peace as a political state of affairs at the national level, coming primarily from democracy and free market capitalism. The primary value associated with such a peace is freedom. Roland Paris’ view of the liberal peace can serve as a first model for this kind of peace. Although he started out criticizing the liberal peace for its lack of efficiency, he is now widely regarded as one of its leading proponents who want to ‘save liberal peacebuilding’ (Paris 2010). On his view, liberal peacebuilding should mostly be concerned with building a certain set of (liberal) political institutions at the national level (Paris 2004, 7). This statebuilding is clearly a political goal, although he contends that is does not ‘stand in the way of pursuing any number of complementary initiatives and goals, including those focusing on post-conflict reconciliation, social welfare and justice, extensive public deliberations at the national and local levels, or the empowerment and inclusion of women and other marginalised groups’ (Paris 2010, 360). ‘Not standing in the way’, however, is not the same as actively promoting these other goals, which makes the liberal peace a rather modest form of peace. Part of the criticism of it can be read as an attempt to broaden the concept of peace beyond the national level and beyond the political domain.

Before turning to these criticisms however, we should further develop our understanding of the liberal peace, by briefly going over some varieties of it that have been proposed in the literature. Both Van Leeuwen e.a. (2012) and Heathershaw (2008) distinguish three basic discourses of liberal peacebuilding: peacebuilding via democratic reform, peacebuilding as statebuilding and peacebuilding via civil society building (van Leeuwen, Verkoren et al. 2012, 296-297). Heathershaw links these three varieties of the liberal peace to three of Banks’ conceptions of peace: peacebuilding via democratic reform leads to peace as conflict management, peacebuilding via statebuilding leads to peace as order and peacebuilding via civil society leads to peace as justice (Heathershaw 2008, 604). Here we see that there is a connection between the means and the end, which leads to three different concepts of liberal peace. The first is ‘peace as democracy’. From the early 1990’s to at least the year 2000, democratization was seen as the best way to guarantee both international and national peace (van Leeuwen, Verkoren et al. 2012, 296). Analyses of the intrastate effects of democratization point to four ways in which democracy and peace are linked (Tadjbakhsh 2011, 22; Hegre 2014, 162-163). Most important among these links is the fact that democratic institutions offer a peaceful way of solving inter- group conflicts. Hence, ‘peace as democracy’ is a process-definition of peace. Peace is not a state of affairs, but a way of dealing with conflicts. The values of non-violence and freedom are important for this conception of peace, as well as equality (or equal treatment) and perhaps accountability and empowerment, since this is what democracy should bring relatively deprived groups. Like the peace that comes from democratic reform, the peace that comes from statebuilding is seen as a purely political phenomenon, operative at the national level. The main difference between the two is that a state is an observable entity, with measurable material and social properties. Hence, the peace that is brought about via statebuilding is a state of affairs, not a process. Moreover, it is usually presented as a political state of affairs that reflects a very small set of values only. In an overview of US statebuilding policy since 1890, David Lake argues that after the experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan US statebuilding has taken a Hobbesian turn. Democracy and economic reform have shifted down the list of priorities, and statebuilding is increasingly concerned with providing security and basic public services for the population (Lake 2010, 258). John Heathershaw calls this approach ‘peace as order’ and criticizes it for relegating social justice and wider political participation to matters of secondary importance (Heathershaw 2008, 609-610). In terms of our framework for conceptualizing peace, we could say that the value-content of state-based peace has shrunk to exclude issues of equality, freedom and emancipation, keeping only order and security.

