UNDERSTANDING CONFLICT

AND WAR: VOL. 5:

THE JUST PEACE Chapter 2 What Is Peace? *

By R.J. Rummel

For Mercy has a human heart,

Pity a human face,

And Love, the human form divine,

And Peace, the human dress.



---- William Blake: "The Divine Image" Songs of Innocence

2.1 INTRODUCTION

1

2

3

4

5

Yet, we agree little on what is peace. Perhaps the most popular (Western) view is as an absence of dissension, violence, or war, a meaning found in the New Testament and possibly an original meaning of the Greek word for peace, Irene. Pacifists have adopted this interpretation, for to them all violence is bad. This meaning is widely accepted among irenologists 6 and students of international relations. It is the primary dictionary definition.

Peace, however, is also seen as concord, or harmony and tranquility. It is viewed as peace of mind or serenity, especially in the East. It is defined as a state of law or civil government, a state of justice or goodness, a balance or equilibrium of Powers.

Such meanings of peace function at different levels. Peace may be opposed to or an opposite of antagonistic conflict, violence, or war. It may refer to an internal state (of mind or of nations) or to external relations. Or it may be narrow in conception, referring to specific relations in a particular situation (like a peace treaty), or overarching, covering a whole society (as in a world peace). Peace may be a dichotomy (it exists or it does not) or continuous, passive or active, empirical or abstract, descriptive or normative, or positive or negative.

The problem is, of course, that peace derives its meaning and qualities within a theory or framework. Christian, Hindu, or Buddhist will see peace differently, as will pacifist or internationalist. Socialist, fascist, and libertarian have different perspectives, as do power or idealistic theorists of international relations. In this diversity of meanings, peace is no different from such concepts as justice, freedom, equality, power, conflict, class, and, indeed, any other concept.

All concepts are defined within a theory or cognitive framework--what I have called elsewhere a perspective. 7 Through a perspective peace is endowed with meaning by being linked to other concepts within a particular perception of reality; and by its relationship to ideas or assumptions about violence, history, divine grace, justice. Peace is thereby locked into a descriptive or explanatory view of our reality and each other.

My perspective, which sees peace as a phase in a conflict helix, an equilibrium within a social field, has been presented in the previous four volumes. 7a In this Chapter I will review this perspective, make clear the imbedded meaning of peace, describe its related qualities and dimensions, and prepare for considering alternative conceptualizations in the next Chapter. This and Chapter 3 are thus the prologue to my subsequent theory of a just peace.

2.2 PEACE AS A SOCIAL CONTRACT

8

2.2.1 The Conflict Principle

Conflict is a balancing of powers among interests, capabilities, and wills. 9 It is a mutual adjusting of what people want, can get, and are willing to pursue. Conflict behavior, whether hostile actions, violence, or war, is then a means and manifestation of this process.

2.2.2 The Cooperation Principle

Cooperation depends on expectations aligned with power. Through conflict in a specific situation, a balance of powers and associated agreement are achieved. This balance is a definite equilibrium among the parties' interests, capabilities, and wills; the agreement is a simultaneous solution to the different equations of power, and thereby the achievement of a certain harmony--structure--of expectations. At the core of this structure is a status quo, or particular expectations over rights and obligations. Conflict thus interfaces and interlocks a specific balance of powers and an associated structure of expectations.

Cooperation--contractual or familistic interactions 10 --depends on a harmony of expectations, a mutual ability of the parties to predict the outcome of their behavior. Such is, for example, the major value of a written contract or treaty. And this structure of expectations depends on a particular balance of powers. 11 Thus, cooperation depends on expectations aligned with power.

2.2.3 The Gap Principle

A gap between expectations and power causes conflict. A structure of expectations, once established, has considerable social inertia, while the supporting balance of powers can change rapidly. Interests can shift, new capabilities can develop, wills can strengthen or weaken. As the underlying balance of powers changes, a gap between power and the structure of expectations can form, causing the associated agreement to lose support. The larger this gap, the greater the tension toward revising expectations in line with the change in power, and thus the more likely some random event will trigger conflict over the associated interests. Such conflict then serves to create a new congruence between expectations and power.

