1: Perspective And Summary
Democratic Peace page
Pity a human face,
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.
---- William Blake: "The Divine Image" Songs of Innocence
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
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.
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.
Conflict is a balancing of powers among interests, capabilities, and wills.
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
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
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,
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.
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.
A. Status quo. The concept of status quo is basic to these volumes. In previous volumes
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,
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.
A. Actuality. In Table 2.2 I list 11 theoretical dimensions along which social contracts vary, and have organized them into four general types.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
A society is defined by a division of labor
International relations among societies are of special importance here. Nation-states form an exchange society
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.
Table 2.5 presents the conceptual level and dimensions of peace to be discussed here.
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,
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.
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.
B. Empirical Concept. The first such dimension defines whether the concept is empirical, abstract, or theoretical--a construct.
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.
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
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.
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;
In the tight theory,
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.
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."
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,
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.
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.
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.
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.
Third, as a social contract peace is operational, and empirical patterns of peace, so defined, have been well delineated.
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.
Fifth, peace as conceptualized embodies a number of psychological principles, such as subjectivity, intentionality, free will, and individualism.
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.
* Scanned from Chapter 1 in R.J. Rummel, The Just Peace, 1981. For full reference to the book and the list of its contents in hypertext, click book. Typographical errors have been corrected, clarifications added, and style updated.
1. Alphonse de Lamartine, Meditations Poetiques (1820).
2. Desiderius Erasmus, Adagio.
3. Martin Luther, On Marriage (1530).
4. Cicero, Letters to Atticus.
5. Benjamin Franklin, Letter to Josiah Quincy (September 11, 1773).
6. Irenology = the scientific study of peace. See Starke (1968).
7. See Vol. 1: The Dynamic Psychological Field (Section 8.3 of Chapter 8). I classify and discuss relevant types of concepts in Section 2.4.3. See also Note 48.
7a. These volumes are: Vol. 1: The Dynamic Psychological Field; Vol. 2: The Conflict Helix; Vol. 3: Conflict In Perspective; and Vol. 4: War, Power, Peace.
8. These principles are presented in Vol. 4: War, Power, Peace (Chapter 20), and are each the subject of chapters in In The Minds of Men (1979a; republished as The Conflict Helix).
9. On the nature and variety of powers, see Vol. 2: The Conflict Helix (Chapters 19, 20, and 21). On interests, capabilities, and wills, see Vol. 2: The Conflict Helix (Chapters 6, 27, 28, and 29). For mathematical definitions, see Vol. 4: War, Power, Peace (Chapter 8 and Section 9A.1 of Appendix 9A). On conflict as balancing of powers, see Vol. 2: The Conflict Helix (Section 29.3 of Chapter 29) and Vol. 4: War, Power, Peace (Part V). Note that I define an interest broadly as any situation--want (or goal)--means complex, which includes sentiments, roles, values, and ethics. Interests are activated attitudes, stimulated by particular needs, Thus, as treated here, interests are basic motivational variables. See Vol. 1: The Dynamic Psychological Field (Chapters 19, 20, 21, particularly Section 20.3 of Chapter 20).
10. For the development of different types of social behavior, see Vol. 1: The Dynamic Psychological Field (Part III). For the mathematical development, see Vol. 4: War, Power, Peace (Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 and Section 9A.1 of Appendix 9A). Empirical applications are given in Vol. 4: War, Power, Peace (Chapter 4).
11. Note that the balance of powers is not necessarily of coercion and force, but may combine exchange, intellectual, authoritative, altruistic, and manipulative powers.
Moreover, regardless of power's form: Power = interests X capabilities X will. And the balancing of these powers takes place in a perceived situation. The balance of powers is thus a multidimensional balance in the minds of the parties involved and should not be confused with any mechanical and physical balance.
12. In the words of Henry Kissinger (1974: 643), "two world wars and an era of involvement and conflict should now have taught us that peace is a process, not a condition."
13. This is clearly a dialectical view of conflict and peace. See, for example, Mao (1954: Vol. 2, p. 45):
As everybody knows, war and peace transform themselves into each other.... All contradictory things are interconnected, and they not only coexist in an entity under certain conditions-this is the whole meaning of the identity of contradictions.
14. Elsewhere (see Note 8) I refer to "peace" rather than "cooperation" in the principle. Since I am leading to a definition of peace here, however, I have substituted "cooperation" for "peace."
