The Global Approaches and the Future of Peace Research

Abstract

The concluding chapter demonstrates how the Palgrave Handbook links classical and modern multidimensional ways of thinking about peace and summarizes some main lessons. The classical discourses on peace developed mostly from the perspectives of the most powerful states, but regional and local approaches to peace, developed in Asia, Africa and Latin America, were given less attention. Accordingly this Handbook fills the gap by presenting such perspectives, and adding them to those developed globally, either conceptually, or through the work of international organizations. The chapter lists also areas where future peace research can develop—for example on the role of new actors in negotiations and agreements, on the links between peace studies and terrorism studies, on the dynamics of unification or fragmentation of rebel movements, etc.