Conflict and cooperation therefore are interdependent. They are alternative phases in a continuous social process 12 underlying human interaction: now conflict, then cooperation, and then again conflict. 13 Cooperation involves a harmony of expectations congruent with a balance of powers achieved by conflict.

2.2.4 The Helix Principle

14

15

2.2.5 The Second and Fourth Master Principles

16

It is this social contract that is peace within social field theory. Peace, then is determined by a process of adjustment between what people, groups, or states want, can, and will do. Peace is based on a consequent balance of powers and involves a corresponding structure of expectations and patterns of cooperation. Moreover, peace may become unstable when an increasing gap develops between expectations and power, as here defined, 17 and may collapse into conflict, violence, or war.

2.3 THE NATURE OF A SOCIAL CONTRACT

18

Throughout the following discussion three points should be kept in mind. First, as mentioned, a social contract is the outcome of parties balancing their mutual interests, capabilities, and wills, and is based on a particular balance thus achieved--a balance of powers.

Second, the powers constituting the balance are not necessarily coercive or authoritative; threat or legitimacy are not the only bases for social contracts. Altruistic, intellectual, or exchange powers (based on love, persuasion, or promises, respectively) may dominate. Thus, a social contract may be a marriage agreement, an understanding developed among scientists over a disputed theory, or a sale in a market. 19

Third, a social contract--this peace--is only a phase in a conflict helix and is thus a temporary equilibrium in the long-term movement of interpersonal, social, or international relations.

2.3.1 Expectations

20

A. Status quo. The concept of status quo is basic to these volumes. In previous volumes 21 I argued that a breakdown of status quo expectations is a necessary cause of violence and war, and I tried to verify this against empirical results. 22 The reason for this necessity is that status quo expectations define the basic rights and obligations of the parties involved, and therefore affect vital values. These rights and obligations form the two types of status quo expectations. As Table 2.1 shows, they involve claims, privileges, responsibilities, duties, and so on. Note especially that expectations about property--who owns what--are part of the status quo.

Obviously, the division between status quo and non-status quo expectations is not clear-cut. The criterion of discrimination is salience to fundamental values, and thus intensity of feeling and commitment. For example, agreements over property (such as territory) will usually involve strong emotion and commitment, while agreed upon rules or practices, advantages or benefits are less vital and violations more tolerable. However, we are dealing here with a great complexity of social contracts and the subjectivity of underlying interests, meanings, and values. In some situations a rule, payment, or service may be a life-or-death matter or a question of fundamental principle to the parties involved and thus, for this case, a matter of the status quo. Therefore, the classification of expectations under status quo or non-status quo divisions in Table 2.1 simply attempts to make intelligible the diversity of expectations, rather than to construct conceptually tight demarcations covering all possibilities.

B. Non-Status Quo. One type of non-status quo expectations is distributional, establishing which party can anticipate what from whom, such as benefits, advantages, and services. The two remaining types guide or prescribe behavior between the parties. The social contract often includes rules, customs, or practices that provide standards or define customary or repeated actions. Such may be commands, authoritative standards, or principles of right actions. They may be binding, acting to control or regulate behavior. Such prescriptive expectations in social contracts are mores (long-term, morally binding customs), norms, the law-norms of groups, 23 or the customary or positive law of societies or states. Even the "rules of morality constitute a tacit social contract" (Hazlitt, 1964: xii).

C. Overall. Regardless of whether the focus is the rights or obligations, the distributions, or the guides or prescriptions between parties structured by their social contract, these expectations share one characteristic: they circumscribe a region of predictability, or social certainty, between the parties. With a social contract, each party can reliably foresee and plan on the outcome of its behavior regarding the other, as over, for example, claims, privileges, duties, or services. What responses to anticipate, the prospect of reciprocity, the likelihood of particular sanctions, are clear. Social contracts are thus our social organs of peace, extending into the future mutual paths of social certainty and thus confidence.

