Dissertation, Boston University (
2014)
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Abstract
Because the goal of reducing violence is nearly universally accepted, the
uniquely prescriptive character of peace and conflict studies is rarely scrutinized.
However, prescriptive pacifism in social psychological peace research (SPPR)
masks a diversity of opinion on whether nonintervention is more effective in
promoting peace than intervention to punish aggression, restore stability, and/or
prevent atrocity. SPPR’s skepticism is sharper in the post–9/11 era when states
use public fear of terrorist threat to promote sometimes-unrelated domestic and
geostrategic interests. The most frequently proposed remedy for this kind of
abuse is some form of international legal positivism that permits the use of force
only in self-defense, per strict interpretation of the United Nations Charter, or
not at all—a position the author calls ‘prescriptive pacifism."
This project critically examines the metaethical premises of prescriptive pacifism,
positivism, and realism, how these animate the moral and political skepticism of
peace studies, psychology, and international relations, respectively, and meet in
SPPR. After comparing the intellectual development of these fields and just war
theory, I present influential psychologist Albert Bandura’s social cognitive theory
(SCT) of moral judgment and aggression as a case study. I present evidence of
the problematic nature of Bandura and others’ formulation of moral engagement
and disengagement, tracing their contradictions to the named premises. In brief,
I argue that SCT’s underlying skepticism of individual moral judgment implies
elite or consensus-driven models of social and political change whose
institutional gradualism contradicts these authors’ and SPPR’s stated progressive
aims, and whose utilitarian ethos undermines the egalitarian individualism that
underpins both the liberal conception of the rule of law and the international
human rights regime.
Finally, I present an alternative model of moral reasoning and engagement based
on a Kantian constructivist understanding of international ethics, and the theory
of the just war. I outline two instruments inspired by these related normative
frameworks that in addition to being more internally coherent, operationalize
moral engagement and disengagement in a manner more consonant with
political liberalism, existing international humanitarian law, and the emergent
norm known as Responsibility to Protect. Intended for use in the collection
and coding of qualitative responses to survey research of public opinion on
morally ambiguous issues in international politics such as intervention and
territorial integrity, these instruments avoid the tendency of existing SPPR
frameworks toward false positives of militarism and pacifism. Their presentation
also makes mutually comprehensible the often-confusing professional idioms of
international relations, political theory, moral philosophy, and social psychology,
standing to make a contribution to each.