The third form of liberal peacebuilding, peacebuilding via civil society, hints at a concept of peace that extends beyond the political. Besides positing civil society as a counterweight to state power, authors writing about the role of civil society in peacebuilding, tend to conceptualize peace as a societal phenomenon, although they are not always very explicit about the objective of civil society peacebuilding. The classical volume dealing with civil society and peacebuilding is Thania Paffenholz’ edited volume with the same title (Paffenholz 2010). She distinguishes seven functions civil society organizations have within peacebuilding work, and how these can be different in different phases of a (post) conflict situation. However, even though she very explicitly wants to assess the effectiveness of civil society activities with regards to the objectives of peacebuilding in each phase, these objectives themselves remain rather vague. Besides contributing to a reduction in violence, an agreement between warring parties and the subsequent sustainability of such an agreement (all parts of negative peace), she mentions “establishing conditions for treating the conflict constructively in society at large” (Paffenholz and Spurk 2010, 75). Likewise, Heathershaw points out that civil society peacebuilding serves to bring (often religiously inspired) ‘community peacework’ into the secular (political) mainstream (Heathershaw 2008, 608). In terms of our framework this mostly means that the peace that comes from civil society is both a political and a societal phenomenon, on both the national and the subnational or community level. More specific work on civil society peacebuilding will have to be done to further clarify what kind of peace civil society organizations are building, since this might be very different for different organizations.

Table 3 sums up the differences between the different discourses of the liberal peace. By comparing the different varieties, it becomes clear that the liberal peace is first and foremost a political phenomenon at the national level. Some authors studying civil society peacebuilders might want to expand this notion of peace to incorporate more societal or community concepts of peace, but developments at the national political level are never far from their minds. In the next section we will see that this is an important point of criticism for those who want to get rid of the liberal peace paradigm altogether. With regard to values liberal peace authors are somewhat ambiguous. The classical liberal value par excellence is of course freedom, but when the liberal peace is further operationalized, other values that might clash with this freedom also come into play. The shift to statebuilding as a strategy to achieve peace, has led to a shift away from freedom to order and security as primary concerns, a move that is vehemently criticized by the advocates of a post-liberal peace. Most importantly however, if peace is understood to mean democracy, not as a political system, but as a conflict management system, this

implies that accountability, empowerment and equality are as important as freedom. Moreover, by defining democracy as a way of handeling conflicts, peace becomes a neverending process, rather than a state of affairs. Below we will see what consequences this has for peacebuilding projects.

Level Domain(s) Values Ontological status Liberal peace National Political Freedom State of affairs (according to Paris) Peace as National Political Non-violence Process democracy Freedom Equality Accountability Empowerment Peace as a National Political Security State of affairs functioning state Order Civil society National Political Non-violence ? peacebuilders’ Community (subnational) Societal Justice peace Table 3: three discourses of the liberal peace

Post-liberal peace A growing number of authors criticizes the liberal peace for being a Western neo-liberal perspective on peace, that fails to take the needs and wishes of local populations in (post-) conflict zones into account. Most interesting about these criticisms for our present endeavour are attempts to formulate alternatives to the liberal peace, what Oliver Richmond calls proposals for a ‘post-liberal peace’ (Richmond 2011). Also here, a threefold distinction can be made, even if some authors combine elements from different parts of the critique. Analytically however, it makes sense to distinguish an ‘everyday’ peace, a ‘hybrid’ peace and a ‘peaceful political economy’ as the three main forms of post- liberal peace. With the help of our four-dimensional model, we can explore how these three forms are different, both from one another and from the liberal peace they are criticizing.

Everyday peace The first form of post-liberal peace comes from authors stressing the need for an ‘everyday’ peace, a peace that is felt in people’s everyday lives (Mac Ginty 2013; Richmond 2009). The concept of ‘the everyday’ implies a shift in all four dimensions that make up a concept of peace.