2.3.2 Theoretical Dimensions

A. Actuality. In Table 2.2 I list 11 theoretical dimensions along which social contracts vary, and have organized them into four general types. 24 To begin with, social contracts may be informal, as are unwritten understandings between friends or allies; or they may be formal, as with treaties. They may be implicit, tacit agreements that the parties choose not to mention, as a wife's acceptance of her husband's affairs; or they may be explicit, such as a verbal contract. They may be subconscious, as when co-workers unconsciously avoid sensitive topics over which they might fight. Or, of course, the social contract may be conscious.

These three dimensions--in formal versus formal, implicit versus explicit, and subconscious versus conscious--concern the actuality of social contracts, whether they are a latent agreement underlying social behavior or a manifest compact of some kind. 25 A fourth, quite important dimension defines how a social contract is manifested.

A direct social contract is a specific agreement between particular parties. It gives or implies names, dates, places, and definite expectations. Contracts are usually thought of as this kind, such as a construction contract between two firms or a trade treaty among three states. However, direct contracts may overlap or be interconnected through the different parties, and thus form a system of contracts. And these systems themselves may overlap and be interdependent. Out of these diverse, interconnected, and related direct contracts and systems of contracts will develop more general expectations, such as abstract rules, norms, or privileges at the level of the social system itself. No one will have agreed to these expectations per se, nor are they connected to any particular interest, but they nonetheless comprise a social contract (albeit an indirect one) covering the social system. The prices of goods in a free market comprise such an indirect social contract evolving from the diverse direct contracts between buyers and sellers. 26 In Section 2.3.3 I will present some of the major forms direct contracts may take; in subsequent sections I will describe several orders of direct and indirect contracts.

B. Generality. A second type of theoretical dimension delineates a social contract's generality. One such dimension concerns whether a contract is unique or common. A unique social contract is a one-time-only agreement within a unique situation and concerning nonrepetitive events or interaction between the parties. Such is the implicit agreement wrought in an alley by a thug, whose knife coerces you to hand over your money; another example is a two-hour ceasefire agreement to enable combatants to clear the battlefield of wounded, or a neutral state granting American relief planes a once-only flyover to rush food and medicine to earthquake victims in a neighboring state. By contrast, a common social contract involves repeated events or patterns of interaction. Treaties, legal contracts, constitutions, and charters are usually of this type. Clearly, the unique-common dimension is a continuum, since between the unique two-minute holdup and the common, overriding political constitution of a state are a variety of social contracts combining in different ways unique and common expectations.

Turning to the second generality dimension shown in Table 2.2, social contracts may be bilateral, involving only two parties, multilateral in covering more than two parties, or collective. The latter covers a society, community, or a group. Constitutions or charters are of this type, as are an organization's bylaws. While this may seem clear enough, there is an intellectual trap to avoid here--that of always viewing collective social contracts as necessarily constructed, designed, or the explicit and conscious outcome of a rational process of negotiation. 27 Collective contracts also may emerge from the interwoven, multilayered, bilateral and multilateral social contracts crisscrossing a society. The integrated system of abstract rules, norms, mores, and customs spanning a society form an indirect, collective social contract. It is implicit and informal; its expectations are partly conscious, partly unconscious. The system of informal rules of the road is such a collective agreement governing, along with coextensive formal traffic laws, a community of drivers.

While no group of people may have formally or consciously agreed to a collective social contract--while such may emerge from various, lower-level social contracts, many of which are conscious agreements--it is still based on a particular balance of powers, now involving all members of the collective. Consider, for example, the historically rapid dissolution and restructuring of collective expectations involving rules, customs, and laws that have occurred as a result of conquest (such as Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia conquered and absorbed by the Soviet Union in 1939), of military defeat and occupation (as of Hitler's national socialist, totalitarian Germany), or revolution (witness the French and Russian Revolutions, or the 1974-1978 Cambodian social revolution of the Khmer Rouge). Of course, not all norms, customs, or customary laws are changed, no more than a new bilateral or multilateral contract will discard all previous expectations. New social contracts build on the old. However, a new social contract, collective or otherwise, will be meaningfully different; associated interaction between the parties will change significantly.

Finally, the third dimension defining a contract's generality may be narrow, middle range, or overarching. A narrow contract concerns only a few interests, events, or behaviors, such as a contract to paint a car, a trade treaty increasing the quota on imported sugar, or the price of a Sony television set. 28 An overarching contract develops from, refers to, or spans a whole system of relationships, such as those of a family, the larger society, or an organization. A marriage contract stipulating duties and rights of spouses, an organization's constitution, or the system of norms covering a society are some examples. Between the narrow and overarching are a variety of middlerange social contracts covering or involving a large amount of behavior, but not the whole society. One's work contract, an alliance between states, and a peace treaty are examples in this middle range.

C. Polarity. The third type of dimension shown in Table 2.2 concerns a social contract's polarity. In the dimension of coerciveness, the parties to social contract may voluntarily accept it, or one or more parties may be coerced into it, either by other parties to the contract or by a third party, such as in a shotgun wedding or governmentally imposed, union-management contract. Between freely determined and coerced contracts are those which one or more parties agree to out of necessity. That is, circumstances, the environment, or events leave virtually no realistic or practical choice. In a one-company mining town where a person has his roots, he may have little, socially meaningful choice but to contract for work with the company. To defeat Hitler in the Second World War, Churchill felt he had little choice but to form an alliance with Stalin.

A second polarity-type dimension concerns whether a social contract is solidary, neutral, or antagonistic. 29 Solidary expectations derive from helpful, altruistic, or compassionate behavior. Such expectations are common among close friends or relations, lovers, or close-knit communal or religious groups. Antagonistic expectations, however, derive from mutually competitive, divergent, or opposing behavior. They involve a perception of incompatible purposes, temporarily bound in a social contract, and a belief that satisfying one's interests entails frustrating those of the other parties. A labor-management contract achieved after a long, violent strike is such an antagonistic contract; or a truce between traditional enemies, such as Pakistan and India, North and South Korea, or Israel and Syria. Between solidary and antagonistic contracts lie neutral contracts, 30 those which are strictly a matter of business, a question of the parties coolly and objectively satisfying rather specific interests. Examples are agreements for a bank loan, renting an apartment, importing cotton, or increasing the postage on international mail.

D. Evaluative. Finally, there is the evaluative dimension. One of these concerns whether a social contract is good or bad. Fundamental philosophical controversy centers on the idea of good. For the moment, I mean "good" simply in the sense that one might say a treaty is a good one because it has characteristics that one desires or believes rationally commendable or divinely inspired. 31

A contract may be positive or negative in the same sense as "good" or "bad." There is a potential confusion in the use of these terms, however, since here a social contract equals peace. "Positive peace" has come to mean, especially among Scandinavian irenologists 32 an existing or ideal social state, such as the achievement of individual potential, as reflected in social equality, for example. "Negative peace" is then simply the absence of violence. This, however, is a confusion of categories, and leads to such strange but consistent (by definition) expressions as "a positive, negative peace." 33 Simply, I will mean positive as good and negative as bad in qualifying social contracts or peace.

A second evaluative dimension defines one kind of good social contract: whether it is just or unjust. It is this dimension of social contracts that is the major focus of this book. Understanding that a social contract defines a particular peace, my question is: What is a just peace? My answer, developed in Part II is that justice is the freedom of people to form their own communities or to leave undesirable ones . For large-scale societies, just peace is promoted through a minimum government.

2.3.3 Forms

2.3.4 Social Orders

34

A. Groups. A group is structured by a direct, overarching social contract that defines members' rights, obligations, and authoritative roles. Behavior is guided and prescribed by sanction-based law-norms. All this may be codified in organizing documents, such as a charter, constitution, or bylaws; or these may be informal, implicit, or even subconscious understandings and norms evolving from the spontaneous interaction and conflicts of group members, as in a family or clan. 35

In any case, this social contract may be solidary, neutral, or antagonistic (as in family, work group, and prison, respectively); it may tightly organize members or leave them unorganized; and it may recruit members voluntarily, through coercion, or out of necessity. Group goals may be diffused or superordinate; the basis of authoritative roles may be legitimacy or threats. These diverse characteristics shape the five groups shown in Table 2.4. 36





