Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Peace in International Relations Theory

  • Chapter
The Palgrave Handbook of Disciplinary and Regional Approaches to Peace

Abstract

What is peace according to IR theory? This question appears to have been settled in favour of the liberal peace. This comprises a victor’s peace aimed at security, an institutional peace to provide international governance and guarantees, a constitutional peace to ensure democracy and free trade, and a civil peace to ensure freedom and rights.2 Though the concept of peace is often assumed to be central, it is rarely defined in IR theory. This raises issues related to an ontology of peace, culture, development, agency and structure, and their implications for ‘everyday life’.3

This chapter draws on a much longer essay by the same author, previously published as ‘Reclaiming Peace in International Relations’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 36, no. 3 (2008): 439–470.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 189.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 249.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Notes

  1. For a discussion of these components, see Oliver Richmond, The Transformation of Peace (London: Palgrave, 2005), especially the conclusion.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  2. See, among others, Christine Sylvester, ‘Bare Life as Development/Post-Colonial Problematic’, The Geographical Journal 172, no. 1 (2006): 66–77.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. She draws upon G. Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998).

    Google Scholar 

  4. Douglas Fry, Beyond War (Oxford: OUP, 2007), 7 and 208.

    Google Scholar 

  5. Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977);

    Book  Google Scholar 

  6. Hedley Bull and Adam Watson, The Expansion of International Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984).

    Google Scholar 

  7. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (Oxford: OUP, 1998 [1651]), chapter 7.

    Google Scholar 

  8. Chris Brown, ‘Tragedy, “Tragic Choices” and Contemporary International Political Theory’, International Relations 21, no. 1 (2007): 5;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Richard Ned Lebow, The Tragic Vision of Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003);

    Book  Google Scholar 

  10. Barry Buzan, ‘The Timeless Wisdom of Realism’, in International Theory: Positivism and Beyond, eds Steve Smith et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 51.

    Google Scholar 

  11. Kenneth Waltz, Man, the State and War (Columbia University Press, 1959);

    Google Scholar 

  12. Hedley Bull, ‘The Theory of International Politics 1919–1969’, in The Aberystwyth Papers: International Politics 1919–1969, ed. B. Porter (London: Oxford University Press, 1972), 35;

    Google Scholar 

  13. Martin Wight, ‘Why Is There No International Theory’, in Diplomatic Investigations: Essays in the Theory of International Politics, eds Herbert Butterfield et al. (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1966), 33.

    Google Scholar 

  14. E. H. Carr, Twenty Years’ Crisis (London: Macmillan, 1939), 68 and 97;

    Google Scholar 

  15. Jim George, Discourses of Global Politics (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1994), 78.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  16. Edward N. Luttwak, Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1987), xi.

    Google Scholar 

  17. Peter Wilson, ‘The Myth of the First Great Debate’, Review of International Studies 24 (1998): 1–16;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Lucian M. Ashworth, ‘Where Are the Idealists in Interwar IR?’ Review of International Studies 32, no. 2 (2006): 291.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Norman Angell, The Great Illusion (London: Heinemann, 1910):

    Google Scholar 

  20. Alfred Zimmern, The League of Nations and the Rule of Law (London: Macmillan, 1936).

    Google Scholar 

  21. See also Andreas Osiander, ‘Rereading Early Twentieth Century IR Theory: Idealism Revisited’, International Studies Quarterly 42, no. 3 (1998): 409–432.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Peter Wilson, International Theory of Leonard Woolf (New York: Palgrave, 2003), 20.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  23. Norman Angell,The Fruits of Victory (London: Collins, 1921);

    Google Scholar 

  24. Leonard Woolf, International Government (London: Allen and Unwin, 1916), 8.

    Google Scholar 

  25. Michael Gurevitch, Tony Bennett, James Curran and Janet Woollacott, eds, Culture, Society and the Media (London: Methuen, 1982).

    Google Scholar 

  26. See Vendulka Kubalkova and Albert Cruickshank, Marxism and International Relations (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985);

    Google Scholar 

  27. John Maclean, ‘Marxism and International Relations: A Strange Case of Mutual Neglect’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 17, no. 2 (1988): 295–319.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Saul K. Padover, ed., The Karl Marx Library, On Revolution (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971), 35.

    Google Scholar 

  29. John Vincent, Human Rights and IR (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).

    Google Scholar 

  30. Barry Buzan, From International to World Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

    Book  Google Scholar 

  31. Charles Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979);

    Google Scholar 

  32. Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars (New York: Basic Books, 1977).

    Google Scholar 

  33. See, in particular, John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford: OUP, 1971).

    Google Scholar 

  34. David Held, ‘Cosmopolitanism: Globalisation Tamed’, Review of International Studies 29, no. 4 (2003): 470.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).