First of all, everyday peace is a peace that is felt at an individual level. A large part of the criticism of the liberal peace is that it deals only with national-level processes, that fail to have any impact on subnational situations (Autesserre 2010; Mac Ginty and Richmond 2013). Where liberal peacebuilding is often concerned with building a neoliberal, sovereign and territorial state, true peacebuilding should have an impact on the needs and rights of individuals and the communities in which they live (Richmond and Franks 2009, 182). Thus, everyday peace is a peace that is operative on the (inter)personal and the community level. If we look at the domain to which this everyday peace belongs, we could argue that the everyday is a domain of its own: that of life prior to politics or social organization(Lefebvre 1991 [1947], 130-137). However, since this is a bit tautological, perhaps it is better to conceive of everyday peace as a primarily societal phenomenon. It is not only about individual people’s wellbeing or personal ‘peace of mind’ (which would make it a psychological phenomenon), but rather about the circumstances in which people live, including, as we saw above, their communities. These circumstances quite explicitly include economic circumstances, leading Richmond to stress the need for welfare-oriented public policies as a prerequisite for this kind of peace (Richmond 2008, 289). Thirdly, a lot of the liberal/post-liberal peace debate is about its normative underpinnings. At the value-axis , Richmond stresses the need for empathy, respect and care for others, as well as emancipation of subaltern voices (Richmond 2011, 10). Emancipation is a broader concern of critical scholars and also features in the other two perspectives. The other three values are strongly related to the interpersonal character of an everyday post-liberal peace. If we move peace from the political to the societal domain, and from the national to the personal level, values related to interpersonal relations, such as the three mentioned above, become more important. Interestingly, care and empathy also feature heavily in feminist approaches to International Relations. Feminist authors such as (Gilligan 2009; Ruddick 1995) contrast a male perspective of domination with a female perspective of care for others, arguing that the latter is inherently more peaceful than the former. Likewise, Christine Sylvester proposes ‘empathetic cooperation’ as a feminist method for IR (Sylvester 1994), raising empathy to a concern at the international level as well. Finally, the ontology of everyday peace is different from the ontology of other concepts of peace. Where liberal peace can be conceived of as a certain state of affairs1, everyday peace is better thought of as a subjective experience. This has three interesting consequences. The first one is that it is much harder to develop indicators for whether or not there is everyday peace in a certain situation (but

1 Even though for part of its proponents, it is more a process than a state of affairs

see Mac Ginty 2013). This might be one reason why more orthodox peacebuilders are reluctant to take such a peace into consideration and are calling for further specification of it (Paris 2010, 356). The second is that it moves the concept of peace towards a psychological phenomenon after all, even if we just saw that this is not necessarily the intention of the authors. Of course this is not a new idea, and there already exists a considerable literature that treats peace as a certain state of mind. Most of this literature comes from psychology (e.g. Lee, Lin et al. 2013), but a few authors have recently tried to bridge the gap between the two disciplines, by arguing for the need to include peace of mind in the more political concept (Galtung 2010; Dietrich 2012). Such efforts might seem esoteric, but the formulation ‘freedom from fear’ as a shorthand for a narrow definition of human security does point in the same direction (see e.g. Begby and Burgess 2009).

Indigenous and hybrid peace The second critique of the liberal peace is inspired by post-structuralism and post-colonialism. It argues that the liberal peace is a hegemonic discourse, that is imposed from the outside on a (post-) conflict zone, but fails to fit the local realities. Peacebuilders should pay more attention to local needs, cultures, ideas of peace and peacebuilding and, especially, local agency. Taking these elements seriously leads to ‘hybrid’ forms of peace, that combine liberal peace ideas with ‘local’ input. Authors working in the hybrid peace tradition usually acknowledge that there are different concepts of peace, even if they are not very explicit on what the differences are. Works on hybrid forms of peace can be broadly divided into two currents. First, there is a body of work on ‘indigenous’ peace mechanisms and rituals. Attention for these rituals and customary approaches to peace goes back to the early days of peace research (e.g. Fabbro 1978), but has recently been rekindled as part of a resurgent interest in indigenous groups and their rights (Mac Ginty 2011, 57; see e.g.Babo-Soares 2004; Mac Ginty 2008). Secondly, and more recently, authors theorize the various ways in which local actors interact with liberal peace interventions. Richmond and Mitchell for example develop a three pronged model of possible local practices and responses to liberal peace intervention: acceptance, co-optation and resistance (Richmond and Mitchell 2012, 9-10). Works dealing with the question of how specific hybrid (or local) conceptions of peace are different from liberal peace conceptions are rather sparse (but see Boege 2012), as are attempts to understand local concepts of peace on their own terms (Krijtenburg 2007; Tasew 2009). If we want to