For my purposes here, the most important distinction is between spontaneous groups and voluntary associations on the one hand, and voluntary, quasi-coercive, and coercive organizations on the other. An organization is structured by an explicit, formal social contract aimed at achieving some superordinate goal (profit for a business, military victory for an army, segregating criminals for a prison, education for a university). Expectations are wrapped around this goal: it determines roles, rights, and obligations, as well as law-norms prescribing behavior. An organization is then an antifield. 37 Spontaneous interaction is circumscribed, consigned to regions of social space (the interstices of the organizational chart) irrelevant to an organization's goals. By contrast, voluntary groups and associations are less organized, not as strongly directed toward some superordinate goal. Goals may even be absent, diffuse, or unarticulated. Coercion or authority play minor roles. Within these groups and associations field forces and processes have considerable freedom and scope, as in a family, friendship group, or neighborhood association.

These different groups define different structures of peace, different patterns of our interests and capabilities, of our powers.

B. Societies. The second kind of social order shown in Table 2.4 is the society. The three pure types listed have been discussed at length in Vol. 2: The Conflict Helix 38 and their empirical validity was assessed there. 39 Here, I need only note the more important relevancies.

A society is defined by a division of labor 40 and, accordingly, certain shared meanings, values, and norms; social interaction; and a communication system. It is shaped by an indirect, overarching, collective structure of expectations--a mainly informal and implicit social contract. The form of social power primarily underlying this contract determines the type of society. An exchange society is dominated by exchange power; an authoritative society by authoritative power; a coercive society by coercion. By virtue of the dominating form of power and associated social dynamics, each society manifests a particular dimension of conflict, with exchange societies least violent; coercive, the most. 41 Each type of society is thus a different kind of peaceful order.

International relations among societies are of special importance here. Nation-states form an exchange society 42 with a libertarian government, pluralistic conflict, 43 and associated pluralistic structure of peace. In later discussing international peace I will make use of this social fact.

C. Summary. I have shown the diversity of social contracts, and thus peace, through detailing their various expectations, dimensions, forms, and orders. I need only underline now the nested, overlapping, and hierarchical complex of such contracts filling out the structure of a group or society. Consider, for example, a voluntary organization such as a university. It has an overarching contract defining its purposes, organizational structure, positions, and attendant rights and obligations, and associated rules and law-norms. Under the cover of these expectations are defined related social contracts and systems of contracts governing separate administrative functions (such as admission and financial aid), colleges, divisions, and departments. Within the constraints of the university's overarching expectations, each contract or system has a certain life, depending on the administrators, deans, and faculty involved. Each teaching department within a college of division achieves its own informal or formal social contracts establishing rights, obligations, and privileges attendant upon faculty and student rank and defining the role of students and rules for judging issues before the department. As should be clear, each department, college, and administrative division will be an arena of conflict establishing or revising such expectations, although the overarching social contract that constitutes the university remains stable--a region of social peace at its level.

The university itself is within an overarching social contract that is the larger society. Families, Businesses, universities, governments, churches, are all are collective social contracts within society, which also includes the numberless bilateral and multilateral social contracts among groups, subgroups, and individuals and the collective contracts ordering subsocieties. Each social contract is a specific peace within a particular conflict helix; each may have within it lower-level conflict (for example, a state within a region of international peace may suffer internal guerrilla war and terrorism); each peace may exist within an ongoing, antagonistic conflict (as internally peaceful states engage in war).

Peace is therefore complex, multilayered. To say the least, discussing peace requires being specific about the social contract involved. To present a theory about a just peace demands clarity about the associated expectations, dimensions, and social orders.

2.4 CONCEPTUAL LEVELS AND DIMENSIONS OF PEACE

Table 2.5 presents the conceptual level and dimensions of peace to be discussed here.

2.4.1 Conceptual Levels

Peace, however, especially among pacifists, is also opposed to violence. This includes war, of course, but additionally covers violent acts not ordinarily thought of or legally defined as war. Indeed, in the contemporary world legal war (that is, war as a legal state of relations invoking special international laws) is rare, while warlike violence is as intense and prevalent as wars were during past centuries. Nonetheless, this is more than a matter of defining war empirically. Many do feel that peace, conceptually, applies only to those human relations which exclude personal, organized, or collective violence.