    Google Scholar 

  36. Maja Zehfuss, Constructivism in IR (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

    Google Scholar 

  37. Emanuel Adler and Michael Barnett, eds, Security Communities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

    Google Scholar 

  38. Emanuel Adler, ‘Imagined (Security) Communities: Cognitive Regions in International Relations’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 26, no. 2 (1997): 249–277;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  39. Emanuel Adler, ‘Seizing the Middle Ground: Constructivism in World Politics’, European Journal of International Relations 3 (1997): 319–364.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  40. Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver and Jaap de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis (London: Lynne Rienner, 1998).

    Google Scholar 

  41. Johan Galtung and Carl G. Jacobsen, Searching for Peace: The Road to TRANSCEND (London: Pluto Press, 2000).

    Google Scholar 

  42. Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen, The West, Civil Society, and the Construction of Peace (London: Palgrave, 2003), 113.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  43. Steve Smith, ‘Positivism and Beyond’, in International Theory: Positivism and Beyond, eds Steve Smith, Ken Booth and Marysia Zalewski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 13.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  44. Robert W. Cox, Production, Power, and World Order (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987).

    Google Scholar 

  45. George, Discourses of Global Politics, 139. See Robert W. Cox, ‘Social Forces, States, and World Orders’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 10, no. 2 (1981): 126–155;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  46. Richard K. Ashley, ‘Political Realism and Human Interest’, International Studies Quarterly 25 (1985): 204–236;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  47. Andrew Linklater, Men and Citizens in the Theory of IR (London: Macmillan, 1982).

    Google Scholar 

  48. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. Anscombe, 2nd edn. (London: Blackwell, 1998), section 23.

    Google Scholar 

  49. Oliver P. Richmond, ‘Dilemmas of a Hybrid Peace: Negative or Positive?’ Cooperation and Conflict 50, no. 1 (2015): 50–68.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  50. E. Balibar, Politics and the Other Scene (London: Verso, 2002), 4.

    Google Scholar 

  51. Andrew Linklater, ‘The Achievements of Critical Theory’, in International Theory: Positivism and Beyond, eds Steve Smith, Ken Booth and Marysia Zalewski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 286.

    Google Scholar 

  52. Pierre Allan, ‘Measuring International Ethics’, in What Is a Just Peace, eds Pierre Allan and Alexis Keller (Oxford: OUP, 2006), 91.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  53. See also Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993).

    Google Scholar 

  54. Ernesto Laclau, Emancipation(s) (London: Verso, 1996), 18–19, especially note 2.

    Google Scholar 

  55. Christine Sylvester, ‘Art, Abstraction, and IR’, Millennium 30, no. 3 (2001): 540–541;

    Google Scholar 

  56. see also Barry Buzan and Richard Little, ‘Why IR Has Failed as an Intellectual Project and What to Do about It’, Millennium 30, no. 1 (2001): 19–39. They point out that other disciplines do not bother to engage with IR.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  57. Roland Bleiker, ‘The Aesthetic Turn in International Political Theory’, Millennium — Journal of International Studies 30, no. 3 (2001): 510;

    Google Scholar 

  58. Roland Bleiker, ‘Forget IR Theory’, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 22, no. 1 (1997): 57–85. Indeed, Bleiker points out that increasing interest in this area in IR means that there has been an ‘aesthetic turn’.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  59. See Stephen Chan, Peter G. Mandaville and R. Bleiker, eds, The Zen of IR (London: Palgrave, 2001).

    Google Scholar 

  60. Edward Said, Orientalism (London: Penguin, 1978), 291.

    Google Scholar 

  61. Christine Sylvester, ‘Empathetic Cooperation: A Feminist Method for IR’, Millennium 23, no. 2 (1994): 315–334.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  62. Homi K. Bhabha, ‘Introduction: Narrating the Nation’, in Nation and Narration, ed. Homi K. Bhabha (New York: Routledge, 1990);

    Google Scholar 

  63. Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London; New York: Routledge, 1994).

    Google Scholar 

  64. R. B. J. Walker, ‘Social Movements/World Politics’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 23, no. 3 (1994): 669–700.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors
  1. Oliver P. Richmond
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Manchester, UK

    Oliver P. Richmond (Research Professor, International Professor, Visiting Professor), Sandra Pogodda (Lecturer) & Jasmin Ramović (Doctoral Candidate) (Research Professor, International Professor, Visiting Professor),  (Lecturer) &  (Doctoral Candidate)

  2. Kyung Hee University, Korea

    Oliver P. Richmond (Research Professor, International Professor, Visiting Professor) (Research Professor, International Professor, Visiting Professor)

  3. University of Tromso, Norway

    Oliver P. Richmond (Research Professor, International Professor, Visiting Professor) (Research Professor, International Professor, Visiting Professor)

Copyright information

© 2016 Oliver P. Richmond

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Richmond, O.P. (2016). Peace in International Relations Theory. In: Richmond, O.P., Pogodda, S., Ramović, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Disciplinary and Regional Approaches to Peace. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-40761-0_5

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation