Peace

Hooshmand World Peace Foundation

Social science has uncovered more knowledge about war than about peace, just as psychology probably has yielded more insights into negative deviance (such as mental illness) than into positive deviance (such as creativity). Unfortunately, studies tend to be focused on wars as units of analysis rather than on periods of peace, and there is a tendency to define peace simply as “nonwar.” Thus, peace thinking has had a tendency to become Utopian and to be oriented toward the future; it has been speculative and value contaminated rather than analytical and empirical. It is conceivable that this might change if research were to be focused more on peace than on war.

Two concepts of peace should be distinguished: negative peace, defined as the absence of organized violence between such major human groups as nations, but also between racial and ethnic groups because of the magnitude that can be reached by internal wars; and positive peace, defined as a pattern of cooperation and integration between major human groups. Absence of violence should not be confused with absence of conflict: violence may occur without conflict, and conflict may be solved by means of nonviolent mechanisms. The distinction between these two types of peace gives rise to a fourfold classification of relations between two nations: war, which is organized group violence; negative peace, where there is no violence but no other form of interaction either and where the best characterization is “peaceful coexistence” ; positive peace, where there is some cooperation interspersed with occasional outbreaks of violence; and unqualified peace, where absence of violence is combined with a pattern of cooperation.

The conception of peace as “nonwar” is neither theoretically nor practically interesting: as used, for instance, in describing the relationship that obtains between Norway and Nepal, it can often be explained in terms of a low level of interaction resulting from geographical distance and thus will hardly be identified by many as an ideal relation worth striving for. For peace, like health, has both cognitive and evaluative components: it designates a state of a system of nations, but this state is so highly valued that institutions are built around it to protect and promote it. It is the concept of positive peace that is worth exploring, especially since negative peace is a conditio sine qua non and the two concepts of peace may be empirically related even though they are logically independent.

World peace systems

All of the following models of world systems have in common a certain resemblance to a nation-state, usually one held to be successful by the person who puts forward the proposal. The idea is that since many nation-states have obtained reasonable security and equity for their inhabitants, there must be something in their structure that is worth copying at the world level. Proposals vary, but they all have in common the idea of a center of decision making with means at its disposal to obtain compliance from the constituent units. Of the many dimensions that can be used to describe such models only three will be discussed.

First, models of world systems can be described in terms of the type of unit on which the system is based. When the basic unit is the individual, the world system is conceived as a world state, with a very low level of autonomy for intermediate levels, such as the nation. With nations as units the world system becomes a confederation, with the nation as a political level interposed between the individual and the government. Congruence between the authority structures of nation and confederation may have a stabilizing effect on the system as a whole (Eckstein 1961).

The difference between these two models is rarely argued in terms of their relevance for peace. Rather, the world confederation is seen as an intermediate step in a more gradualist approach toward the world state or as a system with the built-in protection of some internal autonomy. Also, there is the idea that border lines should be preserved to some extent, precisely because they slow down cultural diffusion and influence and thus contribute to the preservation of sociocultural pluralism—which many fear might disappear in a world state because of the homogenizing effect of a strong nucleus of decision making. But cultural differences in a pluralist system may serve as focuses of conflicts or, at least, as focuses for prejudices and mild forms of discrimination. The costs of pluralism would therefore have to be calculated in terms of potential for conflict.

Models of world systems can also be described in terms of their scope and domain. By “scope” we refer to the variety of needs satisfied by the world system; and by “domain,” to how many receive need satisfaction from the system.

Classification in terms of these two system functions produces two basic models. The first rates high on scope but low on domain. It is the form taken by the regional federation, which gives much in terms of scope to its members but is exclusive in terms of membership; a leading example is the European Economic Community. The second model rates high on domain but low on scope. It is the form taken by the functionally specific organization, which sets no limits, at least in principle, to the number and type of people whose needs it may serve but is able to do this only because both the needs and the type of service provided are of a limited type; an example would be any specialized agency of the UN.