Those opposing the idea of peace to violence or war usually see peace as an absence of such behavior. But a different view, especially in the East, sees peace as harmony, tranquility, concord. Peace is then conceptually opposed to nonviolent, antagonistic conflict, such as that manifesting threats and accusations, hostile quarrels, angry boycotts, and riotous demonstrations.

Another concept goes even further, seeing peace as absolute harmony, serenity, or quietude; that is, as opposed to any kind of conflict, antagonistic or otherwise. Conflict is a general concept meaning, in essence, a balancing of power, 44 which may involve not only hostile or antagonistic balancing but also that of intellectual conflict (as in friendly disagreement over facts), bargaining conflict (as in haggling over a sale price), or a lover's conflict (as when each tries to give the other the choice of a movie to see). Each of these conflicts ends in a social contract, and therefore in a kind of peace. I mention this conceptual level for completeness, however. My conceptual focus here, as for all irenologists, will be on peace at the level of antagonistic conflict, whether violent or not.

B. A Threshold. Especially significant for a theory of just peace is the distinction between nonviolent, antagonistic conflict on one side and violence on the other. There is an empirical threshold here. As I will argue later in Section 7.4.2 and Section 8.2, the conditions for a just peace at the level of violence will increase the amount of nonviolent conflict. A just peace free from long-term violence is, at the level of societies at least, only possible at the price of peace from nonviolent conflict.

2.4.2 Social Levels

A third level involves group relations within states, such as among religious and ethnic groups, nationalities, classes, castes, unions, and families. A state, at the level of its central government, may be peaceful, manifesting a stable social contract, while some of its regions may experience continuing group violence. The final level involves the interpersonal relationships among individuals.

B. Crosscutting Levels. Social levels of peace are crosscutting: each of the conceptual levels may refer to any one of the social ones. Even war is applicable to individual relations, as when conflict goes beyond a violent incident to involve a campaign of violence to defeat or destroy another person.

It should, be clear, then, that there may be peace from war, but not from antagonistic, nonviolent conflict. Moreover, there may be peace from international war, while internal war rends a state. Conversely, a state may be at peace while engaged in international war. Peace among states may be widespread, central state governments may be stable and secure, while some groups in one province, region, or other political subdivision are locked in total war. From the perspective of a particular citizen, his state and social groups all may be at peace, while personal peace eludes him--he simply may not get along with his neighbors or co-workers.

Peace is thus multilayered and complex. This must be kept in mind in defining a just peace.

2.4.3 Conceptual Dimensions

45

B. Empirical Concept. The first such dimension defines whether the concept is empirical, abstract, or theoretical--a construct. 46 An empirical concept 47 of peace refers to readily observable phenomena. It is measurable (operational). Peace as absence-of-killing violence is such a concept; as is peace as an absence of legally declared war or a peace treaty (or any written social contract, for that matter).

C. Abstract Concept. While also referring to empirical phenomena, an abstract concept of peace is not directly observable. Rather, it usually denotes a bundle of empirical attributes or qualities, or is reflected in patterns of behavior. Examples are concepts such as status, power, or ideology, which are detached from particular instances or events or specific empirical characteristics. Abstract concepts provide general, theoretical understanding of social reality, while empirical concepts are usually common-sense descriptions of immediate perception. 48 For general use peace as a social contract would be an abstract concept, although some social contracts may be quite concrete and hence empirical. The abstraction involved is clearest when we consider implicit, or even subconscious, agreements involving tacit expectations. The abstract, nonformal rules of the road are part of such an abstract social contract. And consider the overarching social contract whose expectations define rules and norms spanning society but which no one signed or directly agreed upon, which few are aware of, but which most obey. Most families are integrated by such expectations that wife and husband, parents and children have of each other but which an observer would have difficulty defining empirically (although certainly indicators could be developed, as for status or power).

Peace as a social contract is an abstraction within the idea of a conflict helix, which is part of social field theory. This theory provides an explanation of conflict, violence, war, and peace. So much, I trust, was made clear in Vol. 2: The Conflict Helix and Vol. 4: War, Power, Peace.

There are other abstract definitions of peace: For example, peace as law or justice; or peace as concord, harmony, or tranquility. Often the theoretical context for an abstract definition of peace is not explicit, but nonetheless is clear from the context within which the concept is developed or used.

