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Using Positive and Negative Peace Theory To Analyse the
American “Culture Wars” During the Trump Era
Thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the
Requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts in the
Faculty of Human Sciences
Josh Nadeau
Supervisor: Dr. E. Sula-Raxhimi
Department of Human Sciences
School of Conflict Studies
Saint Paul University
Summer 2023
© Josh Nadeau, Ottawa, Canada, 2023.
ii
Abstract
This thesis proposes that Johan Galtung’s theory of positive and negative peace will gain
relevance and applicability in contexts of non-armed societal conflicts like the Trump-era culture
wars when the theory is adapted to take into account not only dynamics such as violence, but
also felt threat.
In this project, I reviewed the academic literature on culture war and sociopolitical polarization
in the United States, as well as the literature on Galtung’s theory. I then adapted positive and
negative peace theory to take into account conflict dynamics rising from felt threat, which I
argue makes Galtung’s theory more applicable to conflicts where violence is invisible, contested
or difficult to ascertain. I tested this version of Galtung’s theory through 20 exploratory,
qualitative interviews with American liberal and conservative partisans. These interviews
resulted in a typology of various a) visions of positive and negative peace in the Trump-era
culture wars, b) strategies partisans use to achieve them and c) preferences for specific types of
peace. These results are discussed regarding their relevance to the field and their contribution to
the academic literature.
Keywords: positive and negative peace, culture war, sociopolitical polarization, Donald Trump,
peacebuilding.
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Acknowledgements
Like any large project, this thesis would never have gotten off the ground without a team of
people behind the researcher. Foremost among these is my supervisor, Enkelejda Sula Raxhimi,
who suggested that I not settle for a theoretical thesis, but also try my hand at qualitative
interviews. She was even busier than I was but nevertheless helped me complete the project on
deadline. I am grateful for the support from all the professors I encountered during my time at
Saint Paul University, who heroically made the transition online during the pandemic and
embarked with us on what turned out to be an interesting experiment in online communication,
exchange and learning. Most of all, I would like to thank the interviewees who took time to sit
down with me and share not only their ideas about peace, but their stories, struggles and
sometimes even tears – the culture wars in the United States have divided many communities
and families, and I hope with this thesis to help address such divides.
The COVID-19 pandemic led to delays in the project, delays which were exacerbated by my
involvement in peacebuilding projects in Russia and Ukraine prior to and following the full-scale
invasion, which demanded much of my attention in 2022-2023. I am grateful to my supervisor,
the academic advisor for graduate studies at Saint Paul University (who also endured my
frequent questions) and other members of the faculty of conflict studies for their understanding
and encouragement during this challenging time.
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Table of Contents
Introduction 1
Context and research problem 1
The aims of this project 5
Project relevance 7
Project structure 8
Chapter One: Methodology 9
Research approach 9
Research questions and hypotheses 10
Participant recruitment and categorization 11
Data collection and analysis 14
Limits of this study 16
Ethical considerations 18
Chapter Two: The Culture Wars During the Trump Era 21
The culture war thesis 21
The evolution of culture war discourse 24
“The great awokening”: Attitudes towards discrimination in the 2010s 27
Woke politics and a new culture war 31
Donald Trump, Trump supporters and the woke culture wars 36
Chapter Three: Sociopolitical Polarization in the United States 42
Types of sociopolitical polarization 42
Sociopolitical polarization in the US: Mid-century to the present 45
Developments in the study of sociopolitical polarization 51
Possible causes of sociopolitical polarization 55
Dynamics and consequences of affective sociopolitical polarization 60
Chapter Four: Positive and Negative Peace Theory 65
Johan Galtung’s idea of peace 65
The reception of Galtung’s original formulation 67
Galtung’s updated theory of positive and negative peace 70
Visions and strategies: The applicability of positive and negative peace 72
Preferences for positive or negative peace 74
Beyond Galtung: Differing visions of positive peace 79
The problem with violence: limitations of Galtung’s theory 83
Expanding positive and negative peace theory to account for threat 87
Chapter Five: Results and Discussion 89
Results and analysis 89
Visions of negative peace 90
v
Visions of positive peace 95
Strategies for negative peacebuilding 98
Strategies for positive peacebuilding 105
Reasons for preferring negative peace 111
Reasons for preferring positive peace 115
Discussion 118
Insights and partisan asymmetries 118
Applying Galtung’s theory to the field 122
Contribution to the literature 124
Conclusion 127
Areas for future research 127
Bibliography 130
Appendices 151
Appendix A. Interview Guide 151
Appendix B. Participant Demographics 152
Appendix C. Consent Form 153
Appendix D. Graphs: Visions of Negative Peace 155
Appendix E. Graphs: Visions of Positive Peace 156
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Introduction
Context and research problem
Growing concern over a current wave of socio-cultural polarization dividing societies worldwide
has highlighted the need to study the nature and impact of non-armed societal conflicts
(Carothers and O’Donohue, 2019). These include disputes between polarised social groups that
have not escalated to mass or systemic direct violence but are nevertheless thought to exacerbate
trends such as mass unrest, outgroup hatred or the erosion of democratic norms seen as central to
violence prevention (Ramsbotham et al., 2016; Turan, 2015). As a peacebuilder and dialogue
facilitator working in contexts of armed as well as non-armed conflicts, I have long been
interested in how tools and frameworks developed in the fields of peace and conflict studies
(PACS) and peacebuilding, such as Norwegian sociologist Johan Galtung’s theory of positive
and negative peace, may prove useful when working to understand and respond to non-armed,
societal conflicts.
One example of this type of conflict are the so-called culture wars of the United States (Hunter,
1991). The term culture war refers to clusters of ideologically-driven societal conflicts, usually
lacking instances of prolonged direct violence, over competing normative frameworks involving
public ideals, values, morality and historical narratives. Of primary importance in the study of
culture wars are the ways in which these frameworks are established, promoted or transmitted
through social institutions or public discourse (Hunter, 2006; Jacoby, 2014; Hartman, 2019). In
the United States, the term is especially associated with value-based conflicts between liberal and
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conservative groups in the 1990s (Hunter, 1991), but it has also been used to describe similar
societal disputes in the 1960s (Hartman, 2019) as well as those following the 2016 election of
Donald Trump to the American presidency (Campbell and Manning, 2018; Abramowitz and
McCoy, 2019; Jones, 2021).
Scholars have noted that America’s culture wars have been both a result of and a reinforcer of
acute sociopolitical polarization, particularly between groups identifying themselves using
ideological markers like liberal/progressive and conservative/traditional or political affiliations
like Democrat and Republican (Greene, 2004, p. 141; Mason, 2018; Iyengar and Krupenkin,
2018b). Research suggests that as these binary categories have become more socially and
politically salient, the number of political moderates have declined, intergroup dialogue has
decreased and communication between these two groups becomes increasingly less common
(Iyengar and Westwood, 2015; Cleven et al., 2018). In other words, “the other side becomes
more ‘other,’ more alien, and understanding the other side is harder to imagine” (Cleven et al.,
2018, p. 54).
The effects of this intensifying sociopolitical polarization in the United States are well
documented. The likelihood that negative stereotypes are held by one side about the other has
increased by 50 percent from the 1960s to the 2010s (Iyengar et al., 2012, p. 420). Heightened
polarization has led partisans to express increased outgroup hostility, emotional volatility and
bias against the other side (Mason, 2013). Additionally, political or ideological polarization
among partisans can influence factors as varied as friendship, purchasing patterns, job hiring,
salary negotiations, pre-COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and economic decision-making (Iyengar
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and Krupenkin, 2018b). This polarization has also been linked with legislative stalemates in
Washington D.C., a decreased willingness for political parties to be open to compromise and
bipartisanship, greater difficulties with regards to living with increasingly diverse populations,
higher degrees of self-censorship or withdrawal from politics, decreased intergroup trust and
increased feelings of insecurity or threat (Cleven et al., 2018). Over the course of studying these
and related factors, some researchers have gone so far as to posit that polarization along political
and ideological lines has become, in the United States and certain other nations in the Global
North, the “most significant fault line in the second decade of the 21st Century [...] not race,
religion or economic status” (Iyengar et al., 2018, p. 2; Westwood et al., 2017).
These studies have been complemented by literature produced by think tanks, public intellectuals
and journalists who have expressed concern with the impact of polarization, specifically during
the years of the Trump administration. According to a study conducted jointly by the Public
Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and The Atlantic (2019), not only do an increasing number of
US citizens avoid people who hold different political stances, almost 1 in 5 respondents react to
such encounters negatively. What’s more, the PRRI study reported that 45 percent of couples
identifying as Democrats and 35 percent identifying as Republicans would disapprove if their
children married across political lines (PRRI, 2019), a trend confirmed by the academic literature
(Iyengar et al., 2018). Peacebuilding scholars and practitioners have long identified such trends
as signs indicating the dehumanisation of salient outgroups, which can lead to conflict and, in
some cases, potentially to widespread direct violence (Ramsbotham et al., 2016; Rupar et al.,
2022). Corroborating academic claims of the culture wars’ new salience, reports released by the
Pew Research Center (Gramlich, 2017; Schaeffer, 2020) have suggested that more Americans
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claim that partisan conflicts are stronger than conflicts based on other societally contentious
markers such as race, gender or class, a divide that grew even more pronounced over the final
two years of the Trump presidency.
While much attention in the sociological and political science literature has been paid to the
effects of conflicts resulting from American sociopolitical polarization, less attention is paid to
this context within the fields of peacebuilding and PACS (Schirch, 2021; Burgess et al., 2022;
Menkel-Meadow, 2022). This amounts to a gap in how related theories and tools from a
multidisciplinary perspective are understood and applied in such contexts, one that I claim
extends to Galtung’s theory of positive and negative peace.
In the scholarly literature on peacebuilding and violent conflict, Galtung’s theory draws a
distinction between negative peace, the absence of violence, and positive peace, the presence of
factors that lead to peaceful, thriving societies (Galtung, 1969, 2013). Both effectively describe a
desired end state to a conflict, which I refer to in this project as a vision of peace. His theory has
since gone on to greatly influence peacebuilding and PACS as a whole (Sharp, 2020). When
applied to the field, it has been used to (a) classify potential end states to a given conflict, such as
ceasefires or societal reconciliation, which have been described as examples of negative and
positive peace respectively (Clark, 2009; Ramsbotham et al., 2016), (b) distinguish types of
interventions aimed at generating a particular type of peace (Roberts, 2008; Christie et al., 2008;
Standish et al., 2022) or (c) better understand how types of peace interact with and impact other
social phenomena, such as pandemic preparedness or the coordination of international peace
interventions (Richmond, 2015; Syropoulos et al., 2021).
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However, while these three main uses may all be observed in contexts of armed conflict, only the
third has been applied in the academic literature to non-armed societal conflicts like those in the
United States (Institute for Economics and Peace [IEP], 2022). This amounts to an inconsistent
application of Galtung’s theory to this type of conflict, which represents a lack of attention paid
to culture war-type conflicts within the fields of PACS and peacebuilding.