take seriously the idea that peace might mean something different in different contexts, it is of paramount importance to find out not only how local and international conceptualizations of peace interact, or how peace has traditionally been kept in conflict areas, but also in what ways indigenous concepts of peace are different, both from each other and from the liberal peace described above. Authors studying indigenous forms of peace (e.g. Krijtenburg 2007; Babo-Soares 2004) tend to focus more on peace at the community or interpersonal level, which is a relational phenomenon (cf. Lederach 1997). Important values are at least respect for the other, tolerance (as a way of living together regardless of differences) and leaving one another’s human dignity intact. One of the major challenges for future research into this area will be the incorporation of other values into the concept of peace. Taking local traditions seriously includes a certain value relativism, since the values underpinning local concepts of peace might not be the same as those underpinning Western ideas of peace. If we think of ‘hybrid peace’ as a separate post-liberal concept of peace, instead of just a category of different local peaces with some international elements, we can model it in the following way. Since hybrid peace authors are primarily interested in the interaction between local and Western concepts of peace, they are mostly focusing on peace at the national level. Even though some explicitly acknowledge that the consequences of hybrid forms of peace may be felt differently in different subnational or even individual cases (Millar 2014, 502). Hybrid peace is the outcome of a process of negotiation with the international interveners, and this negotiation is mostly about what institutions or processes are most suitable to govern a post-conflict territory (Mac Ginty 2011, 75). Hence, hybrid peace is primarily a political phenomenon, both because it is the outcome of a power struggle and because it is in the end about institutions for governance. A core value driving hybrid conceptualizations of peace is emancipation of local voices (vis a vis international actors). Closely related is the value of diversity, which implies respect for other points of view. Ontologically, hybrid peace is a process, not a certain state of affairs. The very concept of hybridity implies that peace is ‘in constant flux’, since both local and international actors are renegotiating the terms of peace on a daily basis (Mac Ginty 2010, 296-297).

Economic peace A third stream of criticism of the liberal peace treats it not as primarily a political phenomenon, but as an economic phenomenon, specifically geared towards the spread of a neoliberal political economy (Cooper, Turner et al. 2011, 2000-2001). This stream of criticism sees liberal peace interventions as part

of the creation of an international economic order that is far from peaceful (Pugh, Cooper et al. 2008, 394-396; Klein 2007). The basic argument is that the neo-liberal order is in itself structurally violent, fostering inequality and exploitation on both the international and the national level and effectively relegating conflict from the political to the economic sphere (Zizek 2009, 11). This relates, of course, to the classical notion of structural violence and the need for positive peace to overcome this form of violence (Galtung 1969, 170-171). Michael Pugh develops this critique on a conceptual level in a 2010 article on welfare (Pugh 2010). In his analysis, peace is associative, whereas free market competition is dissociative. The (neo-) liberal focus on individual freedom of choice, self-reliance, participation in a free market and the subsequent privatization of government services, including the provision of basic needs, leads to an atomized society. A neoliberal economy is not a peaceful economy, because it puts people in direct competition with each other and breaks down the social contract upon which the state depends (Pugh 2010, 268-269) He contrasts this with an economy based on welfare, which he defines as “individual and community-fostered well-being that embodies a functional social contract and incorporates social value, altruism and human agency” (Pugh 2010, 264). An economic system based on welfare is peaceful, because it builds a collective identity, it leaves the social contract intact, it emancipates people and it provides for their everyday needs.

Summary Summarizing the three different critiques of the liberal peace, we get four alternative conceptions of peace that are presented in table 5. For increased clarity, they are compared to the critics’ concept of liberal peace. What stands out is the diversity in how exactly different post-liberal concepts of peace differ from the liberal peace. This diversity should be taken into account when evaluating their peace proposals, but also their criticism of the liberal peace. If your primary concern is with the international economy, any amount of statebuilding success, or creation of political order in a conflict-ridden society, will not convince you that now there is real peace. Likewise, if you define peace as an individual-level experience, global economic reforms ar useless unless they directly impact people’s everyday lives.