D. Construct. Finally, peace as a construct 49 means that "peace" serves a stepping-stone role in theory. It is a theoretical concept; analytic, not synthetic. The content given to a construct is not defined independent of a theory but wholly within the operations and deductions of a theory. By contrast, while measurements or indicators of an abstract concept certainly would be directed by a theory, the actual data (or content) are collected (or observed) independently.

This is a difficult but important idea, and I would like to take a moment to make it clear. Consider a simple explanatory theory that y = h + tx, where y is the level of armaments of state i, x is the level of armaments of an opposing state j, and t and h are theoretical coefficients conceptualized as "x's perception of threat from y," and "the hostility that j feels toward i," respectively. 50 This simple explanatory theory says that one state's armaments are a function of those of the opposing state's, depending on its perception of the threat from the other and its hostility toward it. Now y and x are abstract concepts, since "armaments" is a concept covering a tremendous empirical diversity of weapons and indicators. Nonetheless, by adding auxiliary statements to the theory one might measure armaments through such indicators as defense expenditures or number of armed military personnel. Data on these indicators could then be collected from sources readily available and independent of the theory.

However, within this theory, threat and hostility are constructs. No measurement of them or indicators need by given; no data collected specifically on them. Rather, the coefficients are totally defined by fitting y = h + tx to the data on x and y. Such a fit could be made by bivariate regression analysis where h is the intercept and t the regression coefficient; y the dependent and x the independent variables. This gives numerical values to h and t without any specific data collected on them. As constructs, they would have been given empirical content totally dependent on the theory y = h + tx and data on x and y.

Keeping this simple arms theory in mind, I must now discriminate between the loose and tight versions of social field theory. In the loose version (specifically, that presented in most of these volumes, especially concerning the conflict helix), the mathematical structure of field theory is usually background; 51 content, conceptual understanding, and explanation are usually foreground. A structure of expectations--social contract--is treated as an abstraction. It is given ostensive content, such as in discussing a union-management contract, an implicit agreement ending a family quarrel, an international settlement of a dispute, or the law-norms integrating a group.

In the tight theory, 52 mathematical structure, substantive interpretation of primitive terms or constructs, 53 operationalization, and empirical tests are of concern. The tight theory is meant to be as explicit, formal, and general as possible. Expectations are constructs weighting behavioral dispositions in a social field and technically function as canonical coefficients in application. 54 And to enhance the theory's generality, I have considered a structure of expectations as implicitly an indirect, overarching social contract of a social field (such as a spontaneous or self-organizing 55 society). This structure is a cooperative component--another construct 56 --underlying the variation in manifest interaction. It is reflected in common patterns of social interaction, and thus is empirically measured indirectly only by a mathematically defined axis lying through an empirical pattern of social interaction spanning society. 57

For the tight theory, then, applicable to an indirect, overarching social contract for social fields, peace is a construct. Its whole meaning is given by the theory; it serves to aid empirical explanation and theoretical understanding; its empirical content is traced by the cooperative patterns of social interaction.

In this Vol. 5: The Just Peace I will not deal with the tight theory, whose role is precise and testable scientific explanation, not intuitive understanding. The loose theory will provide sufficient framework for our purposes here. And, as in previous volumes, I will treat peace as an abstraction, even when referring to indirect, overarching social contracts.

Incidentally, peace as a construct is not unique to field theory, although as far as I know no other such tight theory so treats it. Peace as divine grace in Christian theology or as shalom in Judaism, of which one meaning is a covenant with Jehovah, are constructs. Their empirical meaning is not given directly or abstractly; rather, they are primitive terms whose content comes from the empirical nature of other, linked theological concepts. Moreover, the concept of "positive peace" developed by Johan Galtung is a construct within a neo-Marxist theory of exploitation; "positive peace" has no direct empirical or indirect abstract empirical content, but is defined as the ability of individuals to realize their potential, which in turn is equated in theory with equality, itself an abstraction measured by various indicators of equality. 58

E. Descriptive-Normative. The empirical-abstract-construct dimension of peace concepts is the first conceptual dimension. The second defines whether the concept of peace is descriptive or normative. A descriptive concept is one simply denoting some aspect of reality, such as trade, state, or president.