For these reasons, I identified (a) the divisive effects of culture wars and increased socio-political
polarization in the United States during the Trump Administration and (b) gaps in the application
of tools and frameworks from the fields of conflict resolution and peacebuilding to such conflicts
as two research problems that I sought to address in this master’s level thesis.
The aims of this project
To address these issues, I sought in this thesis to examine how, on a theoretical level, Galtung’s
theory of positive and negative peace might be adapted to better address non-armed societal
conflicts like the American culture wars during the Trump era; following this I explored what
insights the theory could generate when directly applied in this context. I did so by first
reviewing the academic literature on culture war and sociopolitical polarization – these two
branches of literature were used primarily to familiarise readers with the context of the conflict
in question (and not to provide a theoretical lens through which to analyse the results of this
thesis). I then reviewed the literature on positive and negative peace and outlined an expansion to
the theory that not only takes into account dynamics of violence, which Galtung (1969, 2013)
typically frames as a root cause of conflict, but also those of perceived threat, which I argue
6
better facilitates the application of Galtung’s theory to contexts like culture war. This represents
the core of my thesis and forms the theoretical framework through which I interpreted the results
of 20 semi-structured, exploratory interviews.
I conducted these interviews with American citizens spread across the conservative-liberal
spectrum, using this expanded version of Galtung’s theory to explore and analyse (a) how
participants understood positive and negative peace during the Trump-era culture wars, (b) the
strategies they used to work towards a specific vision of peace and (c) respondents’ preferences
for one or the other type of peace. While a sample size of 20 interviews may not provide a
comprehensive answer to these three points, I aimed to conduct a preliminary exploration of
positive and negative peace theory’s relevance in this context and see what potential insights
such an exploratory approach could produce.
Analysing the data produced by these interviews, I sought to find patterns that I could use to
build a typology of these visions, strategies and preferences for peace described by participants..
After doing so, I suggest ways how a preliminary typology such as this could be applied in the
field, what it may contribute to the academic literature, and what further steps can be taken to
further develop similar tools. These findings, although exploratory as they are, indicate that
Galtung’s theory allows for greater comprehension of culture war dynamics during the Trump
era and provide a basis upon which to conduct further research into the theory’s use on the
ground.
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Project relevance
Given the central place positive and negative peace theory in PACS and peacebuilding,
particularly with its track record as an effective tool for conducting conflict analysis and
planning interventions in contexts of armed conflict (Christie et al., 2008; Ramsbotham et al.,
2016; IEP, 2022), increased attention to how Galtung’s theory can be used in contexts of culture
war may open new avenues to understand and respond to this type of dispute. Practitioners,
researchers and policy makers may also be interested in how peacebuilding tools can be used to
address non-armed societal conflicts, which are increasingly framed not merely as a prior phase
to violent conflict, but as an independent phenomenon with its own traits, dynamics and
trajectories (Turan, 2015).
I originally chose to apply Galtung’s theory to the Trump-era American culture wars due to the
increased attention this conflict received following a surge in American sociopolitical
polarization that was attributed in some academic and popular literature to the election of Trump
to the presidency (Pew Research Center, 2016a; Campbell and Manning, 2018; Abramowitz,
2021). As the Trump era concluded relatively recently, with Trump having left office in early
2021, I had hoped with this project to contribute to emerging efforts to understand this deeply
divisive period in American sociopolitical life. However, during the research process I
encountered a robust literature confirming that intensifying polarization and culture war
dynamics predated the Trump presidency, but were certainly exacerbated by it (Iyengar et al.,
2012; Mason, 2018; Rozado, 2022).
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As I locate the American culture wars within a context of increasing ideological polarization
globally (Carothers and O’Donohue, 2019), I hope that the results generated by this project may
be of use to comparative research conducted elsewhere, particularly in my home country of
Canada, where similar polarization dynamics have already been observed (Merkeley, 2023).
Project structure
The thesis is composed of five chapters. The first details the methodological approaches and
methods applied to the theoretical and qualitative aspects of this project. In the second and third
chapters, a review of the academic literature on culture war and sociopolitical polarization
respectively, paints a picture of the context to which I applied Galtung’s theory. The fourth
chapter presents the literature on positive and negative peace and proposes an expansion of
Galtung’s theory that I argue facilitates its application to the Trump-era culture wars. The fifth
chapter presents the findings of the 20 semi-structured, exploratory interviews conducted in late
2022 and early 2023. The findings explore how respondents described (a) the visions of positive
and negative peace they encountered in the culture wars, (b) the strategies used to achieve them
and (c) their preferences for one or the other type of peace. This was followed by a discussion of
how these findings may be applied in the field, as well as what they contribute to the literature.
Lastly, the conclusion addresses the limitations of this project and points toward areas for future
research.
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Chapter One: Methodology
Research approach
In this project, I used a qualitative research approach to test my hypothesis and address the
research questions. The thesis can be divided into three parts, each with a different
methodological approach. First, I reviewed the existing academic literature and created an
outline of the conflict context, which led to the writing of the two chapters on culture war and
sociopolitical polarization in the United States. I opted to review these two branches of literature
as the former gives an overview of the conflict context, especially regarding the groups involved,
what they fight over, and various actors’ self-described motivations, while the latter explores
well-documented social and psychological phenomena that underlie and exacerbate the conflict
dynamics in question. Combined, both chapters provide the situational context necessary to
engage with the topic under study.
Second, I provided a theoretical discussion of Galtung’s theory of positive and negative peace,
which amounts to a review of the relevant literature, with particular attention paid to the
evolution of this theory, how it was applied in different contexts and in what ways various
scholars and practitioners expanded on Galtung’s original idea. I then outlined how this theory
allows for discussion of visions of peace and the strategies used to achieve them, as well as
outlined various preferences for either type of peace present in the academic literature. I then
outline limitations in Galtung’s theory and present my own expansion that accounts not only for
conflict dynamics rising from instances of violence but also those of felt threat. As compared to
the chapters on culture war and sociopolitical polarization, which describe the conflict context,
10
this chapter outlines a theoretical framework which I applied in the final section of the thesis in
order to arrange, discuss and explore the potential implications of my results.
Third, I conducted 20 in-depth, semi-structured and exploratory interviews with individuals
defined as strong and weak partisans on the political right and left, categories that were drawn
from the discussion of conflict-affected actors in chapter two. On the basis of interviewee
responses, I arranged the results into a typology of (a) six unique types of negative peace and
four types of positive peace that participants observed during the Trump era culture wars; (b)
nine types of strategies that work towards negative peace and nine strategies that work towards
positive peace; and (c) six sets of reasons for preferring negative peace and three for positive
peace. I then highlight certain dynamics that emerged in the data and discuss their implications
for the field. While the results of these interviews remain exploratory in nature and thus cannot
speak conclusively about the groups in question, they nevertheless put into practice the
theoretical framework discussed prior in the thesis. I intend on continuing to refine these
categories and insights, and I hope they will contribute to the beginnings of a framework that
could assist researchers, practitioners or policy makers to use Galtung’s theory as a tool to better
understand and respond to non-armed societal conflicts like American culture wars.
Research questions and hypotheses
The main research question: what new insights and affordances can be generated by using
positive and negative peace theory to analyse non-armed societal conflicts like American culture
wars during the Trump era?
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While designing this project’s research approach, I hoped to answer this question by addressing
various sub-questions, including: (a) how could Galtung’s original theory be adapted to increase
its applicability when analysing the Trump-era culture wars, and non-armed societal conflicts
more generally? (b) What types of positive or negative peace did they identify during the Trump
era? (c) What strategies did they see as contributing to various types of peace? (d) What were
respondent preferences for one or the other type of peace? These sub-questions were used to
develop an interview guide composed of six questions, which is included in Appendix A.
I postulated that positive and negative peace theory would prove useful for analysing and
designing interventions in response to culture war after adapting the theory so that its traditional
focus on violence would be broadened to include a focus on felt threat, a shift which will be
discussed at length in chapter five. I also hypothesised that analysing the culture wars through
this lens would result in a typology of visions of peace, along with related strategies and
motivations for pursuing them.
Participant recruitment and categorization
In order to answer these questions and test the hypotheses, I initially limited my potential
recruitment pool to those who were involved in various political, societal or cultural activities
during the Trump era, which includes not only the years of the Trump administration, but also
the lead-up to the 2016 election following Trump’s declaration to seek the Republican candidacy
(2015-2021).
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Originally, I planned only to interview liberal and conservative activists for this project.
Following Webster (2018), I defined activists as individuals who engage in activities such as
attending rallies, speaking about politics, displaying signs or stickers supporting their preferred
party, causes or candidates, working (officially or as a volunteer) to forward a social or political
cause, donating or organising donations for specific causes, contacting officials, signing petitions
and others. Over the course of the interview process, however, I decided to open up the
participant pool to include non-activist respondents to further diversify my results.
My work as a peacebuilding practitioner in North America has given me access to communities
across the political spectrum from which I recruited participants. The initial interviewees were
recruited using three strategies: (a) recommendations from a pool of activist and partisan
contacts in my possession, (b) an open call within social media communities (Facebook,
Telegram, WhatsApp) frequented by liberals or conservatives, and (c) cold emails to
representatives of partisan organisations whose contact information were publicly available.
Organisations and groups contacted include members of the Beautiful/Anonymous podcast
Facebook group, Dappled Things Magazine, campus branches of organisations like Our
Revolution and Turning Point USA as well as the International Student Festival in Trondheim
(ISFiT) 2023, which hosted a project bringing together young American partisans for dialogue.
Once these first exploratory interviews were collected, other participants were identified and
recruited using the snowball technique, which allowed me to randomly recruit new participants
from within the social circles of previous interviewees. This allowed me, once I made initial
13
inroads into liberal and conservative communities online, to find new recruits among my target
audiences.
I interviewed 20 people across the conservative-liberal spectrum, taking care to include
responses equally from both sides. My initial plan was to simply recruit 10 liberal and 10
conservative interviewees and classify their responses as such. However, while conducting
research for the literature review, I encountered various sub-groups among the liberals and
conservatives interviewed – positions identified by the interviewees themselves – that responded
very differently to culture war dynamics. These self-identification brought a lot of richness and
nuance compared to the relatively rigid categories provided by the theoretical framework. These
sub-groups could be considered along two additional axes: (a) partisan strength (weak, moderate,
strong or strongest partisan) and (b) whether liberals expressed views associated with woke
liberal politics, which are discussed in chapter two. Additionally, one right-leaning libertarian
(see discussion in chapter two) participant was included among the conservative respondent
pool. Again, I would like to point out the fact that these subcategories emerged through my
analysis of participant self-identification in response to the first question of the interview guide I
used to conduct the interviews (see Appendix A), which asked respondents to position
themselves regarding the Trump-era culture wars.
To that end, I included these subcategories in Figure 1 below, alongside the broader liberal and
conservative categories that originally informed my research design. I note them not because
participant numbers within each subcategory are large enough to prove representative of these
groups, but to express nuances found in the data that generated insights that I will explore in my
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analysis chapter. These nuances may also prove a useful base upon which to plan future research.