A true world system has to rate high on both of these dimensions because it cannot exclude any class of units, whether nations or individuals, if it wants to be universal, and it also has to offer a wide variety of goods and values if it is to be seen as a source of gratification. Thus, the two models just described must be seen as steps on the road toward a closer analogy with the nation-state (E. Haas 1964). The world system would rate high on domain and high on scope; it would be a true world state or federation, which excluded nobody and tried to satisfy a wide variety of needs that were formerly satisfied at subordinate levels (Deutsch 1966). No agreement exists on whether the regional or the functionally specific model bears more promise as a step toward this full-fledged world system. There is the pragmatic point of view that the regional model is needed as a training ground in systems that are low on scope, and the functionally specific model in systems that are low on domain. But there are also the arguments that the bigger the unit, in terms of number of members, the bigger will be the wars involving that unit and that regionalism is likely to unite upper-class nations (because they have the most interaction experience) and thus contribute to a feudal world pattern.

Nature of compliance systems

A political system is meaningless unless there is a relatively high degree of compliance with a high proportion of centrally decreed norms. According to Etzioni (1961), there are three basic types of compliance mechanisms: the normative, the contractual, and the coercive. This typology can usefully be applied here.

Normative compliance means simply that there is an internalized desire to comply; behavior that is institutionally necessary is internalized as a need disposition in the personal system. The many suggestions for a world system based on this type of compliance focus on two main ideas: creating loyalty to the central agency on the grounds that it provides many services; and creating loyalty on a more ideological basis by a suitable use of symbols, such as the idea of the brotherhood of all men. A basic idea here is the democratic idea that normative compliance is promoted by a pattern of representative and direct democracy on the world level; another idea is that of creating a “welfare world” after the model of the welfare state.

Contractual compliance, by contrast, is built into the institutional structure by making compliance pay, just as an employee is motivated to perform his tasks because he knows he will receive a salary. In the same way, it is argued, nations and individuals can be motivated to perform services for the international community, provided that the latter gives them something in return. They may or may not combine this with a subjective feeling of loyalty; what is essential is that they should perform according to a quid pro quo principle. The system is based on exchange, and disagreements can be resolved by mediation, arbitration, and adjudication, as well as by a suitable clearing system for the exchanges.

Coercive compliance is, of course, compliance based on the use or threat of force, especially against members defined as aggressors. At the international level the model is the deviance-detection-con vie tion-adjudication-sanctioning scheme borrowed from the control systems of national societies. International peace based on coercive compliance is enforced by such institutions as those provided for in the UN Charter: observer corps, peace-keeping forces of different kinds, the World Court, and sanctions of all kinds built into a system of international law.

Particularly important is the search for sanctions, whether economic or diplomatic, that stop short of war (Galtung 1965). This is the legal approach to the problem of international conflict management; it presupposes a nucleus of global institutions and is inconceivable at the purely international level unless one nation takes upon itself the task of acting as a third party in the international system. The problems of the legal approach, which is essentially an effort to obtain predictability by codifying international behavior, can also be analyzed in terms of the three modes of compliance. Thus, for legal rules to be adhered to, normative compliance is not strictly necessary, but some element of internalization built around important symbols in the system is an important positive contribution. To obtain contractual compliance, legal rules must be equitable and reasonable; to coerce, they must be institutionalized by means of credible negative sanctions.

To be implemented, all of these ideas need a central agency, whether it takes the form of the concert of Europe, the League of Nations, the United Nations, or some other form. The central agency will have to do what is needed to build up a basis for all three types of compliance, whether it takes the form of information or propaganda and manipulation of symbols, the administration of services in such a way as to buy loyalty, provision of a clearinghouse of exchanges of all kinds in order to make interdependence under a central organization pay, or the administration of enforcement mechanisms. Crucial for all three types of compliance is the extent to which the central world agency is able to compete with other levels of organization, such as nations, which provide the same kind of basis for compliance but possibly also promote compliance with norms that conflict with those of the world government. It should also be pointed out that any political system will probably need all three types of compliance. Normative compliance alone may not be enough in the long run; the value of a “good conscience” will show a rapidly diminishing return. The right behavior must somehow be made to pay, and if the system runs out of resources for rewards, it may have to resort to force. But force without some basis in normative commitment is tantamount to terror, and terror is notoriously ineffective in the long run.