Stable Peace

Stable peace, as described by sociologist Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993), is “a situation in which the probability of war is so small that it does not really enter the calculations of any of the people involved” (Boulding 1978, p. 13). Since then, the concept has been incorporated into the established corpus of terms used in international conflict resolution. In this article, we examine the idea of a stable peace, including how it came to be studied by scholars in the fields of International Security and Peace and Conflict Studies. If peace is defined as “the absence of war” (Boulding 1978), then working towards it would entail seeking to eliminate, avert, or at the very least mitigate the risks of war. If, on the other hand, peace is defined as “the absence of violence” (Galtung 1969), whether direct, structural, or cultural, one must explore options for dealing with situations in which violence is a possibility. They would work to prevent or abolish all forms of violence,...