15. See Vol. 2: The Conflict Helix (Chapter 29) and Vol. 4: War, Power, Peace (Chapter 18, particularly Figures 18.1, 18.2, and 18.3). This conception overlaps Boulding's, although expressed within a different theory and by different theoretical terms. According to Boulding,
peace is a property of conflict systems and a homeostatic or cybernetic property that enables the system, in the course of its dynamic path, to remain in some stated boundary. Where the boundary is drawn is not so important as the machinery by which the system stays within it wherever it is drawn. Most conflict systems exhibit what might be called a "Break boundary" at which the system suddenly changes into another or passes some point of no return in its dynamic processes. Thus, marital conflict may lead to separation or divorce, industrial conflict may lead to strikes, personal conflicts may lead to fisticuffs at the lower end of the social scale or to litigation at the upper end, and international relations may degenerate into war.
16. Here it is unnecessary to distinguish interpersonal and international contracts. Therefore, I am combining what I have called elsewhere (see Note 8) the Third and Fourth Master Principles.
17. See Note 15.
18. With the understanding that societies and organizations are structures of expectations (social contracts), see Vol. 2: The Conflict Helix (Chapters 30, 31, 33 and 34) for theoretical and empirical analysis of types of societies and political systems, and Vol. 1: The Dynamic Psychological Field (Chapter 33) for structures of expectations within states. For structures of expectations within the international society, see Vol. 4: War, Power, Peace (Section 4.3).
19. See Note 28.
20. Expectations weigh behavioral dispositions. See Vol. 1: The Dynamic Psychological Field (Sections 15.2 and 18.1 of Chapter 15 and Chapter 18), Vol. 4: War, Power, Peace (Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 and Section 8.2 of Chapter 8).
21. Vol. 2: The Conflict Helix (Chapter 24; Section 29.4 of Chapter 29); Vol. 4: War, Power, Peace (Section 16.9 of Chapter 16, Status Quo Disruption Proposition 16.10, Violence Principle 20.16, and War Principle 20.22).
22. Vol. 4: War, Power, Peace (Proposition 16.10).
23. See Vol. 2: The Conflict Helix (Sections 23.1 and 23.3 of Chapter 23).
24. These dimensions are meant to cover all forms of contracts and to discriminate among their qualitatively significant aspects. To my knowledge, little quantitative empirical work on the dimensions of contracts has been done. For an exception, see Russett's factor analysis of international alliances (1971).
25. "Actuality ... .. latent," "manifest" are basic ontological categories of these volumes. For their development and discussion, see Vol. 1: The Dynamic Psychological Field (Chapter 8 and Chapter 9).
26. See Note 28.
27. This is the myth of "rational constructivism" well elaborated by Hayek (1973 Vol. 1, Chapters 1 and 2). In general, this is the belief that societies are rationally constructed; that they are organizations. This is an intellectual error underlying the current emphasis on governmental (i.e., socialist) intervention in and planning of all or major aspects of society. While some societies are, of course, organized (such as a communist state, the military, or a university), not all are or need be. Societies can be spontaneous and self-regulating--that is, social fields, in which patterns and institutions of cooperation, communications, and the division of labor, evolve to satisfy individual needs and maintain peace. This characterizes the exchange society and its free market. See Vol. 2: The Conflict Helix (Chapter 22, Chapter 30, Chapter 31, and Chapter 32). International relations form such an exchange society. See Vol. 4: War, Power, Peace (Chapter 2).
28. The price of goods is a narrow social contract. In a free market it is the resolution of diverse overlapping balances between buyers and sellers. In a command market the price of goods is set by government managers and planners, but is still a social contract (even more obviously so) resulting from multiple overlapping and ascending bureaucratic and political balances.
Of course, the price of coffee on the market shelf seems qualitatively different from the signed peace treaty in hand, and it seems odd to call both social contracts. But this is because they are manifestly different kinds of social contracts. Besides being narrow, a price is an informal, implicit, subconscious, indirect, and collective social contract, whereas a peace treaty is formal, explicit, conscious, and possibly middle range. They therefore display the essence of social contracts quite differently, as whale and mouse manifest qualitatively distinct "mammalness" among animals. However, the price of goods and peace treaties are one in being a structure of expectations based on a balance of powers which is the outcome of a balancing process. For a free market price, the balance is among exchange powers; for a command price it is among coercive and authoritative powers.
29. For the application of these distinctions to social behavior, see Vol. 2: The Conflict Helix (Section 10.4 of Chapter 10).
