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Peace

Positive and negative peace

In 1969 Johan Galtung coined two terms that still shape how we think about peace. They separate the silence of weapons from a peace that is also just

Key points at a glance

  • Negative peace means the absence of direct violence, positive peace also the absence of structural and cultural violence.
  • Johan Galtung introduced the distinction into the social sciences in 1969 with his essay Violence, Peace, and Peace Research.
  • Negative does not mean bad here: the word describes that something is missing, namely violence.
  • Positive peace is seen as a long-term process in which violence decreases and justice increases.
  • Critics consider the broad concept vague, yet it is widely used in research and education.

In numbers

1969

Violence, Peace, and Peace Research

Galtung's essay in the Journal of Peace Research

3

forms of violence

direct, structural and cultural

1959

PRIO in Oslo

Galtung was at the centre of its founding

Negative and positive peace comparedSource: Johan Galtung 1969 and 1990, bpb, State Agency for Civic Education Baden-Württemberg

Negative peace

What is absent
direct, personal violence
Violence in focus
war, murder, bodily harm, threats
Example
deterrence in the Cold War: no war, but constant danger
Goal
end or prevent violence
Time frame
can come quickly, for example with a ceasefire

Positive peace

What is absent
structural and cultural violence as well
Violence in focus
poverty, lack of access to health care or education
Example
fair conditions in which everyone can develop their potential
Goal
end violence and build justice
Time frame
long-term process on several levels
Founder
Johan Galtung, Norwegian peace researcher, 1930 to 2024
Key text
Journal of Peace Research, 1969, issue 3
Addition
Cultural Violence, 1990
Used in
peace research and peace education

What is positive and negative peace?

Negative peace means the absence of personal, direct violence: nobody is killed, injured or threatened. Positive peace goes further and also means the absence of structural, indirect violence. This is how the Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb) sums up the distinction that is common in peace and conflict research today.

Negative does not mean bad here. The word describes that something is missing, namely violence. Positive means that something is added: just conditions in which people can develop their potential.

A country can therefore have negative peace without having positive peace. There is no war, but people die earlier than they need to because they lack access to food, health care or education.

Who was Johan Galtung?

Johan Galtung was a Norwegian peace researcher who lived from 1930 to 2024. He was at the centre of the group that founded the peace research institute PRIO in Oslo in 1959, and in 1964 he founded the academic journal Journal of Peace Research.

In 1969 this journal published his essay Violence, Peace, and Peace Research, with which he introduced the concepts of negative and positive peace into the social sciences.

Galtung died on 17 February 2024 at the age of 93. The Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University published an obituary of him. PRIO writes that without his energy and personality the institute would never have come into being.

What is structural violence?

Galtung's starting point was a broad definition of violence: violence is present when people are influenced so that their actual physical and mental realisation is below their potential realisation. In this understanding, violence is the gap between what would be possible and what is.

If a person is responsible for it, someone who strikes, shoots or threatens, Galtung speaks of personal or direct violence. If there is no such perpetrator, but unequal conditions that cause the same harm, he speaks of structural violence. It is built into institutions and power relations and often works invisibly.

A frequently cited example is an illness that could be treated, but from which people die because they lack access to treatment. Nobody attacked them, and yet they are kept below their potential.

What does Galtung mean by cultural violence?

Twenty years later Galtung added to his distinction. In 1990 he published the essay Cultural Violence in the same journal. He himself describes it as a continuation of his 1969 concept of structural violence.

By cultural violence he means aspects of a culture that can be used to justify direct or structural violence, for example through religion, ideology, language, art or science. It makes violence look right, or at least not wrong.

This creates a triangle of direct, structural and cultural violence. In this picture, positive peace means working on all three corners: ending violence, changing unjust conditions and removing the ground from justifications of violence.

What criticism is there of the terms?

The broad concept of peace is contested in research. One objection is that it is so comprehensive that peace has never been achieved anywhere in the world. Part of peace research therefore argues for focusing on the narrow concept again: the absence of violence and war.

A second objection is more fundamental. If every unjust structure is called violence, a new justification of violence could follow from it, namely as counter-violence against structural violence. An article in the German journal Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte points to this danger.

