Constitutional Guidelines for Global Governance

Peace studies has, from its inception, always felt the need to overcome skepticism as to its academic credibility and convince doubters that it is entitled to as much respect as other forms of inquiry into social, economic, and political issues. It has mostly pursued this goal of disciplinary credibility by relying on methodologies developed in such social science settings as political science, law, sociology, and economics. This priority has inclined the dominant approach taken to peace and justice to be as grounded as much as possible in empirical, data-driven interpretations of global developments related to war/peace issues. Such an epistemological orientation tends to overgeneralize on the basis of what statistical or other forms of hard data are available even if it influences inquiry in misleading ways. This struggle for disciplinary respectability by practitioners of peace studies has been adopted at a high cost, given the nature of the subject matter being investigated and its implicit ethical premise. An insistence on social science and juridical methodologies has had the effect of devaluing, and rendering irrelevant, the moral, political, historical, philosophical, cultural, and spiritual imagination as sources of insight, knowledge, and wisdom, which have much to contribute with respect to any prescriptive inquiry on the foundations of peace in the context of global governance.