When we talk about peace, most of us picture the silence that follows a war or the calm of a society without riots. But peace researchers argue that this picture is incomplete. The absence of fighting does not automatically mean a society is genuinely at peace. This is the heart of one of the most important debates in Peace and Conflict Studies: the difference between negative peace and positive peace. Understanding this distinction helps us see why two societies can both be “peaceful” on the surface, yet differ enormously in how just, stable, and humane they actually are.
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Where the distinction comes from
The terms negative and positive peace are most closely associated with the Norwegian scholar Johan Galtung, often called the father of peace studies. In his influential 1969 work, he argued that negative peace is the absence of war and violence, while positive peace is a more lasting peace built on sustainable institutions and the social attitudes that foster it. The economist Kenneth Boulding, a contemporary of Galtung, approached the same problem from a different angle and added his own concept of “stable peace.”
What makes these thinkers worth studying together is that they were in active dialogue-and disagreement-with each other. Galtung pushed for an expansive, almost idealistic vision of peace, while Boulding worried that stretching the concept too far would make it impractical. Looking at both gives us a fuller map of what peace can mean.
Negative peace: the absence of conflict
Negative peace is defined primarily by what is missing. It refers to the absence of violence, such as when a ceasefire is enacted and the fighting simply stops. It is called “negative” not because it is bad, but because something undesirable-the violence, the oppression, the open conflict-has ceased.
Think of a region where two armed groups sign a truce. The shooting ends. People can walk the streets again. By the standard of negative peace, this is a success, and an important one. Nobody should underestimate the value of stopping people from being killed. The problem is that negative peace says nothing about why the conflict began or whether the underlying tensions have been resolved. The grievances, inequalities, and resentments that fuelled the violence may still be simmering beneath the surface, ready to erupt again.
The minimalist law-and-order state
A useful way to picture negative peace is the minimalist “law-and-order” state. Here, the government’s main job is to contain conflict and keep public order. It maintains police, courts, and prisons to stop crime and suppress violence, but it does not see itself as responsible for the deeper social and economic conditions of its citizens. As long as the streets are quiet, the state considers its duty done.
This model keeps a lid on visible disorder, but it treats symptoms rather than causes. If poverty, discrimination, or exclusion are driving people toward unrest, a purely law-and-order approach manages the resulting turmoil without addressing what produced it. Peace, in this framework, is little more than the successful suppression of conflict.
Positive peace: the presence of justice
Positive peace flips the focus. Instead of asking only “Has the violence stopped?” it asks “What conditions allow a society to flourish without violence in the first place?” For Galtung, this meant that peace is not merely the absence of direct violence but also the absence of structural violence.
This idea of structural violence is the key that unlocks positive peace. Galtung argued that violence is not only the direct, physical harm one person inflicts on another. Structural violence is harm built into social structures and institutions that prevents people from meeting their basic needs-things like institutionalised inequality, discrimination, and systems that keep certain groups poor or powerless. A child who dies of a preventable disease because resources are unequally distributed is, in this view, a victim of violence even though no one fired a shot.
Positive peace, then, is about good management of conflict and the presence of harmonious, just relationships. It involves peacebuilding efforts that replace structures reinforcing violence with structures that reinforce cooperation, often by targeting issues like inequality. The goal is not just to stop fighting but to remove the reasons people fight in the first place.
The expansive welfare state
If negative peace mirrors the law-and-order state, positive peace mirrors the expansive welfare state. A welfare state does not limit itself to maintaining order. It actively works to secure social and economic justice for its citizens, treating well-being as a public responsibility.
The Indian Constitution offers a clear illustration of this aspiration. The Directive Principles of State Policy in Part IV set out the ideals for building a social welfare state aimed at the common good and at securing social and economic justice for all citizens. Article 38 mandates the state to secure a social order in which social, economic, and political justice pervades all institutions, while Article 39 directs it to secure adequate livelihood and protection against economic exploitation. These provisions reflect the logic of positive peace: a state that tackles the root conditions of conflict rather than merely policing its consequences.
Boulding’s “stable peace” and a word of caution
Kenneth Boulding added an important middle position to this debate. He defined stable peace as a situation in which the probability of war is so small that it does not really enter into the calculations of the people involved. Importantly, he noted this could apply at any level of social organisation, from international relations down to families.
Boulding was wary of both extremes. He challenged the minimalist view that peace is simply the absence of war, but he also shied away from Galtung’s maximalist approach, warning against stretching the concept of peace into unrealistic, idealistic directions. He even half-joked that structural violence risked being defined as anything Galtung happened to dislike. His concern was practical: if peace is defined so broadly that it requires a perfect society, it may become impossible to measure or pursue.
To explain how peace holds or breaks, Boulding used the language of strain and strength. Just as whether a bridge collapses depends both on how sturdy it is and on the force applied to it, a social system’s stability depends on factors that strain it, such as memories of past injustice, and factors that strengthen it, such as the ethos and resilience of a society. Peace, for Boulding, is the outcome of this ongoing balance-something that must be actively worked at, not assumed.
Two sides of the same coin
It would be a mistake to treat negative and positive peace as rivals where one is “real” and the other “fake.” They are better understood as complementary stages. For a truly peaceful society, there must be both the absence of violence and continued cooperation toward a sustainable culture of peace.
Negative peace is often the necessary first step. You usually cannot build schools, courts, and welfare systems while bombs are falling. Stopping direct violence creates the breathing room in which deeper work can begin. But if a society stops there, it remains fragile. The peace is brittle because the strains that caused the conflict are still present.
Positive peace is the harder, longer project. It demands addressing inequality, building inclusive institutions, and changing the attitudes that legitimise violence. Communal tensions, caste discrimination, and economic exclusion are exactly the kinds of structural problems that negative peace cannot solve on its own. A society that experiences periodic communal flare-ups despite the formal absence of war is, in Galtung’s terms, enjoying only negative peace while positive peace remains unfinished.
Why this distinction matters
This framework is more than academic hair-splitting. It changes how we judge whether a society is genuinely at peace and what we should do about it. A government that measures its success only by crime statistics and the absence of riots is pursuing negative peace. A government that also asks whether its citizens have dignity, opportunity, and protection from exploitation is reaching for positive peace.
The distinction also shapes how international bodies allocate resources. Competing definitions of peace have had real consequences, for instance influencing which programmes received budget allocations within UN agencies like UNESCO. How we define peace determines what we choose to fund, build, and prioritise.
For anyone studying politics or society, the lesson is to look past the surface calm. The absence of violence is worth protecting, but it is the beginning of peace, not its completion. Real, durable peace requires building the kind of just and resilient society in which conflict, when it arises, is managed constructively rather than violently.
What do you think? Is the absence of visible violence enough to call a society peaceful, or should we reserve the word “peace” only for societies that have also tackled structural injustice? And in your view, how close does a state’s pursuit of social and economic justice bring it to genuine positive peace?
References
- https://www.visionofhumanity.org/introducing-the-concept-of-peace/
- https://www.irenees.net/bdf_fiche-notions-186_en.html
- https://www.transcend.org/tms/2024/07/johan-galtung-positive-and-negative-peace/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_violence
- https://www.nonviolenceny.org/post/why-are-negative-peace-and-positive-peace-important
- https://www.arcjournals.org/pdfs/ijps/v6-i3/1.pdf
- https://sleepyclasses.com/indian-constitution/
- https://www.beyondintractability.org/bi24/peace
- https://www.marketsandsociety.org/v1i2/continuing-relevance-stable-peace
- https://www.visionofhumanity.org/policy-planks-for-stable-peace/
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