Despite this criticism, peace education would be hard to imagine without the terms. They help to explain why a ceasefire is not yet a lasting peace, and why peace work is needed even where nobody is shooting.

Which examples make the difference tangible?

A frequently cited example from history is the Cold War. There was no direct war between the superpowers, the USA and the Soviet Union. Arms control and confidence-building measures in the 1980s helped ensure that conflicts between the military blocs of NATO and the Warsaw Pact did not escalate.

According to the Duden Learnattack school encyclopedia, however, this was not positive peace. The principle of deterrence, the so-called balance of terror, rested on large arsenals on both sides and carried the latent danger of a third world war. What prevailed was negative peace: no battle between the two blocs, but no reliable security either. People living at the time were spared a war between the blocs as long as deterrence held, but not the worry that it might one day fail.

The difference can be shown on a small scale as well. A school class in which nobody is hit, but in which some children are permanently left out, has negative peace. Positive peace would be reached once the exclusion ends too and everyone has the same chance to take part. The State Agency for Civic Education of Baden-Württemberg sums up Galtung's idea like this: decreasing violence combined with increasing justice leads to more peace.

What makes peace last?

The Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) has taken up the concept and tried to make it measurable. It describes positive peace as the attitudes, institutions and structures that create and sustain peaceful societies. This shifts the focus away from the question of which violence is absent toward the question of what needs to be present.

From a statistical analysis of numerous data series, the institute derives eight pillars: a well-functioning government, a sound business environment, an equitable distribution of resources, acceptance of the rights of others, good relations with neighbours, a free flow of information, high levels of human capital and low levels of corruption.

The IEP understands these pillars as a system. They work together and support one another; none works on its own. This fits Galtung's idea that peace is a process and not a state that is reached once. Unlike Galtung, however, the IEP focuses less on violence than on the question of which structures keep a society peaceful and resilient. In practice, this means that anyone who wants to strengthen peace can start in many places, in a public authority, in a company or in a neighbourhood.

Johan Galtung, 1969

Violence is present when human beings are being influenced so that their actual somatic and mental realizations are below their potential realizations.

Sources

What is peace?

The three forms of violence

  1. Direct violenceThere is a perpetrator and a victim: war, murder, bodily harm, threats. Its opposite is negative peace.
  2. Structural violenceThere is no single perpetrator, but conditions that keep people below their potential: poverty, lack of access to health care or education.
  3. Cultural violenceInterpretations in religion, ideology, language or science that justify direct or structural violence.
  4. Positive peaceThe absence of all three forms, understood as a process, not as a state reached once and for all.

Common questions, brief answers

How can the two terms be explained simply?

Negative peace means: nobody is shooting, nobody is beaten or threatened. Positive peace means: in addition, conditions are fair enough that all people can develop their potential.

One image for this is a house. Negative peace is the foundation without which nothing stands. Positive peace is the whole house in which people can live safely and well. Building only the foundation is a start, but not yet a home.

What distinguishes a ceasefire from lasting peace?

A ceasefire is an agreement to stop the fighting. It ends direct violence, at least for the time being, and thus creates negative peace. The causes of the conflict often remain unresolved.

Lasting peace needs more: rules that all sides can rely on, fairer conditions and a climate in which violence is no longer seen as justified. In Galtung's terms, it addresses all three forms of violence.

Is the broad concept of peace a utopia?

The State Agency for Civic Education of Baden-Württemberg mentions the criticism of the concept's vagueness. At the same time, it notes that most experts see peace as a complex and long-term process that unfolds on several levels.

In this understanding, the broad concept is more a direction than an end point. Intermediate steps can be recognised and named: less violence, more justice. Even where it is not fully reached, it shows where a society can move.

How can the terms be used in the classroom?

The distinction is one of the foundations of civic education on peace. The State Agency for Civic Education of Baden-Württemberg presents it in its own graphic based on the Berghof Foundation.

In class, it works well to use examples from the students' own surroundings. The class collects situations from school, town and world and sorts them: is only direct violence missing here, or also the injustice behind it? More on this is on the page about peace education.

More on peace

From the idea to a mission of your own

Peace comes about where people shape it: in a neighbourhood, a school, a club. On W3ltfrieden you will find peace missions that you can start or support.

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