A normative concept is evaluative, denoting or implying goodness, desirability, what ought to be, or the negation of these denotations. Compassion, equality, and exploitation are such normative concepts. Clearly, the same concept may be used descriptively or normatively depending on context and intent. However, some concepts have a built-in evaluation that even a careful descriptive analysis may not avoid, such as with the concepts murder, torture, exploitation, charity, and love. As with love, peace undefined is an implicit good, a hope, desire, a human ideal. "Give peace in our time, 0 Lord." 59 In its common usage, peace is normative.

However, regardless of the affective connotation of peace, the concept can be used descriptively. For example, if peace is conceived as an absence of war or a peace treaty, it is possible to write about the peace in Europe since 1945, the peace of the Versailles Treaty, or the average periods of peace in history, without necessarily connoting that these are good historical periods (although for pacifists, peace as an absence of war is, ipso facto, good in all contexts).

My use of peace as a social contract is meant descriptively. Not all social contracts are good. Some are quite bad, 60 as was the horrible peace (as absence of international war) of the Khmer Rouge over Cambodia in 1974-1978 (before the Vietnamese invasion). Since peace is meant here to be (normatively) as neutral a concept as possible, it is sensible to ask when peace is good, or (as a subcategory of the good) when it is just--or when bad or unjust. For the very reason I have treated peace descriptively in previous volumes, even though it is my fundamental normative goal, I now must conclude by pointing out in this Vol. 5: The Just Peace when peace, so described, is just or unjust and, given my analyses and results, what will foster a just peace.

2.5 QUALITIES OF PEACE

2.5.1 An Existent

61

62

63

Other conceptualizations also treat peace as an existing something, such as peace as harmony, integration, or virtue. However, the currently conventional definition of peace as the absence of violence or war treats peace as a void, a nonexistent. This creates several analytical problems, which will be mentioned below. 64

2.5.2 Dichotomous

65

66

It is necessary here, then, to remember the distinction between a peace existing or not and the attributes, form, or order of the peace that exists. Thus, I might say that peace in the world is increasing and mean that more states are subscribing to a particular overarching, international peace. Or by saying that peace is more intense I might imply that a specific peace is involving more and more cooperative interaction.

2.5.3 Internal and External

67

68

2.5.4 Active

By contrast, peace as the absence of violence or war is passive. True, it may be generated by negotiation and resolution. But the resulting peace is inactive, inert. It is a social void-something to build a wall around to protect and maintain. Any condition or structure or lack thereof constitutes such a peace as long as there is no social violence-even a desert without human life. 69

2.6 ADVANTAGES OF

THIS CONCEPTUALIZATION

Second, peace stands in clear theoretical and substantive relationship to such important concepts as perception, situation, expectations, interests, capabilities, will, power, status, class, and behavior. 70 This gives the nature of peace considerable substantive and theoretical clarity. That is, peace is locked into an overarching social theory.

Third, as a social contract peace is operational, and empirical patterns of peace, so defined, have been well delineated. 71

Fourth, because of the theoretical and substantive meaning of peace, peacemaking and peacekeeping policies are given concrete direction and crucial variables are spotlighted. For example, keeping the peace then depends, most generally, on maintaining congruence between the balance of powers and the structure of expectations (social contract). This might be done by altering expectations unilaterally to adjust to changing capabilities, or strengthening will to lessen a developing gap with expectations. 72

Fifth, peace as conceptualized embodies a number of psychological principles, such as subjectivity, intentionality, free will, and individualism. 73 This, plus the social principles mentioned in the previous Section, enable a clear and straightforward application of the social contract theory of justice. As will be shown in the next part, a just peace is a hypothetical social contract of a particular kind, one to which individuals would fairly and impartially agree.

* * *

This Chapter has described peace as a social contract. And it has made the necessary definitions and distinctions in order to compare this idea of peace to alternative conceptualizations.. This will be done in Chapter 3.

NOTES

For citations see the Vol. 5: The Just Peace REFERENCES

Go to top of document