Furthermore, respondents stated that the acknowledgement of these subcategories facilitated a
greater sense of trust and comfort with the research process, as they allowed for greater
self-expression and reflection of nuance.
Liberal
Conservative
Weak Liberals
2
Weak Conservatives
3
Right-Leaning Libertarian
1
Moderate
Woke Liberals
3
Moderate
Non-Woke Liberals
1
Moderate Conservatives
3
Strong
Woke Liberals
2
Strong
Non-Woke Liberals
1
Strong Conservatives
2
Strongest Liberal
1
Strongest Conservative
1
Total
10
Total
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Fig 1. Participant Breakdown by Ideological Categorization
The results of the interviews will be presented with respect to the various groups mentioned in
Fig. 1, which will be key to the discussion presented in chapter five. Additional information on
participant demographics can be found in Appendix B.
Data collection and analysis
To conduct these exploratory interviews, I used a questionnaire (included in Appendix A) as a
guide, which formed the basis of 20 open-ended – though still semi-structured – in-depth,
exploratory interviews in which I gathered data on how liberal and conservative communities
framed positive and negative peace in the context of the Trump-era American culture wars. I
aimed for a duration of 60 minutes per interview but, given the exploratory nature of these
sessions, some participants opted for interviews of up to two hours. This was dependent on
15
participant availability and willingness to discuss these issues at length. I conducted all the
interviews myself. Every participant was required to give written consent to being interviewed,
as defined in the consent form approved by the university’s Ethics Committee (included in
Appendix C). All participants gave their consent to participate.
The questionnaire was composed of six questions and was preceded by a short introduction in
which I described the project’s aims as well as the definition of key terms such as “vision of
peace,” “positive peace” and “negative peace.” The description of these terms is based on the
theoretical work presented in chapter four of this thesis. Participants were then asked to confirm
their comprehension of the distinction between positive and negative peace by listing examples.
The first question asked participants to position themselves on the conservative-liberal spectrum
with regards to the Trump-era culture wars. The second, third and fourth questions asked them to
identify (a) their preferred vision of peace, (b) their preferred strategies for achieving it and (c)
their motivations for working towards preferred visions of peace. The fifth question asked
participants to identify whether they perceived the election of Trump to the American presidency
as having influenced their answers to the previous three questions1. The final question had
participants describe whether they perceived any particular vision of peace, or strategy used to
achieve it, as potentially unsafe, problematic, illegitimate or threatening to them or their
community.
1This reflected the project’s initial focus on Trump’s impact on polarization and culture war. While the data
generated by this question proved interesting, the amount of data generated by the other questions precluded the
exploration of this data within the limited scope of a master’s-level thesis.
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Given the reality of a global pandemic, all the interviews were conducted via Zoom. All
interviews but two were recorded in accordance with participant consent. I took extensive notes
during the interviews, which formed the basis for transcripts that were then analysed by myself
according to four overarching themes: (a) how the interviewees positioned themselves in the
culture war, (b) the instances of positive and negative peace they observed in the context of the
Trump-era culture wars, (c) strategies they deemed conducive to building positive or negative
peace respectively and (d) respondent reasons for preferring either vision of peace. This led to
the primary output of my research: a typology of (a) visions of positive and negative peace
identified by participants, (b) various groupings of strategies thought to work towards them and
(c) diverse categories of preferences for one or the other type of peace. These results are
followed by a discussion of their relevance, how they can be applied to the field and what
contribution they make to the literature.
Limits of this study
While these 20 exploratory interviewees provided a diverse and wide-ranging dataset, there are
two influential groups that did not contribute data to the project: (a) the alt-right as well as
explicitly anti-immigration Republicans, and (b) far-left anarchist or anti-fascist (“antifa”)
groups. While I hold that the current participant pool nevertheless provided enough data to begin
addressing my research questions, this project holds no pretensions on providing insights into
how strong or even extreme partisans would formulate visions of peace, related peacebuilding
strategies as well as their preferences regarding both. Further work will need to be conducted to
add the responses of highly polarised, even extreme, partisans.
17
Additionally, in this thesis I sought to learn more about how different groups present their
visions, preferences and strategies of positive and negative peace. Therefore, I did not seek to
confirm whether specific strategies indeed contribute to visions of peace in the ways that
participants affirmed they did. Also, my ambition with this project was not to evaluate the
success of such approaches, but instead better understand how participants perceive and conceive
what peace looks like and how to build it. Furthermore, this project relies on respondent
self-reports concerning preferences for peace and related strategies, and makes no claim to
empirically confirm whether ingroup behaviour corresponds to the narratives shared by
participants.
There are a number of other relevant academic spheres relevant to the American culture wars
that were not surveyed by this project. For example, the literature on intergroup contact explores
the circumstances under which ingroups and outgroups seek to create or minimise distance from
each other, which may have substantial implications for understanding dynamics like willingness
to engage in dialogue or preferences for positive and negative peace (Dixon et al., 2010;
Wojcieszak and Warner 2020; Amsalem et al., 2022).
The main output of this thesis project is twofold: (a) a theoretical explanation and justification of
my adaptation of positive and negative peace and (b) a typology of participant visions of peace,
strategies used to work towards visions of peace and preferences for a particular vision,
assembled from my interviews describing. The 20 exploratory interviews conducted are, as their
name suggests, exploratory rather than conclusive in nature, and the typology generated is meant
to provide an example of the data that could be generated by practitioners who apply Galtung’s
18
theory in the field. I hope with this initial typology to contribute to a discussion about the
different visions of peace that can emerge in a given context, as well as how they interact with
each other. I expect that this typology will likely develop over time as I continue to refine it
following the completion of this project.
This means, however, that this project is not structured in a way to make conclusive claims
concerning the proportion of liberals, conservatives and the sub-groups that make up each group
that support specific visions of positive and negative peace. Creating quantitative data
concerning large-group preferences for visions of peace and their corresponding strategy would
require a separate and differently-structured project.
Ethical considerations
The Trump-era culture wars have been described as an environment in which there was a high
likelihood that partisans viewed political opponents and ideological outgroup members as
enemies and would treat interactions as potential moments of threat (Mason, 2018; Aikin and
Talisse, 2020). It has been noted within the field of PACS that such dynamics can prompt actors
to feel unsafe and potentially trigger patterns of self-defence and hostile behaviour towards
perceived sources of threat, especially when said threat is thought to challenge one’s sense of
collective identity and belonging (Rothman and Olsen, 2001; Saguy and Reifen-Tagar, 2022).
In such cases, it was paramount to develop a comfortable, positive atmosphere during interviews
so that these instances of data collection would not trigger perceptions of threat or that I, the
interviewer, sought to delegitimize participant discourses, narratives or worldviews. In highly
polarised and volatile situations, these perceptions can be triggered even by well-intentioned but
19
improperly phrased questions. Some conflict-affected communities who experienced the
Trump-era culture wars may perceive particular discourses as attempts to marginalise their
identities or experiences, or they may even perceive that researchers, and the social sciences
generally, promote biases against certain political communities and thus may not be invested in
presenting their experiences accurately (Duarte et al., 2015; Haidt, 2012, 2016; Grossman and
Hopkins, 2016). This could have led to a refusal to participate in the project entirely, and I sought
to avoid generating these impressions over the course of this project. This is why I developed an
interview guide using neutral language and why I have privileged an exploratory format allowing
participants to frame their culture war-related activities, as well as their own identity markers, in
a language that resonated with them. Conducting interviews with sensitivity to these dynamics
was of the utmost importance not only for data collection, but also for building relationships with
polarised communities in a time of anxiety, thus mitigating the potential emergence of tensions
or perceived threats over the course of the interview process.
Another area of ethical concern highlighted by some participants involved whether taking a
balanced, value-neutral approach to the study of culture war would legitimise opposing positions,
strategies or visions of peace. These participants expressed concerns that this would result in the
moral equation of each side’s use of similar tactics, especially in contexts where power was seen
by participants as imbalanced or conflict dynamics asymmetrical. Using my discretion and
experience as a peacebuilder within the North American context, I responded to such questions
in a variety of ways: (a) assuring that the description of strategies would not amount to moral
equation, (b) discussing with participants the role of making legitimate moral claims vs. learning
to understand conflict dynamics, as well as the benefits of either approach and how they could
20
support each other, (c) outlining the ways in which peacebuilding has historically responded to
claims of problematic neutrality and (d) genuinely sharing my own motivations behind the
project and expressing, when appropriate, my own convictions, my positionality as well as my
doubts.
In addition, other ethical guidelines were implemented, such as a full disclaimer as to the
purposes of the project as well as the collection of informed consent by means of a consent form
sent to participants prior to the interviews. The consent form was vetted by the university’s
Ethics Committee and is included in Appendix C. Participants were informed about data
conservation practices, including the storage of recordings, signed consent forms and interview
transcripts on an encrypted key available only to myself and my academic supervisor, Dr.
Enkelejda Sula-Raxhimi.
Following the completion of the thesis, and upon my return to Ottawa, Canada, the original copy
of this data will be kept at the Saint Paul University campus during the full period of retention.
Original and analysed data will be held there for five years, after which the data will be
destroyed in a shredder (for paper copies) or permanently deleted (for digital data). Participants
were also informed of their freedom to rescind their consent to participate at any time or could
refuse to answer any questions without suffering any negative consequences. If they chose to
withdraw at any point in time, all the data gathered up to that moment (i.e., correspondence with
myself, video recording and transcript of the interview) would be deleted. In cases where the
participants indicated a desire to know the results of the project, I committed to send both a
summary of my results as well as the final thesis project when completed.
21
Chapter Two: The Culture Wars During the Trump Era
The culture war thesis
The term culture war entered the academic lexicon with James Hunter’s book Culture Wars: The
Struggle to Control the Family, Art, Education, Law and Politics (1991). While the term had
been used loosely in the United States prior to Hunter’s work (Washington Palladium, 1906;
Oakland Tribune, 1942), he was the first sociologist to conduct a rigorous exploration, in the
American context, of what he identified as “political and social hostility rooted in different
systems of moral understanding… [aimed at] the domination of one cultural and moral ethos
over others” (Hunter, 1991, p. 42). These conflicts, which he called “culture wars,” had a number
of unique features that distinguished them from other kinds of protracted disputes.
First, these conflicts were fought less over resources or political power than the dominance of
competing normative frameworks involving public ideas, values, morality and historical
narratives. They were over how people should live their lives, and thus concerned private and
public morality as well as what was to be deemed socially acceptable. Key to this claim was that
American culture had undergone a “realignment” that led to the development of two “sides”
which vied in the 1990s for moral control (Hunter, 2006, p. 13). One side, the traditionalists, or
conservatives, were thought to answer moral questions through appeals to objective,
transcendent values, often religious ones. The other side were the progressives, or liberals, who
framed moral decision-making as within the realm of subjective experience. Key to this conflict
was that the values underlying the positions held on each side were seen as non-negotiable,
22
incentivizing a struggle in the public sphere over which values were to dominate over the other
(Hunter, 2006).
Second, the controversial topics that fueled the 1990s culture wars were clustered into two
overarching camps which, like the groups that held them, were subject to periodic realignment.
These topics included moral questions such as abortion and homosexuality, historical questions
such as the writing of history textbooks, religious questions such as school prayer and the
separation of church and state, scientific questions of evolution and intelligence testing, cultural
questions like the Western literary canon or foreign policy questions like the US role in
Israel-Palestine (Hartman, 2019). Liberal and conservative groups had diverging approaches to
these matters that developed into competing packages of moral answers to complex issues.
Hunter (2006) noted that, in the past, such value-based conflicts were more likely to occur
between religious traditions (i.e., Catholics vs. Protestants vs. Jews), but argued that a cultural
realignment united the traditional members of these religions against progressives and their
allies.
Third, culture wars are typically devoid of prolonged direct violence – there may indeed be
instances of direct violence, but these are not usually systemic in nature (Hunter, 1991; Hartman,
2019). Direct violence is a term popularised by Johan Galtung that refers to physical attack, as
compared to less visible conceptions of violence like what he calls “structural” or “cultural
violence” (Galtung, 1969, p. 171; 1991). This will be further discussed in chapter four.
23
Fourth, of primary importance in the study of culture wars are the ways in which moral and
value-based frameworks are established, promoted or transmitted through social institutions.
These include schools, churches and unions, as well as spaces of public discourse like the media,
popular culture and the arts (Hunter, 1991). Hunter claimed that these conflicts were not merely a
matter of ideology, but were played out on the level of symbols, narratives, national myths and
public conversations, and so each camp sought control of the institutions that shaped and
maintained public culture (Hunter, 2006). Thus, a victory in the culture war could result in shifts
in media narratives, changes in school curriculums, boycotts of films or books, shifts in
perceptions of acceptable behaviour, legislative regulations of cultural organisations, new voting
patterns or, ultimately, the public acceptance of values (Tessler, 2015; Hartman, 2019). This was
thought to happen through large-scale mobilisation of polarised constituents (Barker et al., 2008,
p. 310; Layman and Green, 2006), with or without the assistance of moral entrepreneurs (Cohen,
1973), which are prominent figures that seek to influence the moral decision-making processes
of large communities. Hunter himself thought that polarised “culture warriors” only made up
about 5-8 percent of the US population, but that their commitment to the cause enabled them to
generate resources and organise in ways that belied their relatively small numbers (Hunter, 2006,
p. 28).
A key question within culture war discourse was whether such disputes could lead to armed
conflict. The literature on this question reflects mixed opinions. Hunter himself warned of this
possibility in a book explicitly titled Before the Shooting Begins (1994), in which he claimed that
while culture wars do not necessarily lead to armed conflict, competitive group-based armed
conflicts are nevertheless often preceded by a culture war. Others have also deemed culture wars
24
a “form of fighting before the fighting begins,” one that would need to be addressed to avert
potential tragedy (Rieff, 2006, p. 34). Some work has emphasised the ways violent, culture
war-style metaphors in the media that describe outgroup members as enemies may encourage
individuals with higher propensities to commit violence (“trait aggression”) to act on their
impulses (Kalmoe, 2014, p. 548). But while such dynamics have indeed led to armed conflict
abroad (Carothers and O’Donohue, 2019), there is no consensus over why this has not occurred
yet in the United States and whether that country’s institutions are strong enough to withstand
such impulses or, alternatively, are eroding to a dangerous extent (Kalmoe and Mason, 2018;
Levitsky and Ziblatt, 2018; Westwood et al., 2022).
The evolution of culture war discourse
Though Hunter originally formulated the culture war thesis within a specific academic context,
the term soon took a life of its own. On August 17th, 1992, talk show host and Republican
presidential hopeful Pat Buchanan made his now famous “culture war speech” at the Republican
National Convention, where he claimed: “There is a religious war going on in this country. It is a
cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we shall be as was the Cold War itself, for this war is
for the soul of America” (Buchanan, 1992).
Following this, the term culture war entered the public consciousness as a colloquial way to
describe struggles over abortion, school prayer, gay marriage and other controversial issues
(Hartman, 2019). The term was especially used in socially conservative, evangelical circles
where figures like Jerry Falwell linked increasing support for liberal values to conservative
Christian persecution, contributing to the mobilisation of what is now called the Religious Right,
25
and potentially to Republican electoral successes in the mid-90s (Wolfe, 2006; Layman et al.,
2006). This led to some backlash against the term itself, especially in liberal circles that
associated the phrase with conservative activist strategies (Hartman, 2019). To this day, some
left-leaning and liberal sources continue to view culture war discourse as primarily a
conservative phenomenon rather than a bipartisan discussion of societal dynamics (Muste, 2014;
Cammaerts, 2022).
That said, Hunter’s original understanding of culture war is not without critics. The most
prominent challengers of Hunter’s ideas were Fiorina et al., who in their book Culture War? The
Myth of a Polarised America (2004) claimed that the United States as a whole was far from
polarised, not as susceptible to mobilisation along culture war issues and that these moral debates
amounted to an inconsequential, if noisy, chapter in American cultural life that would recede
with time. Some critics took a middle ground, such as Wolfe (2006), who claimed that the culture
war existed but that it was “fought by partisans and ideologically inclined pundits [and did] not
extend very deep into American opinion” (p. 42), with notable exceptions like abortion and gay
marriage. Still other criticisms claimed that the term culture war itself was vague and imprecise
(Bain, 2010, p. 3) or that it sensationalised societal conflicts by using metaphors derived from
armed conflict, which was thought to be inappropriate (Muste, 2014, p. 439).
Regardless, the term remained a fixture in public discourse and evolved into a catch-all for
disputes between societal factions over controversial social practices (Bain, 2010). It soon was
used to describe Western influence in Arab countries (Wise, 2005), American trends in French
film (Grantham, 2000) or moral issues in countries like Israel (Ben-Porat and Feniger, 2012),
26
Australia (Busbridge et al., 2020), Indonesia (Welker, 2021) or Poland (Bobrowicz and Nowak,
2021).
Debates on the term shifted in the 2000s from whether the culture wars existed into whether the
culture wars still existed (Fiorina et al., 2004; Hunter, 2006; Wolfe, 2006), as public
controversies over issues like the Western canon or school prayer faded from popular view,
leaving only seemingly evergreen issues like abortion and especially gay rights on the table
(Hartman, 2019). While potential reasons for this shift are currently understudied, some
academic work suggests that this may be due to the shift of public attention to the War on Terror
in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in New York, with issues like foreign policy and Islamophobia
becoming increasingly salient (Giroux, 2005). Others claimed that liberals declared a “truce” and
moved more to the political centre (Wolfe, 2006, p. 57), though this is contested by work
theorising that, while conservatives “won” the struggle for public office and policy in the early
2000s, they nevertheless “lost” with regards to representation in popular culture, the
dissemination of ingroup moral norms and influence on the social sciences (Himmelfarb, 2006,
p. 75; Hartman, 2019).
This dynamic has been labelled a central paradox in the study of culture war in the United States:
“America has moved to the right politically and at the same time it has moved to the left
culturally” (Wolfe, 2006, p. 55)2. This led many conservatives to feel marginalised even
following the election of George W. Bush to the presidency (Grossman and Hopkins, 2016). This
state of affairs was particularly felt by social conservatives, for whom religious and cultural
questions, like school prayer or the definition of marriage, were far more important than control
2See chapter four for more on this paradox in the literature on sociopolitical polarization.
27
of the White House, leaving many feeling marginalised or left behind even in an ostensibly
Republican political climate (Dreher, 2017, 2020).
“The great awokening”: Attitudes towards discrimination in the 2010s
While a number of scholars noted that many of the cultural tensions associated with the culture
wars in the 1990s became less salient in the 2000s (Wolfe, 2006; George, 2009; Jacoby, 2014;
Hartman, 2019), a relatively new discourse consolidated in the public sphere during the early
2010s that pushed for a mass shift in public values, dividing public intellectuals along different
lines than the culture wars of the previous decades. This discourse would come to be referred to
by the term woke in popular and academic literature (al-Gharbi, 2018; Yglesias, 2019; Morgan,
2020; Rozado, 2022).
While the term woke originated among African Americans in the first half of the 20th century to
denote awareness of racial injustice, the current popular understanding of the word refers to a
general awareness of social injustice and oppression, particularly against groups that experienced
historical marginalisation along lines like race, gender or sexual identity (Morgan, 2020; Atkins,
2023). Another idea associated with woke discourse, one that echoes Hunter’s (2006) culture war
thesis, is that oppression manifests itself not only in political or economic contexts, but also on a
symbolic and cultural level (Sobande, 2020; Kaufmann, 2022). In other words, marginalisation
was thought to be produced through cultural norms and practices, potentially necessitating a
systemic shift in mainstream values if overlooked or otherwise invisible experiences of
discrimination or marginalisation are to be redressed (Atkins, 2023). To separate proponents of
woke discourses from other liberals, I will use the term woke liberal3in this thesis. I use the term
3For the purposes of simplicity, I have opted to use the word liberal throughout instead of progressive.
28
woke in a value-neutral way, notwithstanding a tendency within some conservative circles to use
the term as a pejorative (Cammaerts, 2022, p. 735).
Discourses surrounding woke values have offered definitions of violence that not only included
direct violence, but also indirect or invisible societal factors that were thought to produce
unequal outcomes for members of historically marginalised populations, resulting in a range of
phenomena called “structural,” “systemic” or “institutional” racism (Odoms-Young and Bruce,
2018), sexism (Homan, 2019) or homophobia (Sell and Krims, 2021). Within this paradigm,
instances of verbal or written interaction (speech-acts) that were seen to lead to negative
consequences for such groups were often described as a form of violence (Shafer, 2022, p. 156).
Silence in the face of perceived oppression was also framed as actively harmful, a notion
encapsulated in the popular protest phrase “silence is violence” (Pillay, 2016, p. 157). This was
often underlied by a structural approach to harm claiming that certain discourses or cultural
practices could reproduce and reinforce unequal power relations in society and thus required
redressing (Garlitz and Zompetti, 2021).
