Happiness as a measurement and goal of peacebuilding

ABSTRACT

The Global Peace Index (GPI) measures how ‘peaceful’ countries are, while the World Happiness Report (WHR) index measures how ‘happy’ their citizens are. But when compared side by side, the two sets of findings conspicuously do not match – apparently indicating that people who live in peace do not always live in happiness. To grapple with this interesting dissonance, let us assume that happiness is the ultimate goal in life – as proposed by the Benthamite philosophy – and that peace is therefore an instrumental good, much like health, freedom and autonomy. Once this is taken on principle, it follows that peacebuilding’s overall goal should be to make sure conflict-affected communities are happy. This paper investigates what the results of peacebuilding would look like if they were measured using the GPI and WHR at the same time. Using the former Yugoslavia countries as a case study, it asks whether these countries’ post-conflict experiences of peacebuilding can help explain their WHR and GPI results. The intention is to start a meaningful debate on what peacebuilding’s overall objective should be – and to examine whether the measurement of happiness could be a useful starting point.

KEYWORDS:

• Peace
• happiness
• peacebuilding
• measurement
• former Yugoslavia

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Prof Roger Mac Ginty for his comments and inputs in the finalisation of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes to contributor

Alpaslan Özerdem is Professor of Peacebuilding and Associate Pro-Vice-Chancellor Research at Coventry University, UK. He is co-editor of Human Security in Turkey (2013); Local Ownership in International Peacebuilding (2015); co-author of Peacebuilding: An Introduction (2015), co-editor of Conflict Transformation and the Palestinians (2017) and co-editor of Comparing Peace Processes (2019).

Notes

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2 Keith Gottschalk, ‘Why the Global Peace Index Needs Be Read with Scepticism’, The Conversation, 2015. https://theconversation.com/why-the-global-peace-index-needs-be-read-with-scepticism-43646 (accessed August 11, 2018).

3 Roger Mac Ginty, ‘Indicators +: A Proposal for Everyday Peace Indicators’, Evaluation and Program Planning 36 (2013): 56–63.

4 Amartya Sen, ‘Capability and Well-Being’, in The Quality of Life, eds. Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).

5 Michael Ignatieff, The Ordinary Virtues: Moral Order in a Divided World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017).

6 David Boersema and Katy Gray Brown, eds., Spiritual and Political Dimension of Nonviolence and Peace (Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi, 2006); David Cortright, ‘What is Peace?’ in Peace and Conflict Studies, eds. Charles P. Webel and Jorgen Johansen (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012); Fuat Gursozlu, ed., Peace, Culture and Violence (New York: Brill, 2018).

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8 David P. Barash and Charles P. Webel, Peace and Conflict Studies, 3rd ed. (London: Sage, 2013).

9 Benjamin Miller, ‘When and How Regions Become Peaceful: Potential Theoretical Pathways to Peace’, International Studies Review 7, no. 2 (2005): 229–67, 232.

10 Jean Paul Lederach, The Little Book of Conflict Transformation (Intercourse, PA: Good Books, 2003); Oliver Ramsbotham, Tom Woodhouse, and Hugh Miall, Contemporary Conflict Resolution, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Polity, 2011).

11 Johan Galtung, ‘Peace Research: Science or Politics in Disguise?’, International Spectator 21, no. 19 (1967): 1573–603.

12 David P. Barash and Charles P. Webel, Peace and Conflict Studies, 2nd ed. (London: Sage, 2009), 7.

13 Betty A. Reardon, Comprehensive Peace Education (New York: Teachers College Press, 1988).

14 Johan Galtung, ‘Cultural Violence’, Journal of Peace Research 27, no. 3 (1990): 291–305.

15 Elise M. Boulding, ‘Cultures of Peace’; K. Standish and H. Kertyzia, ‘Looking for Peace in the National Curriculum of England’, Journal of Peace and Justice Studies 24, no. 2 (2014): 73–99; Alpaslan Özerdem and SungYong Lee, International Peacebuilding: An Introduction (London: Routledge, 2016).

16 Fletcher D. Cox and Timothy D. Sisk, Peacebuilding in Deeply Divided Societies: Towards Social Cohesion? (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017); Johan Galtung, ‘Positive and Negative Peace’, in Peace and Conflict Studies, eds. Charles P. Webel and Jorgen Johansen (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012), 75–80; Oliver Richmond, The Transformation of Peace (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).

17 Necla Tschirgi, ‘Securitization and Peacebuilding’, in Routledge Handbook of Peacebuilding, ed. Roger Mac Ginty (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013), 197–210.

