Causes of Peace

About the course

Peace and conflict research arose as a field devoted to understanding the causes of war; contemporary peace and conflict research also focuses on conflict resolution and peacebuilding. Causes of peace, however, are understudied. Shifting the focus from causes of war to causes of peace can generate profound insights about peace - as well as war - as it asks new questions which may highlight factors previously overlooked.

Empirically, the peace and conflict research field focuses on countries in conflict or in a post conflict stage, thus, countries that have not experienced armed conflicts often goes under the radar/ are usually receive limited attention. For example, the question of why some countries have not experienced civil war despite being part of a region with widespread warfare has received limited attention. This course arises from this lacuna and with the ambition of understanding the causes to inter- and intrastate peace it will focus on the concept of peace, peace theories and empirical peace puzzles.

The course centers around three themes. The first theme - The Concept of Peace - focuses on different ways of conceptualizing and measuring peace including deliberations about concepts such as the Peace Continuum, Quality of Peace, the Peace Triangle, and Philosophies of Peace. The second theme - Peace Theories - centers on theoretical frameworks for understanding peace such as gender equality and peace, the democratic peace, and security communities. The third theme - Peace Puzzles - covers empirical peace puzzles and focuses on different types of surprising cases of peace.