Peace Research – in the Line of Fire

This Sunday, we had a rare example of a daily newspaper – Bergens Tidende – taking an interest in the agenda of Peace Research.

PRIO aims at playing a central role in the ongoing debate about peace research. What is it? How does it relate to the established disciplines? Does it hold a particular ethical commitment? How does it contribute to our understanding of peace and conflict? Does it have an impact on the ability to prevent violence, mitigate the effects of armed conflict, end wars?

The ambition to take a lead in this critical self-reflection is behind the three successive roundtables on peace research at the Annual Conventions of the International Studies Association. Likewise, it is a central motivation for the institutionalization of the PRIO Annual Peace Address, which will this year be given by John Lewis, a central character in the US civil rights movement in the 1960s, and a long-serving member of US congress. Many of you attended the opening of the Research School on Monday and listened to Mats Berdal’s presentation, which was very insightful on many of these issues.

Among some of those most critical of peace research, there is the basic assumption that unless the focus is on how to bring about peace through peaceful means, then it is not peace research. In fact, claims Jørgen Johansen, who is interviewed by Bergens Tidende, it is nothing but ‘war research’! I could not disagree more. Peace research needs to also investigate the use of armed power, not the least it limitations. The consequences – many of which are unintended – of the armed interventions in Afghanistan or Libya are important to understand. The impact of peace operations should be a key topic of study. Understanding the causes, dynamics and consequences of armed conflict – of war – is essential for understanding the possibilities for peace. A significant share of PRIO’s research concerns what it is that distinguishes societies where conflict is solved with violence from societies where it is not.

But there certainly are important questions which are under-researched. One example, on which our strategy defines an ambition to build a new major research effort, is non-violence. We have a set of projects under development (and with funders) examining the outcomes for political groups that choose violence versus those choosing non-violence. I would also like to see new initiatives on non-violence as a means of third-party intervention (observer missions; civilian protection, etc.). And we should pursue those difficult questions: What are the very definitions of peace and violence? Is organized political violence being replaced by other forms? As Christian Davenport asked at this year’s ISA panel, do we tend to neglect state repression as an object of study, even though it may possibly be the major form of violence?

There is more than enough to do. We at PRIO shall carry our part in expanding the agenda.