Another significant notion associated with woke discourse was the thought that certain culturally
liberal practices poorly serviced underprivileged groups and needed to be rethought, or even
potentially discarded (Kaufmann, 2022). An example of an especially contested liberal notion
was the primacy of free speech and the open marketplace of ideas. In the traditional, liberal
perspective exemplified by philosopher John Stuart Mill, human progress is facilitated by the
interaction of competing ideas, the civil treatment of ideological opponents, a neutral or
“rational” approach of analysing ideas presented, the correction of problematic discourses by
29
means of open debate and placing limits on restricting speech-acts only to extreme cases, such as
direct incitements to violence (Shafer, 2022, p. 156). Woke criticisms of this paradigm included
the claims that (a) speech-acts can constitute violence or normalise dangerous ideas like racism
or fascism, (b) bad actors can utilise the defence of free speech to consolidate unjust power
relations and (c) expectations of being civil in the face of violent speech places additional
burdens on marginalised populations and potentially expose them to further harm (Peterson,
2019; Aikin and Talisse, 2020; Schirch, 2021; Shafer, 2022; Cammaerts, 2022)
This led to the development of tactics to resist these negative factors. These included informal
practices like call-outs, which were attempts to draw public attention to allegedly problematic or
violent speech-acts, potentially resulting in deplatforming, referring to the removal of the means
by which actors can spread ideas, or ultimately cancellation, which involves campaigns to
disincentivize contact with such actors, either in public spaces or on social media (Legge, 2019;
Brown, 2020; Aikin and Talisse, 2020). Terms like microaggression were popularised to draw
attention to speech-acts and discourses that were thought to reproduce patterns of marginalisation
even in contexts when speakers were well-intentioned (Campbell and Manning, 2018). Speech
could also be formally regulated through hate speech laws, which applied legal sanction to
specific speech-acts thought to harm protected groups (Kulenović, 2022).
Race was a key issue within woke discourses, particularly with regards to the popular grievances
against structural racism and police brutality that gave rise to the Black Lives Matter (BLM)
movement (al-Gharbi, 2019; Solomon, 2019; Morgan, 2020). Gender and feminism, which were
key elements in the culture wars in the 1990s, continued to be salient into the 2010s, especially
30
as the #metoo movement brought issues like sexual harassment and assault to major public
attention (Chandra and Erlingsdóttir, 2020). Gay marriage was a major concern until the 2015
Obergefell v. Hodges supreme court ruling, which removed same-sex marriage restrictions
nationally; following this, transgender-related issues began receiving increased attention
(Kinsella et al., 2019; Castle, 2019). Narratives of the past, particularly regarding historical
legacies of violence or discrimination, were also a public concern at the time, with conversations
emerging about what to do with statues of historical figures seen as complicit in historical
violence, or with public holidays connected to colonial pasts (Pillay, 2016; Chou and Busbridge,
2020; Satia, 2021).
While most of the societal issues listed above were not new, the early 2010s saw a major
resurgence of these questions in the public sphere in what some scholars and public figures have
called “the great awokening,” a term first used in an influential journalistic article (Yglesias,
2019) but that later entered the academic literature (Rozado et al., 2023, p. 99; Thornton and
Tischauser, 2023, p. 2). Academic discussions of this phenomenon have largely focused on two
components. The first consists of a new shift, particularly among white liberals and Democrats,
towards more left-leaning positions on issues like race, immigration and the causes of inequality,
leading to a claim that white liberals began holding more liberal views on these issues than the
average black American (Pew, 2017; Yglesias, 2019), though see Thornton and Tischauser
(2023) for an argument against this claim. The second component was a well-documented spike
in the frequency of terms describing or condemning prejudice based on ethnic, racial, gender,
sexual or religious cleavages in major news outlets and academic sources starting the early 2010s
(Rozado, 2022; Rozado et al., 2023).
31
The causes of the great awokening were a matter of vigorous academic debate. Some theories
point to the steady reduction of prejudice in the United States since the 1960s (Gao, 2015;
Krysan and Moberg, 2016; Marsden et al., 2020), suggesting that decreasing tolerance of
discrimination has made the average American more sensitive to perceived marginalisation or
oppression (Mallett and Monteith, 2019). Campbell and Manning (2018) claim that a cultural
shift has resulted in the emergence of victimhood culture, which is thought to allocate social
status and prestige to actors who successfully claim and maintain victim status – this trend was
thought to incentivize the production of victimhood claims and stimulate greater discussion of
marginalisation in the public sphere. Haidt (2016) and Haslam (2016) point to the notion of
concept creep, which refers to a phenomenon whereby the standards for what constitutes harm,
prejudice or violence slowly but consistently expand – for example, when hate speech or
structural racism come to be understood as violence – eventually leading to a tipping point where
newly-recognized instances of violence or injustice appear endemic. Finally, Rozado et al.
(2023) talk about the Trump effect, which refers to the idea that the election of Trump to the
American presidency prompted a mass response from the political left to defend historically
marginalised groups.
Woke politics and a new culture war
The emergence and consolidation of woke discourses and related values over the 2010s led to
highly publicised societal disputes that were labelled a new culture war by numerous scholars
and public commentators (Stern, 2017; Castle, 2019; Perry et al., 2020; Chou and Busbridge,
2020; Alvis, 2021; Cammaerts, 2022; Kaufmann, 2022). I argue that these conflicts, while
32
transcending the liberal-conservative or secular-religious lines of Hunter’s original thesis,
nevertheless embody the four main criteria of his theory.
First, disputes over woke values are fought over seemingly non-negotiable values, like justice or
diversity, and are primarily expressed through symbols, values, discourses and cultural practices
(Sobande, 2020; Atkins, 2023). Second, just as Hunter and other scholars noted that the culture
wars in the 1960s and 1990s displaced previous, religiously-motivated culture wars and led to
the formation of new camps (Hunter, 2006; Hartman, 2019), disputes over harm, justice and
discrimination led to the formation of new coalitions that mobilise pro- and anti-woke discourses
and strategies (Kaufmann, 2022), which will be discussed below. Third, these conflicts are
primarily non-armed in nature, with occasional instances of direct or armed violence, such as
assaults on controversial campus speakers or the killing of a protester at the infamous 2017 Unite
the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia (Taylor, 2018; van der Vegt et al., 2021). Fourth, of
key importance are control over the political and cultural institutions that produce, maintain or
transmit values, such as the Supreme Court, which had the power to overturn Roe v. Wade
(Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 2022), or schools, which were at the centre of
debates over whether to teach students concepts like systemic racism or white privilege
(Ladson-Billings, 2021).
It is also important to understand perceptions of the new lines drawn in the culture wars, as well
as the coalitions thought to be built along them. While culture war dynamics in the 2010s are
currently understudied, the existing academic literature suggests that the anti-woke coalition was
composed of various distinct groups, each possessing their own agenda, underlying values and
33
ultimate goals. What appears to have united them, even if superficially, was that their
engagement in the 2010 culture wars put them in direct conflict with those promoting woke
discourses, sometimes much more than with each other.
The first group I will explore is the alt-right. This was a coalition of right to far-right groups that
was thought to reject mainstream Republican and conservative thought, seeking instead to
overturn the political establishment in favour of structures that more explicitly privileged white,
conservative-Christian and “traditional” American culture, sometimes to the point of advocating
for racial segregation or the creation of a white American ethnostate (Hawley, 2017; Mirrlees,
2018). The movement was thought to be social media-savvy, youthful and hostile to minority
groups favoured by woke discourses, such as blacks or the LGBT+ community (Cammaerts,
2022, p. 734). Goals of the alt-right included the normalisation of racism, and perhaps
neofascism, in public discourse, as well as the promotion of ideas like impossibility of peaceful
multiculturalism or the need to defend against the ethnic replacement of American whites
(Hawley, 2017).
The next group reviewed is a coalition that promoted what Kaufmann (2022) calls cultural
liberalism, which resists the woke notion that speech-acts can constitute harm, therefore
requiring regulation or sanction through formal or informal mechanisms. I noted three distinct
demographics in the academic literature that make up this coalition. The first were moderate
liberals who sympathised with the groups privileged by woke discourses but who nevertheless
disagreed with responses considered coercive or that could erode democratic norms like civility,
due process or free speech (Haidt, 2016; Legge, 2019; Aikin and Talisse, 2020). The second
34
were bipartisan academics who claimed that woke values were increasingly dominating the
social sciences, as well as select professions like social work or journalism – this was thought to
marginalise centrists and conservatives or generate ideological incentives to promote woke
values like equity or antiracism at the alleged cost of scientific integrity4(Thyer, 2010; Duarte et
al., 2015; Grossman and Hopkins, 2016; Haidt, 2016, 2020). The third were classical liberals and
libertarians who prioritised free speech and choice, an open marketplace of ideas, laissez-faire
economics and the freedom to offend, many of whom were prominent members of the so-called
intellectual dark web, a term referring to an informal grouping of public intellectuals,
commentators and comedians who often challenged woke values (Parks, 2020, p. 178; Finlayson,
2021, p. 169).
The next group are the conservatives who formed one side of the 1990s culture wars (Hunter,
2006). This group included fiscal conservatives, who may not have been motivated by cultural
concerns so much as the defence of political and economic autonomy as well as small
government in the face of woke preferences for social or economic equity (Williams, 2015). Also
in this category were the Religious Right, social conservatives who valued cultural
traditionalism, conservative forms of Christianity and support for the Republican Party
(Grossman and Hopkins, 2016). Their allegedly diminished cultural status following their loss in
the previous culture war was thought to have led to a change in approach from offensive attempts
to promote conservative values to defensive strategies aimed at retaining personal freedoms
(Dreher, 2020). This importantly include securing legal exemptions from performing specific
services on the basis of freedom of religion or conscience, with the term conscience rights
4While debates over whether certain academic disciplines or professions structurally privilege woke values are
important to discuss at length, this lies beyond the scope of this thesis. I merely mention these criticisms here as they
are important to one dimension of the culture wars in the 2010s.
35
legitimising choices like refusing to bake cakes for gay weddings or perform medical procedures
like abortion or transgender-related surgeries (Clauson, 2019; Castle, 2019; van der Tol, 2020;
Cherry, 2021).
Supporters of woke politics also faced resistance from the left, particularly from anti-woke
elements of a resurgent socialist or far left. While the political American left was said to be in
decline since the 1980s, several scholars noted that the 2011-12 Occupy movement as well as the
2016 Bernie Sanders campaign for the Democratic presidential candidacy seemed to revitalise
and legitimise what was seen as further-left, even socialist thought in a country where the term
socialist had possessed a decades-long stigma (Grossman and Hopkins, 2016; Rosenfeld, 2017;
Gregory, 2020). But while some of these socialist and woke movements collaborated with each
other, as with the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), which demanded economic restructuring
on a mass level in response to allegations of systemic racism (Solomon, 2019; Thornton and
Tischauser, 2023), other socialist/leftist groups were deeply critical of woke politics. Some
deemed corporate use of woke discourse (labelled woke capitalism) to be an attempt by
predatory elites to divorce identity politics from the struggle for economic justice, as companies
could “woke-wash” themselves with liberal imagery without fundamentally changing their
behaviour (Sobande, 2020, p. 2740). Other critics claimed that supporters of woke discourses
deliberately focused on issues like race, gender and sexual orientation at the expense of class,
which was thought to allow upper- and middle-class liberals to speak about racism or sexism
while ignoring the increasingly precarious position of the American poor (al-Gharbi, 2018;
Olúfẹmi, 2022).
36
In addition to the groups listed above, figures like the “Trump voter” or the “Trump supporter”
went on to loom large in the culture wars from the mid-2010s into the 2020s (Kaufmann, 2022).
In order to discuss this demographic, it is necessary to first describe the impact of Trump’s
presidency on America generally and on the culture wars in particular.