Concept Level Domain Values Ontology Liberal peace National Political Order State of affairs (according to its Economic critics) Everyday peace Individual (Everyday) Care Experience Community Societal Empathy

Economic Psychological? Indigenous peace Individual Societal Respect Relational Community Psychological Tolerance Dignity Hybrid peace National Political Emancipation Process Community Societal Diversity Economic peace International Economic Inclusivity State of affairs National Equality Emancipation Welfare Table 5: three concepts of post-liberal peace and the post-liberal vision of liberal peace

Conclusion Mapping the different concepts of peace discussed above onto the four-dimensional model leads to the following table. Concept Level Domain Values Ontology Negative peace International Political Stability State of affairs Positive peace International Political Justice State of affairs Economic Stable peace International Political Non-violence State of affairs (pacifism) Peace through International Political Order State of affairs strength Military Revolutionary International Legal Non-violence State of affairs pacifism Rule of law Personal pacifism Individual Moral Non-violence Attitude Liberal peace National Political Freedom State of affairs (according to Paris) Liberal peace National Political Order State of affairs (according to its Economic critics) (liberal) Peace as National Political Non-violence Process democracy (peace Freedom as conflict Equality management) Accountability Empowerment (liberal) Peace as National Political Security State of affairs a functioning Order state (liberal) Civil National Political Non-violence ? society peace Community Societal Justice Everyday peace Individual (Everyday) Care Experience Community Societal Empathy Economic Respect Psychological? Emancipation Indigenous peace Individual Societal Respect Relational Community Psychological Tolerance Dignity Hybrid peace National Political Emancipation Process Community Societal Diversity Economic peace International Economic Inclusivity State of affairs National Equality Emancipation Welfare Table 6: four-dimensional concepts of peace

Two caveats are in order. The first caveat is that probably there are more concepts of peace ‘out there’, either in publications in other (sub)disciplines (such as peace education) or in the minds of peace workers working to achieve one or another form of peace. The second caveat is that most of the concepts identified above are analytical ideal types. Both in theory and in practice these can be combined to form more holistic concepts of peace. However, as was already indicated in the introduction, grouping all forms of peace into one big container notion does not help us to understand current debates, nor does it help in making policy choices that support one form of peace or another.

These caveats notwithstanding, this summary shows us at least three things. The first is the increased attention for individual and community-level peace. Where early authors were almost exclusively concerned with peace between nation-states, present day concepts of peace are much more concerned with peace at lower levels. Although in itself this should not come as a surprise, the table also shows us that these new concepts of peace come with different sets of values, operate in different domains and might have a different ontology. Copy-pasting recipes for international peace (such as the Kantian triad of democracy, free trade and joint membership in institutions) to the national or subnational level might not always be possible. The second thing that stands out is that not all forms of peace are states of affairs. This leads to interesting questions about the theory and concept of peacebuilding, which does seem to presuppose an outcome that can be ‘built’ and will then last. However, if peace is not a state of affairs, but a process, or even a subjective experience, the act of building might very well be what constitutes peace (cf. Rasmussen 2003). In which case of course peacebuilding projects are neverending. This is not really a new observation (see e.g. Röling 1973, on static and dynamic peace), but a lesson certain international peacebuilders seem to have forgotten. Thirdly, it becomes clear that a lot of the present day debates about liberal and post-liberal peace are not only about how to achieve peace, but also about what it is that is to be achieved. Richmond and Franks for example, do concede that statebuilding has produced some successes in making a transition from a politics of violence to democratic politics. Their criticism is that even the most successful statebuilding projects fail to affect the everyday lives of people in post-conflict areas (Richmond and Franks 2009, 184). This might be a legitimate fundamental criticism of international efforts, but it does change the terms of the debate. Statebuilders have no intention of directly affecting the everyday lives of people, since to them peace is mostly a question of political institutions.

The future of peace research Thinking of peace as a concept that both has a plural form and consists of multiple dimensions, allows us to ask a new set of questions of both practitioners and peace theorists. The answers to these questions will have consequences for the way peace is being built by both international and local actors. I will end this paper with a short exploration of these consequences, as they point to interesting topics for future research.

Ontology Most fundamentally, the question should be what kind of phenomenon peace is. If peace is a stable state of affairs, as most of the liberal peace proponents, as well as most classical authors would seem to argue, it is possible to ‘build’ this state of affairs through political (and possibly economic, social or security sector) reforms, awareness raising, civil society peacebuilding etc. Working on this concept of peace also allows for an exit-strategy once peace has been reached. If peace is a process, a way of doing things, the criteria for when it has been reached and peacebuilders can leave the country again, become much more difficult. It could still be argued that peacekeepers can leave once the institutional requirements for such processes to take place have been put in place, but experiences in e.g. Bosnia show that this might take a very long time. If peace is understood as a subjectively felt experience, as the proponents of an everyday peace are arguing, its very subjectivity makes any form of outside intervention to achieve it highly problematic. Thus, explorations of the ontological dimension of different concepts of peace will yield important insights into the feasibility of implementing a certain form of peace.

Values Secondly, peace is a normative ideal. Therefore, debates over what kind of peace ought to be promoted are also debates over which values should take precedence. Although in most cases peace will include more than one of these values, there is a sharp contrast between a peace that is based on order and security (the realist version of peace), a peace that is based on freedom (liberal peace) and a peace that embodies harmony (or the absence of conflict altogether). Since international peacebuilding almost invariably involves working in an intercultural context, explicit attention to values, and differences in values between local and international peacebuilders, is crucial to the success of such endeavours (Hofstede 2001). Critical peace researchers should question the values implicit in different concepts of peace, not only from a moral point of view (as e.g. Liden 2007), but also in relation to the predominant

values in conflict affected societies, in order to come up with visions of peace that are locally felt to be legitimate.

Domains Thinking about peace as a phenomenon that belongs primarily to one or another domain allows us to question both the nature and extent of the desired objective. Whether or not something like ‘attitude change toward other groups’ (Paffenholz and Spurk 2010, 72) is seen as a successful outcome of peacebuilding efforts depends on the domain wherein peace is conceptualized. If peace is defined as a political phenomenon, e.g. the outcome of negotiations between two conflict parties, any people-to- people dialogue aiming at ‘attitude change’ will only be considered a success if the changed attitudes lead to pressure on political leaders to sign a peace agreement. If in contrast, peace is thought of as a social phenomenon, people-to-people dialogue might take centre stage, but focusing on changes in behaviour rather than attitude. Whereas if peace is conceptualized as a psychological phenomenon, trauma healing, peace education and reconciliation become key pathways to achieve attitudinal change. To some extent the question of what concept of peace should be promoted depends on the nature of the conflict: in a political dispute over borders or self-determination, peace takes the form of a political settlement. After civil war between different ethnic groups, re-establishing civil peace in the social domain might be the key concern. And in cases like Rwanda, where a genocide has left deep psychological scars, the restoration of people’s inner peace and basic trust of their neighbours might be deemed to be the most important. What can be observed however, is that a lot of the criticism on the concept of a liberal peace hinges on the fact that it only takes (democratic) governance into account, forgetting the other domains in which peace has to be (re-) established.

Level The fourth dimension is perhaps the most straightforward one. A rising interest in local infrastructures for peace (Richmond 2013) points to the importance of subnational or community-level forms of peace. Severine Autesserre captures quite well how the predominant concern with the national and international level led the UN mission to Congo to oversee important drivers of conflict at the subnational level (Autesserre 2010, 244). Even if she does agree that there was some sort of national level peace, local drivers of conflict kept threatening it, leading her to the conclusion that the UN intervention failed to build a sustainable peace in the Congo (Autesserre 2010, 127). Autesserre is hesitant to equate peace with anything else than the absence of violent conflict, but even so, her focus

on the local level leads her to a series of policy recommendations to establish this local level peace, in addition to the national level peace UN missions are now designed to uphold. Interestingly, part of these recommendations also broaden the domains to which peace is applicable: a shift in level also implies a shift in domain (Autesserre 2010, 261-271). Of course ‘global’ international peace and security, the core business of the UN security council, is something else again. Drawn-out discussions in the security council on whether or not an intrastate conflict is a threat to international peace and security, and thus a reason for UN intervention, attest to this. Shifting the level at which peace and security are conceptualized from the international to the personal (as was done with the introduction of the concepts of human security and a Responsibility to Protect), has interesting consequences for peace research.

In sum, how to build peace depends to a large extent on what kind of peace is to be built. The conceptual model outlined in this paper allows researchers and practitioners to be much more explicit about this, hopefully moving current debates on liberal, post-liberal, everyday and hybrid peace beyond an exchange of principled arguments and broadening the appeal of positive concepts of peace to both scholars and practitioners.

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