30. The more appropriate term, as used by Pitirim Sorokin (1969), is "contractual" (see Vol. 2: The Conflict Helix, Section 10.5 of Chapter 10). However, I could only confuse the issue by referring to, for example, contractual social contracts. By contractual Sorokin meant behavior that was narrow, utilitarian, businesslike.
31. I am expressing a summary view of the good here sufficient only to orient the subsequent discussion.
32. See Section 3.9.3, where I present Johan Galtung's idea of positive peace.
33. Defined as the absence of violence, negative peace may involve "positive" or non-"positive" peace. This not only entails calling a state of negative peace "positive" if social equality obtains (thus we would have a "positive, negative" peace), but also uses "positive" in an affective, desirable sense, while treating its opposite as affectively neutral. Thus, to denote an undesirable absence of violence (e.g., slavery), one must say something like "a bad, negative peace." All this hardly leads to clarity.
34. I am using "causal-functional" in the same sense here as in previous volumes, which is as defined by Sorokin (1969:145-146). The basic idea is that diverse objects or events are united or connected by their relationship to an external agency (as all the objects in my house are interrelated through their functional relationship to me), by their manifest causal dependence and functional interdependence (as with diverse aspects of a university or government), or by their meaningful causal and functional interrelationships (as in the interconnection between all the diverse events, objects, agents, and actions comprising a war).
35. I have differentiated among types and dimensions of groups in Vol. 2: The Conflict Helix (Chapter 23), especially in relation to the concept of antifield.
36. See Vol. 2: The Conflict Helix (Table 23.1), which shows the profiles of the different types of groups across these characteristics.
37. See Vol. 2: The Conflict Helix (Chapter 22 and Section 23.3 of Chapter 23).
38. Chapter 30 of Vol. 2: The Conflict Helix.
39. Chapter 33 and Chapter 34 of Vol. 2: The Conflict Helix.
40. "The fundamental social phenomena is the division of labor and its counterpart human cooperation" (Mises, 1966: 157). And: "Society is joint action and cooperation in which each participant sees the other partner's success as a means for the attainment of his own." (p. 169).
41. See Vol. 2: The Conflict Helix (Chapter 32). I have also elaborated, perhaps more clearly, this crucial relationship between type of society and conflict in my book, In the Minds of Men (Chapters 16-19; republished as The Conflict Helix).
42. See Vol. 4: War, Power, Peace (Chapter 2).
43. See Vol. 2: The Conflict Helix (Sections 32.5 and 35.5 of Chapter 32 and Chapter 35).
44. See Vol. 2: The Conflict Helix (Chapter 26).
45. I separate concepts in meaning from percepts and perceptibles. The latter are stimuli that reach the brain, transformed and carried via our neurological receptors. Percepts are perceptibles endowed with perceptual meaning and value through our cultural matrix. It is the percept that we consciously perceive. For example, the perceptible may be a "piece of wood, sharpened at one end and with a rubbery substance at the other." The percept would be of a "pencil." Thus, "crossed sticks" become perceived as a "Christian cross"; a "hairy sphere" as a "tennis ball." Concepts are then the cognitive structures we impose on percepts. Thus, "pencil," "cross," or "tennis ball" are concepts correlated with, but not identical to, percepts. Concepts add meaning, schema, value to percepts, as is most clearly seen by the concept "cross" or "tennis ball," while also losing some of the phenomenological richness of the percept. On all this, see Vol. 1: The Dynamic Psychological Field (Part II, esp. Section 11.3 of Chapter 11 on concepts).
46. I find no consensus on the best taxonomy for concepts. Generally, however, scientists discriminate, as I do here, between those concepts close to the observational level and those which are theoretical in some sense. See, for example, Hempel (1952) and Price (1953).
47. This is also called an observational concept.
48. In essence, all concepts are defined within some theory or cognitive framework, even such commonsense concepts as dog and house. To see this, in part, consider how languages differ significantly in the concepts developed to cover even everyday phenomena. As one who speaks more than one language knows, often a common idea or thing conceptualized in one language will have no counterpart in another.
Languages are informal, implicit theories of reality that evolve as cultures attempt to meet the demands and surmount the challenges of a particular reality. On concepts and theory, see Heath (1967). See also Hempel's (1952) useful analysis of concepts. For the a priori nature of such commonly accepted concepts as cause and effect, see Kant's The Critique of Pure Reason (1952: Book I, Chapter II, Section III, 3B, Book II, Section II, Third Conflict; Section IX, III).
