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WHY POSITIVE PEACE IS TRANSFORMATIONAL
Positive Peace is a transformational concept because it shifts the focus from the negative to the positive by describing the necessary conditions for peace and society to flourish. The systemic nature of Positive Peace not only strengthens peace but is also associated with other desirable outcomes for society, such as higher GDP growth, better measures of wellbeing, higher levels of resilience and more harmonious societies. Importantly, it provides a theory of social change, explaining how societies transform and evolve. Positive Peace describes an optimal environment under which human potential can flourish.
Combined with Halo, IEP’s social systems analysis tool, it provides not only the ability to map systems, but to also understand the transactions flows of a system, identifying emergent qualities, self-regulating functions, and the changing dynamics of the system over time. A parallel can be drawn with medical science. The study of pathology has led to numerous breakthroughs in our understanding of how to treat and cure disease. However, it was only when medical science turned its focus to the study of healthy human beings that we understood what was needed to do to stay healthy: physical exercise, a good mental disposition, a balanced diet, and a sense of purpose. This could only be learned by studying what was working. In the same way, the study of conflict is different from the study of peace, producing very different insights. Understanding what creates sustainable peace cannot be found in the study of violence alone. Humanity is nearing a tipping point and facing challenges unparalleled in its short history. Many of these problems are global in nature, such as climate change, ever decreasing biodiversity, depletion of the earth’s freshwater, and overpopulation. Such global challenges call for global solutions and require cooperation on a scale unprecedented in human history. In a hyper-connected world, the sources of many of these challenges are multidimensional, increasingly complex and span national borders. For this reason, finding solutions requires fundamentally new ways of thinking. Peace is a prerequisite for the survival of humanity. Without peace, it is not possible to achieve the levels of trust, cooperation, and inclusiveness necessary to solve these challenges, let alone empower international institutions and organisations necessary to address them. In the past, peace may have been the domain of the altruistic; but in the 21st century it’s in everyone’s self-intertest. Positive Peace provides a framework to understand and address the many complex challenges facing humanity. It is transformational in that it is a cross-cutting facilitator of progress, making it easier for businesses to sell, entrepreneurs and scientists to innovate, individuals to produce and governments to effectively regulate. Positive Peace is systemic and understanding systems thinking is required to grasp it in its entirety. Systems thinking originated in the study of organisms and has been extended into sociology. A system is a set of parts that interact to achieve a desired purpose/function and driven by intent. Systems thinking can also assist in understanding the way countries function and evolve. When combined with Positive Peace, it provides new ways of conceptualising and explaining societal change. A system is more than the sum of its parts and cannot be understood merely by breaking it down and analysing its constituent parts. Positive Peace consists of eight Pillars, but each of these Pillars does not correlate with peace as strongly as Positive Peace. This highlights that the whole is more than the simple sum of its components. The processes contained within systems can also be mapped and understood through Halo which has 24 analytic functions that define the flows and state changes within a system. One example is the stocks and flows within system, and between systems which could be capital, people or ideas. Through understanding the flows and the size of the stocks emergent and sunsetting properties can be identified as well as the strength of the various subsystems contained within the system. Such an approach distinctly contrasts with the traditional notion of linear causality, which dominates decision making today: identify a problem, decide upon its causes and tackle them in isolation. Without a fuller understanding of the underlying system dynamics, the linear approach is often ineffective and creates unintended consequences. The failure to solve some of society’s fundamental challenges is a testimony to this. Systems thinking opens new ways of understanding nations and how they evolve. In systems, relationships and flows are more important than events. Events or problems represent the outcomes of the relationships and flows. This is why it is important to look at the multidimensional concept of Positive Peace, combined with Halo as a holistic, systemic framework. Positive Peace defines the goals that a system needs to evolve too. Interventions should incrementally nudge the system towards ever higher levels of Positive Peace, rather than creating radical change, which is disruptive, and disorienting and can create unease and resentment