Donald Trump, Trump supporters and the woke culture wars
Many public commentators, scholars and journalists described the 2016 election of Trump to the
American presidency as a profound surprise, overturning expectations that Hillary Clinton would
win the White House (Grossman and Thaler, 2018; Klein, 2020; Aikin and Talisse, 2020). Trump
became a central figure in the culture wars, in part due to his bombastic rhetoric (particularly on
Twitter), weak condemnation of alt-right violence, policies limiting immigration and instances of
vocal hostility towards groups favoured by supporters of woke politics, particularly
hispanic-Americans, immigrants, women and the disabled (Mirrlees, 2018; Crandall et al., 2018;
Barkun, 2017). These dynamics, in addition to the uncertainty surrounding Trump’s status as a
political outsider, especially given his electoral promise to “drain” Washington of the mainstream
political establishment (Enders and Uscinski. 2021, p. 48), led groups ranging from the far left to
liberals to moderate conservatives to frame Trump as a threat to liberal democracy, to the
neoliberal political mainstream, to the gains made by historically marginalised populations or
even to national security itself (Klingner, 2018; Ettinger, 2020; Espinoza, 2021; Newman et al.,
2021; James, 2021).
This level of felt threat was exacerbated among communities that supported woke politics, many
of whom reported increased stress and anxiety following the 2016 election (Campbell and
37
Manning, 2018; Krupenkin et al., 2019). This is unsurprising, as Trump elevated certain issues as
new fronts in the culture war, including the role of transgender persons in the military or the
construction of a wall along the southern border with Mexico (Yang, 2017; Reno, 2020;
Pepin-Neff and Cohen, 2021). He had also been accused of facilitating the emergence of culture
war dynamics in the municipal political sphere, which is typically presented in the academic
literature as especially resistant to polarised rhetoric (Rosenthal, 2005; Chou and Busbridge,
2020). The president himself labelled woke discourses an existential threat to American society
(Fahey et al., 2022), taking an unambiguous side in the culture wars. Supporters of woke politics,
as it were, had found an opponent within the highest office of the United States.
Trump was also accused of empowering the alt-right and white nationalism. For example, the
president was seen as endorsing controversial groups such as the Proud Boys, famous for their
opposition to woke politics; he also declined to outright condemn right-wing violence at the 2017
Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville (James, 2021). Trump elevated Steve Bannon, a founding
member of the anti-woke news site Breitbart, an outlet associated with the alt-right, as White
House chief strategist for his first half year in office (Barkun, 2017). Though the alt-right
eventually distanced itself from the president, major figures in the movement, in the early days
after the election, declared that Trump’s victory “legitimised” their efforts (Mirrlees, 2018, p.
52). A sharp increase in hate crime reports following the presidential election, as well as key
Trump rallies, may suggest that perpetrators felt emboldened by the president’s anti-woke
discourse and thus increased their readiness to commit hate crime (James, 2019; Gordon and
Rhineberger, 2021; Newman et al., 2021).
38
Another obstacle to woke politics was Trump’s shifting of the Republican Party further to the
right, ideologically speaking, on cultural issues like racial and immigration policy (Espinoza,
2021). A particular victory for conservatives in the Trump-era culture wars involved the
president’s facilitation of a new conservative majority in the Supreme Court, which
complemented the appointment of 54 judges to the United States Circuit Court of Appeals and
174 judges to federal District Courts and led to eventual, dramatic legal changes like the
overturning of Roe v. Wade (James, 2021; Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization,
2022).
Of concern to supporters of woke discourse and anti-woke classical liberals alike, the Trump
presidency was associated with the erosion of informal democratic norms like civility, dialogue
and compromise (Foa and Mounk, 2021). Arguments against certain Trump administration
policies were occasionally dismissed by the president as fake news, whereas Trump’s opponents
labelled much of the information produced in the White House as misinformation (Klingner,
2018; Bratich, 2020). This was thought to create difficulties when assessing what was or was not
factual, leading to discussions over whether the nation had entered an era of post-truth, where
comparing information, checking facts and establishing claims in a nonpartisan manner were
thought to take second place to disparaging political opponents and promoting one’s own
cultural, political or societal agenda (James, 2021; Enders and Uscinski, 2021).
It lies beyond the scope of this thesis to assess the legitimacy or veracity of these competing
claims – instead, it suffices to point out that the Trump presidency ushered in a new, intensified
stage of a preexisting culture war over woke values (Pope, 2021). He presented a new challenge
39
to woke liberal goals and strategies that created a new dynamic of adversity, as well as cultural
and political escalation. Given these grievances and concerns, it is important to discuss another
party to the conflict that was said to have played an important, discursive role in the culture wars:
the “Trump supporter,” an ambiguous label applied to a demographic thought to be loyal
specifically to Trump instead of the Republican Party.
The popular use of terms like “Trump supporters” or “Trump voters” to refer to a single
demographic may be problematic, as there is no academic consensus as of yet concerning who
cast their votes specifically to support Trump, as compared to those who were already prepared
to vote for the Republican Party. That said, there are a number of competing, though connected,
theories that seek to explain Trump’s ability to generate the cultural response that he did and
secure the electoral support of those who were not already disposed to vote Republican in the
2016 election, namely (a) those who voted for Barack Obama in previous elections or (b) those
who did not normally vote.
One major narrative points to intensified economic hardship, especially among the white
working class (Mutz, 2016), claiming that Trump’s campaign appealed to a (primarily white)
working class that experienced greater precarity following the financial crisis of 2008 and may
have welcomed messages like “Make America Great Again” (Mirrlees, 2018, p. 49), also known
as MAGA. This theory was contrasted with those focusing on racial resentment, advanced by
Abramowitz and McCoy (2019), who suggested that Trump activated racial grievances to secure
support among the white working class – for example blaming Mexican immigrants or Chinese
industry for American financial troubles.
40
Closely related to this is the “status threat” theory, whereby animus among Trump supporters
was thought to be sparked by the loss of status across a number of spheres: international status
on the world stage, the status of men in the face of strengthening feminist movements, the status
of religious traditions like Christianity in a time of increased pluralism, and so on (Mutz, 2016).
It is important to note a key distinction: whereas much of the alt-right actively promoted white
superiority, many individuals who were motivated by racialized status threat experienced anxiety
not because they deemed other races to be inferior, but because they feared the consequences of
their own diminishing group status in the face of increasing competition. Certain scholars
suggest that economic hardship, racial resentments and fear of status loss were explicitly utilised
as motivators for culture war dynamics, as Trump’s rhetoric sought to link working class troubles
not only to “immigrants, unfair trade agreements and defence alliances, [but also] the ‘liberal’
media and intellectuals,” framing them as “enemies of the people” (Abramowitz and McCoy,
2019, p. 150).
Enders and Uscinski (2021) sought answers in anti-establishment discontent, framing Trump
support in populist language. They found a sizable portion of Trump voters to differ significantly
from typical Republican supporters in that they rejected the conservative political establishment,
decried foreign interventionism. Barkun (2017) claimed that these groups and were more likely
to embrace theories considered by the mainstream to be fringe or conspiracy theories, for
example concerning the birth of Obama (allegedly abroad, also known as birtherism) or claims
of satanic child sex rings promoted by an enormously popular, anonymous online presence
known as “Q.” Members of these groups were also thought to be fuelled by grievances against a
41
mainstream political establishment that was seen to be deeply corrupt, making them willing to
overlook problematic elements of the Trump presidency should he succeed in “draining the
swamp” in Washington (Enders and Uscinski. 2021, p. 64). De Oliver (2018) claimed that
populist sentiment may have also been linked to a deep sense of unrootedness or alienation in
one’s own nation, possibly connected to the erosion of strong religious, regional or local
identities, which some scholars theorise may have led to resentment against distant elites or to
the creation of us-vs-them dynamics that facilitated a feeling of belonging. This may or may not
be combined with a strong resistance to social change, which was also observed as an indicator
of support for Trump (Grossman and Thaler, 2018).
These diverse theories paint a varied, if somewhat inconsistent, image of Trump supporters as an
actor in the 2010s culture wars. While in office, President Trump was thought to direct their
anxieties and anger against liberal elites, woke intellectuals and the historically marginalised
populations who were a central concern in woke discourses. In response, supporters of woke
discourses themselves at times framed Trump supporters, populists and poor whites as, at best,
duped by Trumpian rhetoric to vote against their interests or, at worst, potentially fascist threats
to the gains made by the oppressed (Hochschild, 2016; Mirrlees, 2018; Cammaerts, 2022).
While the literature reviewed in this chapter explores culture war discourse, its history and how
contemporary disputes over public values shape the dynamics, coalitions and perceived stakes
involved in the Trump-era culture wars, it does not provide any indications concerning how
partisans conceptualise what peace with their opponents might look like, what preferences they
42
have for various visions of peace nor the strategies they utilised to work towards them. I
reviewed this literature to present an overview of the conflict context.
Chapter Three: Sociopolitical Polarization in the United States
Types of sociopolitical polarization
In contrast to culture war, which refers to a specific type of non-armed societal conflict, the term
polarization typically describes an increasing divergence between groups or coalitions, often
with an emphasis on disappearing middle ground between the two consolidating poles. For
example, economic polarization implies increasing distance between the rich and poor, along
with a vanishing middle class (Kapeller et al., 2019), while ethnic polarization may refer to
social, cultural or political distance between different ethnic groups within a state (Montalvo and
Reynal-Querol, 2005). I use the term sociopolitical polarization to refer to diverging views
regarding social and political issues – in the United States, this division is often framed
ideologically, meaning between liberal/conservative or the political right/left, or as being
party-based, between Republican- or Democrat-related groups (Greene, 2004; Mason, 2018;
Merkeley, 2023).
Social scientists have debated over the nature and extent of American polarization since the
1990s. Consensus emerged concerning how elected officials, aspiring candidates for office,
political activists and highly informed voters had become increasingly polarised with regard to
ideological beliefs and policy positions (Grossman and Hopkins, 2016), but researchers remained
divided over the degree to which ordinary voters were themselves polarised. Two camps
43
emerged in the debate: one represented by Abramowitz and Saunders (2008) who held that
average Americans were polarised and another led by Fiorina et al. (2004) who claimed
polarization was largely an elite and activist phenomenon.
The debate was eventually transformed when researchers identified different types of
polarization that could develop independently of each other among political elites, activists and
the mass public. One such type is ideological polarization, which refers to the possession of
liberal/left or conservative/right views and perspectives (Iyengar et al., 2012, p. 406). Separate
but deeply related to this is issue/positional polarization, the possession of diverging
policy-related opinions and positions (Merkeley, 2023, p. 1). The current scholarly consensus
holds that ideological polarization has steadily increased among political elites, activists and
informed citizens since the 1980s, though debate continues regarding whether everyday voters
are ideologically polarised (Lelkes, 2018; Kalmoe, 2020; Abramowitz, 2021; Merkeley, 2023).
Components of ideological polarization include ideological divergence, which is when partisans
adopt stronger views associated with either the political right or the left (Lelkes, 2016),
ideological consistency, the degree to which the extent to which the views that citizens hold are
consistently liberal or conservative, as compared to possessing mixed positions (Abramowitz and
Saunders, 2008), and partisan-ideological sorting, where partisan identity (which, in the US,
refers to identifying as a Democrat or Republican) becomes increasingly correlated with liberal
or conservative positions and issue preferences respectively (Abramowitz and Saunders, 2008).
This sorting can occur irrespective of whether citizens become more ideologically extreme
(Levendusky, 2009). As compared to debates over ideological divergence in the mass electorate,
44
scholars have reached a consensus that ideological consistency and partisan-ideological sorting
have indeed increased over the past half century (Merkeley, 2023).
The second major type is affective polarization, sometimes referred to as behavioural
polarization (Iyengar et al., 2012; Mason, 2013). This type of polarization refers not to the ideas
or policy positions one holds so much as one’s dislike of the other side or the tendency to project
negative traits onto sociopolitical outgroups, no matter whether they are official representatives
or rank-and-file supporters, potentially leading to hostile behaviour toward them (Iyengar et al.,
2012). High degrees of affective sociopolitical polarization make partisans more likely to
identify with their political ingroups rather than with identity groups based on ethnicity, gender,
religion or other traditionally salient cleavages (Iyengar and Krupenkin, 2018b). This, in turn,
means that more hostility is typically directed at political outgroups than members of other
relevant outgroups.
While evaluations of ideological polarization as a positive or negative phenomenon are mixed
(Mason, 2018; Zimmer, 2019; Sommer and McCoy, 2019), affective polarization is described
near-universally as pernicious and as a major factor contributing to legislative deadlock,
discrimination against sociopolitical outgroups and an inability to build a common future with
them (Hetherington and Rudolph, 2015; Iyengar and Westwood, 2015; Mason, 2018). Some
political scientists, sociologists and peacebuilding practitioners worry that high levels of
affective polarization may eventually result in increased instances of politically-motivated direct
violence (Kalmoe and Mason, 2018; McNeil-Wilson et al., 2019; Burgess et al., 2022), though
others treat such claims with scepticism (Westwood et al., 2022).
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Sociopolitical polarization in the US: Mid-century to the present
The transition of the political landscape in the United States from a relatively depolarized
mid-century to the increasingly fractious present has been the topic of much study (Grossman
and Hopkins, 2016; Rosenfeld, 2017; Zimmer, 2019). In the 1950s, the Democrat and
Republican parties were ideologically bipartisan and often represented concrete groups that
advocated for their interests in largely big-tent coalitions. For example, the Democrat party was
less a gathering of liberal-minded voters than a conglomerate of “New Deal” coalition groups
(labour union members, the urban poor, African Americans and the working class), Catholics,
southern conservative whites, liberal intellectuals and northern immigrants (Grossman and
Hopkins, 2016). Both major parties lacked clear ideological differences, prompting some
activists to begin advocating for responsible parties, which referred to parties that clearly
diverged regarding platforms and provided clear choices to voters (Rosenfeld, 2017). It was
thought that this would have prompted citizens to cast their ballots based on policy issues rather
than group membership. In this sense, ideological polarization was promoted as a social good. To
this end, the American Political Science Association (APSA) created the Committee on Political
Parties in 1946, which released a report called “Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System”
(APSA, 1950), which promoted ideological divergence between the two parties.
While responsible party activists were unable to prompt immediate political polarization between
the Republicans and Democrats, cultural polarization did emerge in the 1960s, when major
societal shifts led to the sexual revolution, the civil rights movement, protests against the
Vietnam war and other major social changes (Hartman, 2019). This was accompanied by the rise
of a “New Left” that altered the traditional New Deal focus on the working class and instead
46
emphasised the emancipation of historically marginalised communities like women, blacks and
sexual minorities (Gregory, 2020). This shift in focus towards these groups may have alienated
the white working class, facilitating a splintering of the big-tent Democratic base and prompting
many working whites to begin voting for the Republican Party. This occurred roughly in parallel
with the defection of conservative, southern, white “Dixiecrats” to the Republicans. Combined,
this was the first of two major shifts in voting patterns that sorted liberal and conservative voters
into the Democratic and Republican parties respectively, effectively starting the current era of
sociopolitical polarization (Rosenfeld, 2017). It is important to note that this polarization was an
example of partisan-ideological sorting in which the views of individuals did not change so much
as did the demographic makeup of the two major parties.
While scholarly consensus exists regarding the periodic, ideologically liberal influence on
Democratic public policy during the New Deal (1930s) and Great Society (1960s) eras, leading
to occasional periods of left-centred polarization in those decades, much more has been written
about consolidation of conservative dominance in the Republican Party from the mid-1960s until
Ronald Reagan’s presidential victory in 1981 (Grossman and Hopkins, 2016; Rosenfeld, 2017;
Hartman, 2019). Polarization scholars note that Barry Goldwater, the mid-century’s first
staunchly conservative presidential candidate, failed to secure the White House in 1964, which
was taken as a sign by mainstream political scientists of the unviability of highly polarised
candidates (Rosenfeld, 2017). But within a decade and a half, the conservative movement
effectively “captured” the Republican Party, a feat that the left-liberal movement had never done
with the Democratic Party, which Rosenfeld claims led to the marginalisation of moderate
conservative voices and laying the groundwork for the eventual “Reagan revolution” in the early
47
80s. While the reasons for this conservative shift are still debated, one noted factor in this
process was conservative and white working class backlash to the shock of the 1960s
counterculture and the liberation campaigns of the New Left (Grossman and Hopkins, 2016).
The Reagan era effectively established the party as a conservative institution that, while unable
to turn back the clock on the cultural shifts of the 1960s, nevertheless prompted Democratic
leaders to adopt more centrist economic positions on taxation or the welfare state well into the
1980s and 1990s (Baer, 2000; Kazin, 2011). During this time, some scholars posit that
conservatives became so entrenched in the party that “claiming adherence to the conservative
national movement became a virtual requirement for national party officials to retain their
credentials as Republicans in good standing,” with movement activists fusing religious
traditionalism, economic libertarianism, hawkish foreign policy preferences and, while the Cold
War lasted, anti-Communist sentiment into a lasting ideological package (Grossman and
Hopkins, 2016, p. 9; Noel, 2013). It is important to note that while asymmetrical polarization
existed regarding the Republicans’ rightward shift on economic and foreign policy issues from
the late 1970s onward, more symmetrical polarization existed regarding social, cultural and
moral issues like abortion, civil rights and changing gender roles, as was discussed in the
previous chapter. This state of affairs contributed to the paradox referred to in chapter two: that
the conservative movement had proven especially effective at influencing national politics while
nevertheless failing to halt the already decade-long shift in public values to the left.
Another major, though primarily religious, shift that continued to sort, and thereby polarise, the
parties occurred in the mid-1990s. The first half of the decade saw a consolidation of the
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Religious Right in which Catholics and other religious conservatives switched voting patterns
from the Democrats to the Republicans, fuelling the 1994 rise of a Republican majority in both
the House of Representatives and the Senate, which together attempted to implement ambitious
conservative reforms (Layman et al., 2006). This was called the Republican Revolution, and
Buchanan’s famous culture war speech (1992) was noted by some scholars as a key moment
facilitating this shift (Wolfe, 2006), and it was at this time that public debates over the culture
wars emerged (Hartman, 2019).
While debates over polarization and the culture wars diminished in intensity over the early and
mid-2000s (Wolfe, 2006; Jacoby, 2014; Hartman, 2019), tensions emerged once more at the tail
end of the decade and into the 2010s, effectively pre-dating the emergence of the woke culture
wars. Fiscal grievances among rank and file Republicans, as well as animosity toward the
policies of the early Obama era, contributed to the emergence of the Tea Party movement in
2009, which challenged mainstream Republican incumbents and pushed for further conservative
reforms (Horwitz, 2013). On the other side of the aisle, the Occupy movement mobilised tens of
thousands of young people across the US against the neoliberal economic policies of the Bush
administration, as well as the economically centrist early Obama era (Gregory, 2020). Each of
the two movements galvanised a growing ideological base, though the dynamics were highly
asymmetrical: Republicans and conservatives offered a fairly ideological package of social
conservatism, fiscal libertarianism and American exceptionalism; the Democrats and many
liberals focused less on leftist ideas and instead favoured discourses appealing to the concrete
needs of the social groups that increasingly voted for the party: blacks, hispanics, the LGBT+
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community, union members or residents in large cities (Klinkner, 1994; Grossman and Hopkins,
2016; Mason et al., 2021).
At the same time, the conservative movement and the Republican party consolidated a populist
rhetoric criticising the perceived excesses of “liberal” or “establishment” elites, claiming that
these groups were marginalising everyday Americans; on the other side of the divide, liberal
activists were focused on making headways in elite spaces, such as university campuses, as well
as in traditional and social media (Grossman and Hopkins, 2016, p. 131). Some sociologists and
commentators argue that while liberal influence on the media and at universities certainly did
increase, conservative efforts nevertheless proved more successful at mobilising a large,
ideologically-motivated voting base (Critchlow, 2011; Grossman and Hopkins, 2016). Another
paradox to right-wing success, however, is that conservative and Republican elites themselves
were sometimes surprised by or struggled to control the grassroots forces that this populist
discourse unleashed; the Tea Party movement, for example, ousted many established Republican
incumbents, and the successful nomination of Trump as the Republican candidate came as a
surprise to, and was ultimately against the wishes of, many within the Republican establishment
(Grossman and Thaler, 2018; James, 2021).
A large number of journalists, political commentators and scholars reported a new spike in mass
polarization (thought to be affective polarization in particular) in the mid-to-late 2010s and
linked it with Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and subsequent term in office (Iyengar and
Krupenkin, 2018a; Campbell and Manning, 2018; Klein, 2021; Abramowitz, 2021). Following
the election, the Pew Research Center (2016b) published a report finding that sizable portions
50
(sometimes well exceeding 50 percent) of Republican and Democrat voters thought very
unfavourably of the other; they also reported feeling angry or afraid when thinking about
outgroup members and that they had very little in common politically, culturally or socially with
each other. Further reports found evidence that American voters perceived partisan conflicts as
stronger than those involving class, gender or racial issues (Gramlich, 2017), a tendency that
reportedly intensified in the final years of the Trump administration (Schaeffer, 2020). Partisans
also frequently reported being unable to comprehend the other side’s views, which may have
indicated a “further [erosion of] the mutual understanding that is often a necessary condition for
compromise and accomplishment within the American political system” (Grossman and
Hopkins, 2016, p.13).
The Democratic party, which was thought to have retreated to the political centre through the
Reagan until the Clinton (and even the Obama) administrations, soon started showing signs of
movement to the political left during the 2016 electoral race, largely due to the Sanders
campaign, which incorporated explicitly socialist language and proved surprisingly popular,
providing a legitimate challenge to Hillary Clinton’s decidedly more centrist campaign (Gregory,
2020). The 2020 primaries saw Sanders joined by other explicitly left-leaning candidates,
including Elizabeth Warren, suggesting that the Democratic Party had consolidated this leftward
shift, potentially following signals given by its voting base (Ettinger, 2020), even with the
eventual 2020 win of the centrist Joe Biden. The rise of popular, young Democratic politicians
espousing leftist views, such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, may indicate that
this leftward trend will continue into the future (Gregory, 2020).