18 Ho-Won Jeong, Peace and Conflict Studies: An Introduction (London: Routledge, 2017).

19 Kevin Clements, ‘Peace Building and Conflict Transformation’, Peace and Conflict Studies 4, no. 1 (1997): 3–13; C.A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson, and Pamela R. Aall, Herding Cats: Multiparty Mediation in a Complex World (Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace, 1999); Graciana Del Castillo, Obstacles to Peacebuilding (London: Routledge, 2017); Paul Newman, Roland Paris, and Oliver Richmond, eds., New Perspectives on Liberal Peacebuilding (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2009); Roland Paris, At War’s End: Building Peace After Civil Conflicts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

20 Lederach, ‘The Little Book of Conflict Transformation’.

21 Özerdem and Lee, ‘International Peacebuilding’.

22 John D. Brewer et al., The Sociology of Everyday Life Peacebuilding (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

23 Roger Mac Ginty, ‘Indicators +: A Proposal for Everyday Peace Indicators’, Evaluation and Program Planning 36 (2013): 56–63, 56.

24 Roger Mac Ginty, ‘Everyday Peace: Bottom-up and Local Agency in Conflict Affected Societies’, Security Dialogue 45, no. 6 (2014): 548–64.

25 Ibid, 553.

26 Pamina Firchow, Claiming Everyday Peace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).

27 Ibid.

28 Ted Honderich, The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 332.

29 J.H. Burns, ‘Happiness and Utility: Jeremy Bentham’s Equation’, Utilitas 17 (2005): 46–61.

30 John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (Ticknor and Fields1863 [1859]), 8.

31 Ted Honderich, ‘The Oxford Companion to Philosophy’.

32 Richard Layard, Happiness: Lessons from a New Science (London: Penguin Books, 2011), 113.

33 Ibid, 12.

34 Ibid, 13.

35 (1) Number and duration of internal conflicts; (2) Number of deaths from external organized conflict; (3) Number of deaths from internal organised conflict; (4) Number, duration, and role in external conflicts; (5) Intensity of organised internal conflict; (6) Relations with neighbouring countries; (7) Level of perceived criminality in society; (8) Number of refugees and displaced persons as percentage of population; (9) Political instability; (10) Political Terror; (11) Impact of terrorism; (12) Number of homicides per 100,000 people; (13) Level of violent crime; (14) Likelihood of violent demonstrations; (15) Number of jailed persons per 100,000 people; (16) Number of internal security officers and police per 100,000 people; (17) Military expenditure as a percentage of GDP; (18) Number of armed-services personnel per 100,000; (19) Volume of transfers of major conventional weapons as recipient (imports) per 100,000 people; (20) Volume of transfers of major conventional weapons as supplier (exports) per 100,000 people; (21) Financial contribution to UN peacekeeping missions; (22) Nuclear and heavy weapons capability; (23) Ease of access to small arms and light weapons.

36 IEP (2017) Global Peace Index 2017. http://visionofhumanity.org/app/uploads/2017/06/GPI17-Report.pdf (accessed September 5, 2018).

37 Global Peace Index 2018. http://visionofhumanity.org/app/uploads/2018/06/GlobalPeace-Index-2018-2.pdf (accessed September 10, 2018).

38 GDP per capita is in terms of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) adjusted to constant 2011 international dollars, taken from the World Development Indicators (WDI) released by the World Bank in September 2017. The time series of healthy life expectancy at birth are constructed based on data from the World Health Organization (WHO) and WDI. Social support is the national average of the binary responses (either 0 or 1) to the Gallup World Poll (GWP) question ‘If you were in trouble, do you have relatives or friends you can count on to help you whenever you need them, or not?’. Freedom to make life choices is the national average of binary responses to the GWP question ‘Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with your freedom to choose what you do with your life?’ Generosity is the residual of regressing the national average of GWP responses to the question ‘Have you donated money to a charity in the past month?’ on GDP per capita. Perceptions of corruption are the average of binary answers to two GWP questions: ‘Is corruption widespread throughout the government or not?’ and ‘Is corruption widespread within businesses or not?’

39 World Happiness Report 2018. https://s3.amazonaws.com/happiness-report/2018/WHR_web.pdf (accessed August 1, 2018).

40 Ibid.

41 David Chandler, Bosnia: Faking Democracy After Dayton, 2nd ed. (London: Pluto Press, 2000); Sabrina Petra Ramet, Balkan Babel: The Disintegration of Yugoslavia from the Death of Tito to the Fall of Milosevic, 4th ed. (New York: Routledge, 2002).

