Peace studies has operated pre-paradigm, with 61 concurrent definitions of its central concept. The framework subsumes them as partial descriptions of a single structure, giving research programmes a common reference against which their findings can finally triangulate.
Peace research is fragmenting. A 2024 review in the International Studies Review identified 61 distinct peace concepts across the literature, each coherent within its own tradition, few in dialogue with the others. Findings rarely triangulate, contributions are absorbed slowly across traditions, and the field's output becomes harder for adjacent disciplines and policy audiences to draw on.
The framework does not displace any tradition. It specifies the single structure they have each been partially describing, so work in one vocabulary can be read alongside work in another.
Because each finding can be mapped onto the same shared structure, results from one research tradition become readable in another. Peer research stops being a parallel literature and starts being a cumulative one.
Ontological, structural, and applied tiers let your work at its own level of abstraction share a framework with work at any other. The same structure carries from philosophical grounding to measurable indicators.
"Reframing the Ontology of Peace Studies" (Peace and Conflict Studies, Vol. 29, No. 2, 2023) sets out the structural claim in full and is openly available. The 2026 article The Sovereignty of Sentience: A Phenomenological Approach to Peace for International Law develops a phenomenological standard for peace and applies it to international law. Publication details and free eprint access are available on the publications page.
Systematic reviews, concept reviews, and co-authored applied studies stop reinventing the frame. A shared reference organises the field, and past applications span conceptual analysis and field work in conflict-affected and humanitarian settings.
Identifying the elements that serious approaches to peace appear to share may give the field a common anchor. Each tradition can keep what makes it distinct while still contributing to a cumulative picture, and research that has been fragmenting can start to converge on the questions that matter.