In this Section I am not concerned with the philosophy of concepts, but with usefully distinguishing different conceptions of peace. I have treated concepts more generally in Vol. 1: The Dynamic Psychological Field (Part II).
49. The use of "construct" varies among philosophers of science. Some prefer to call my "construct" a "theoretical concept" or "theoretical term," and my "abstract concept" a "construct." But this is a terminological disagreement, not one of underlying ideas.
50. A much more sophisticated version of such an arms theory has been developed by Richardson (1960) and elaborated by others. For an example of the latest of such work, see Gillespie and Zinnes (1977: Part II, and the citations therein).
51. The clear exception is Vol. 4: War, Power, Peace (Chapters 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9).
52. For the tight theory, see my Field Theory Evolving (1976), and Vol. 4: War, Power, Peace (Chapters 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9).
53. For example, the construct of a "dimension of international behavior space" requires substantive interpretation in order to test or apply social field theory. One way of providing this interpretation is through a factor analysis of the attributes of states, as done in my Field Theory Evolving (1977b: Chapter 5) and National Attributes and Behavior (1979c: Chapter 6). For their interpretation within these volumes, see Vol. 4: War, Power, Peace (Chapter 4).
To avoid misunderstanding, since factor analysis is often considered an empirical measurement technique, the construct of a dimension in field theory is a mathematical vector given numerical content by factor analysis as an axis through a cluster of independently, empirically measured attributes. The dimension is not itself measured, therefore, but depends on other measured concepts for its content; nor is dimension in the tight theory simply an abstraction, for as a concept it is integral to the equations of field theory and plays a deductive role therein.
54. See Vol. 4: War, Power, Peace (Appendix 9A, especially Figure 9A.1). The technical development is given in Vol. 4: War, Power, Peace (Chapter 5).
55. Hayek (1979: Vol. 3, p. xii) has (quite rightly, in my view) pointed out the appropriateness of this term to the society of freely interacting individuals.
56. "Component" is a central philosophical concept for me. See Vol. 1: The Dynamic Psychological Field (Section 10.3 of Chapter 10). A component defines a common latent function underlying phenomena.
57. For greater clarification than warranted here, see Vol. 2: The Conflict Helix (Chapter 33), and Vol. 4: War, Power, Peace (Chapter 4 and Chapter 7). See also Note 53.
58. See Section 3.9.3.
59. "The Lord Be With You," Book of Common Prayer.
60. The ethics implicit in this paragraph will be made clear in Part II by my definition of a just peace.
61. For my relevant view of reality, see Vol. 1: The Dynamic Psychological Field (Parts II and VII). Reality comprises potentiality and actuality, with the latter divided into dispositions (or powers) and manifestations. Expectations are dispositional, as are interests and will. Capabilities may be only dispositional (as with intelligence) or may combine both dispositional and manifest levels (as with armaments). A social contract, and thus peace, is actual, always tied to the dispositional level through its expectations, but also partially manifest, reaching the surface of reality via, at least, observable behavior.
62. See Vol. 2: The Conflict Helix (Chapter 26).
63. Regarding international conflict, see Vol. 4: War, Power, Peace (Sections 4.3, 4.4 and 11.3); for patterns of international peace, see Vol. 4: War, Power, Peace (Sections 4.3 and 4.4). For patterns of peace (structures of expectations) internal to states, see Vol. 2: The Conflict Helix (Section 33.4 of Chapter 33).
64. See Section 2.5.4 and Section 3.3.1E .
65. This holds whether peace is an abstraction in the loose theory or a construct in the tighter version. As a construct, peace is empirically defined by components of social behavior. Each component may vary in the amount of variance in behavior correlated with it, but mathematically each is a dimension (a vector of a basis) of the space of behavior. And there is either a dimension of a space or there is not.
66. See Sections 2.3.2, 2.3.3, and 2.3.4.
67. See Note 34.
68. See Note 61.
69. See Note 29 in Chapter 3.
70. For the precise relationship between these concepts, see Vol. 4: War, Power, Peace (Chapter 8 and Chapter 9).
71. Peace as a social contract = a structure of expectations. Such structures have been empirically defined. See Note 18.
72. Along these lines I have tried to specify principles and rules for waging peace, as here defined. See Chapter 10.
73. Each of these principles is the subject of separate chapters in my In The Minds of Men (1979a: Part I--book republished as The Conflict Helix).