42 Global Peace Index 2013. https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/Global%20Peace%20Index%20203.pdf (accessed August 1, 2018); Global Peace Index 2015. http://economicsandpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Global-Peace-Index-Report-2015_0.pdf (accessed August 1, 2018); Global Peace Index 2016. http://economicsandpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/GPI-2016-Report_2.pdf (accessed August 1, 2018); Global Peace Index 2017. http://visionofhumanity.org/app/uploads/2017/06/GPI17-Report.pdf (accessed August 1, 2018); Global Peace Index 2018.

43 World Happiness Report 2013. http://worldhappiness.report/ed/2013/ (accessed August 1, 2018); World Happiness Report 2015. http://worldhappiness.report/ed/2015/ (accessed August 1, 2018); World Happiness Report 2016. http://worldhappiness.report/ed/2016/ (accessed August 1, 2018); World Happiness Report 2017. http://worldhappiness.report/ed/2017/ (accessed August 1, 2018); World Happiness Report 2018.

44 World Happiness Report 2018.

45 Global Peace Index 2017; World Happiness Report 2017; UNDP, Human Development Index 2017. http://hdr.undp.org/en/composite/HDI (accessed August 1, 2018); UNDP, Inequality-Adjusted Human Development Index 2017. http://hdr.undp.org/en/composite/IHDI (accessed August 1, 2018).

46 The IHDI combines a country’s average achievements in health, education and income with how those achievements are distributed among country’s population by ‘discounting’ each dimension’s average value according to its level of inequality (UNDP, Inequality-Adjusted Human Development Index, 2017). http://hdr.undp.org/en/composite/IHDI (accessed 21 September, 2018).

47 Global Peace Index 2018.

48 Tobias Denskus, ‘Peacebuilding Does Not Build Peace’, Development in Practice 17, no. 4–5 (2007): 656–62.

49 Richard Layard, ‘Happiness’, 42.

50 WHR 2017 provides this ranking separately in terms of measuring changes in happiness, based on figures available from the Gallup World Poll.

51 World Happiness Report (2017). http://worldhappiness.report/ed/2017/ (accessed 10 August 2018).

52 Andrew, E. Clark, Sarah Fleche, Richard Layard, Nattavudh Powdthavee, George Ward, ‘The Key Determinants of Happiness and Misery’ in World Happiness Report 2017 (2017) https://s3.amazonaws.com/happiness-report/2017/HR17.pdf (accessed June 30, 2018).

53 Richard Layard, ‘Happiness’, 71.

54 John F. Helliwell, Haifang Huang, Shun Wang, ‘Social Foundations of Happiness’ in World Happiness Report 2017 (2017), https://s3.amazonaws.com/happinessreport/2017/HR17.pdf (accessed June 30, 2018), 33.

55 Ibid, p. 38.

56 Vesna Bojicic-Dzelilovic, ‘Informality, Inequality and Social Reintegration in Post War Transitions’, Studies in Social Justice 7, no. 2 (2013): 211–28, 223.

57 Rastko Mocnik, Social Change in the Balkans. https://www.eurozine.com/social-change-in-the-balkans/ (2003) (accessed September 24, 2018).

58 Paula M. Pickering, Peacebuilding in the Balkans: The View from the Ground Floor, (NY: Cornell University Press, 2007).

59 Marita Eastmond, ‘Reconciliation, Reconstruction, and Everyday Life in War-torn Societies’, Focaal – Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology 57 (2010): 3–16, 11.

60 Stefanie Kappler, ‘Everyday Legitimacy in Post-Conflict Spaces: The Creation of Social Legitimacy in Bosnia-Herzegovina’s Cultural Arenas’, Journal of Intervention and Peacebuilding 7, no. 1 (2013): 11–28, 24.

61 Sung Yong Lee and Alpaslan Özerdem, eds., Local Ownership in International Peacebuilding: Key Theoretical and Practical Issues (London: Routledge, 2015); Roger Mac Ginty, ‘Where is the Local? Critical Localism and Peacebuilding’, Third World Quarterly 36, no. 5 (2015): 840–56.

62 Roger Mac Ginty and Oliver Richmond, ‘The Local Turn in Peace Building: A Critical Agenda for Peace’, Third World Quarterly 34, no. 5 (2013): 763–83.

63 Helen Berents and Siobhan McEvoy-Levy, ‘Theorising Youth and Everyday Peace(building)’, Peacebuilding 3, no. 2 (2015): 115–25.

64 Brewer et al., ‘The Sociology of Everyday Life Peacebuilding’, 3.