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Developments in the study of sociopolitical polarization
While a scholarly consensus exists regarding a relatively bipartisan political era, sociopolitically
speaking, from the civil war until the 1960s (Grossman and Hopkins, 2016; Rosenfeld, 2017;
Levitsky and Ziblatt, 2018; Zimmer, 2019), debates continue regarding how to evaluate the
nature of this bipartisanship. Levitsky and Ziblatt (2018) viewed this depolarized period as an
age of consensus, egalitarianism, freedom and civility, though this is a contested claim. Somer
and McCoy (2019), for example, criticise this bipartisan consensus as existing primarily between
privileged political elite, while Zimmer (2019) claims that this era of consensus may have
preserved an inequitable status quo that prevented advancements in racial, gender and social
equality.
Speaking about partisanship and party-based identities, an early major study from that period that
drew attention to these dynamics was Campbell et al.’s The American Voter (1964), which
concluded that the majority of voters make their political choices not based on ideological or
policy-based decisions, but on party identities like Democrat and Republican, which were easily
passed down through one’s family. Political preferences, in other words, were linked mostly to
identity and belonging. Regarding ideological or policy positions, Campbell et al. held that the
average voter generally held a mixture of liberal and conservative preferences across a range of
issues.
While the study of partisanship continued to place much attention on non-identity related issues
like ideology and policy preferences, especially from the 1990s when scholars like Hunter
(1991), Abramowitz and Saunders (2008) and Fiorina et al. (2004) debated the existence of the
52
culture wars and mass polarization, identity-based scholarship picked up speed once more from
the mid 2000s. Researchers began to view partisan identity and polarization through the lens of
social identity theory (SIT), developed primarily by Henri Tajfel in the 1970s and 80s (Greene,
2004). According to theories steeped in realism or game theory, both of which were popular
approaches in the second half of the 20th century, conflict emerged primarily when groups faced
resource scarcity, loss of position, overt aggression or other threats to ingroup or individual
interests (Mearsheimer, 1990; Snidal, 2013). According to Tajfel and Turner (1979), however, it
takes far less for people to sort themselves into ingroups and outgroups or to spark conflict
between them; all that was thought to be necessary for group comparison and competition to take
place is the mere perception of difference. These us-vs-them dynamics were thought to remain
dormant for long periods of time, at least until circumstances made conflict-conducive identities
salient. These identities could then go on to shape perceptions of threat or of reasons for group
competition. Importantly, such conflicts might be entirely unconnected to concrete interests and
material benefits; the spoils may be immaterial, as winning is thought to produce positive
emotions and consolidate individual or group self-image, status and esteem.
By analysing partisan identities like Republican or Democrat using SIT, scholars began to return
to Campbell et al.’s idea (1964) that voting patterns and other partisan behaviours were
motivated not only by policy consequences, ideological preferences or material gain, but also by
individual and group belonging, by a sense of meaning and self-worth. Political and ideological
identities were shown to provide a solid basis for ingroup favouritism and outgroup derogation
(Greene, 2004), which was a key factor that facilitated the eventual discovery of the difference
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between ideological polarization on the one hand and group-based affective polarization on the
other (Iyengar et al., 2012).
This distinction between the two types of polarization allowed for scholars to transcend the
stalemate over whether the American populace at large was polarised: while only mixed
evidence existed regarding ideological polarization, there was overwhelming evidence that
Americans were experiencing increasing levels of affective polarization, sometimes quite
independently of how strong their beliefs or policy positions were (Iyengar and Westwood, 2015;
Mason, 2018; Iyengar and Krupenkin, 2018b; Merkeley, 2023). Following Tajfel, affective
polarization was thought to be deeply correlated with identity: “the mere act of identifying with a
political party is sufficient to trigger negative evaluations of the opposition…not only
increasingly dislik[ing] the opposing party, but also [imputing] negative traits to the rank-and-file
of the out-party” (Iyengar et al., 2012, p. 407).
The emergence of affective polarization as a dominant paradigm led to increased study into the
nature of partisan identity, with scholars eventually finding evidence that animus in the US
towards partisan and ideological outgroups had become more intense than hostilities along more
conventional cleavages such as race, gender or sexual identity (Iyengar and Westwood, 2015).
This is not to say that the consequences of racial, gender or other types of discrimination were
less concerning, just that hatred towards political and ideological outgroups tended to be more
prevalent in the general populace. Iyengar and Westwood (2015) also noted that such hatred
(sometimes called partyism) is not mitigated by social taboos in the same way as racism or
sexism, and in fact can be actively encouraged as a positive good in some communities. While
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affective polarization was studied extensively first in the US, it has now been shown to exist in
other countries across the Global North (Reiljan, 2019; Merkely, 2023), sometimes even
eclipsing ethnic tensions in historically divided European countries like Belgium or Spain
(Westwood et al., 2015).
Though the study of polarization long preceded the election of Donald Trump to the American
presidency, the 2016 vote led to a surge of popular and academic interest in understanding the
dynamics of polarization and political identity (Campbell and Manning, 2018; Chua, 2018;
Abramowitz and McCoy, 2019; Klein, 2021; Jones, 2020). The Pew Research Center (2016a,
2016b, 2019) released reports documenting increased affective polarization as well as mutual
incomprehension between Trump supporters and critics. Scholars found evidence that partisans
in the Trump era “view[ed] supporters of the opposing party not as opponents but as enemies:
bad actors who want to inflict harm to the nation and who will stop at nothing to achieve their
goals” (Abramowitz, 2021, p. 349). Mistrust of opposing partisans reached new heights, and
many citizens reported perceiving the stakes of losing to the other as enormous (Nilsen, 2018;
Galston, 2020).
Given widespread opinion among scholars and policy makers regarding the pernicious nature of
affective polarization (Mason, 2018; Somer and McCoy, 2019; Aikin and Talisse, 2020; Finkel et
al., 2020), much research has been dedicated not only to understanding the nature and impact of
affective polarization, but also to potential mechanisms of depolarization, though there is much
debate concerning appropriate and effective methods of doing so (McCoy and Somer, 2019;
Levendusky and Stecula, 2021; Schirch, 2021; Burgess et al., 2022; McCoy et al., 2022).
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Possible causes of sociopolitical polarization
The wide array of possible causes for sociopolitical polarization, and in particular affective
polarization, makes it difficult to pinpoint exact origins or trace direct causal structures.
Researchers, practitioners and public figures have hypothesised various reasons for its origins
and have marshalled evidence to support various theories. It is likely that polarization emerges
and is compounded by diverse factors operating in parallel, and this section outlines various
theories and places them in context.
Much has been theorised regarding the role of media outlets and informational infrastructure in
the rise of US polarization. A major development in the past decades was the emergence of
partisan news outlets promoting news with a marked ideological bias. Partisans watching these
news sources are thought to have their biases confirmed and are less likely to be exposed to
information that would disconfirm partisan narratives or present the other side in a holistic light
(Levendusky, 2013; Sunstein, 2017).
Up until 1987, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) implemented a policy known as
the “Fairness Doctrine” that required news sources to present different sides of controversial
issues, but this practice was abandoned during the Reagan presidency, which was thought to lay
the foundations for the present, polarised newscape (Thomas, 2013). A major new player was
Fox News on the conservative side, which presented itself as providing an alternative source of
information to mainstream news sources that many conservatives perceived to be biassed
(Grossman and Hopkins, 2016). Fox was accompanied by a broad new conservative
“mediaverse” composed of conservative talk radio, blogs, think tanks and podcasts (Adamic and
56
Glance, 2005; Lawrence et al., 2010). This was eventually followed by the creation of MSNBC,
a cable news network that presented the news with a marked liberal bias (Grossman and
Hopkins, 2016).
Polarised news broadcasters, along with social media algorithms, may facilitate partisan isolation
in echo chambers, which are like-minded communities in which the majority of social
encounters are between those who hold similar positions (Ross et al., 2022). This is thought to
magnify ingroup beliefs and assumptions, decrease the likelihood of partisans being challenged
with opposing evidence, disincentivize drawing attention to competing narratives and intensify
levels of confirmation bias (Sunstein, 2017). The lack of disconfirming content has been shown
to radicalise partisan beliefs (Levendusky, 2013) and strengthen affective polarization (Rogowski
and Sutherland 2016; Webster and Abramowitz, 2017). While evidence suggests a strong
correlation between watching partisan news and high levels of affective polarization, there is a
“chicken and egg” debate over whether one of the two more directly leads to the other
(Arceneaux and Johnson, 2013). Furthermore, while echo chambers are broadly discussed in the
media, some evidence indicates that few people find themselves locked inside one – but this
minority may be likely to become more extreme and could perhaps wield disproportionate
influence on the public conversation (Ross et al., 2022).
Economic factors are also thought to lead to increased polarization. Auter et al. (2016) found
evidence suggesting that trade shocks and the decline of national manufacturing industries have
contributed to US polarization. Some theorise that perceived economic instability or other forms
of financial-based threat can be projected by ingroup members onto racial or national outgroups
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– for example, Adler et al. (2021) demonstrated that levels of perceived financial threat
following the 2008 recession were correlated to increased hostility and xenophobia against
immigrants, Asian-Americans and Jews. These findings were particularly pronounced among
groups who experienced higher levels of exposure to the financial crisis, for example among
blue-collar workers in the Rust Belt.
Demographic changes are also thought to contribute to a polarised populace. Two relevant
demographic changes that have been increasing over the past decades are the increasing ethnic
diversity of the United States as well as increasing levels of secularisation, both of which are
prominent especially in major cities (Craig and Richeson, 2014; Mutz, 2016; Jones, 2016; Klein,
2021). Certain sociologists theorise that ethnic diversity is perceived as a threat to some white
Americans’ sense of security – evidence has been found linking higher degrees of support for
polarising figures like Trump less to economic downturns or industrial decay (though, as
mentioned above, these may certainly be contributing factors) than to perceived status threat
(Mutz, 2016; Abramowitz and McCoy, 2019; Brown et al., 2021).
Scholars have long noted that an increasing number of cities, neighbourhoods and regions have
become more ideologically homogeneous. This, combined with a recorded decrease in public
spaces believed to facilitate contact between people of different backgrounds (sports teams,
churches, lunch clubs, etc.), has been thought to increase insulation from political outgroups,
thereby leading to greater social distance, incomprehension or even hostility and fear (Putnam,
2000; Bishop, 2009; Mason, 2018). This homogenization has been observed inside families,
which are becoming increasingly ideologically similar, with rates of politically mixed marriages
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decreasing and with greater instances of parental disapproval for children befriending or dating
members of political or ideological outgroups (Pew, 2016; Iyengar et al., 2018).
Another demographically-related potential source of affective polarization is a phenomenon
called social sorting (Mason, 2018). The term sorting is used to refer to a number of separate,
though interrelated, phenomena – for example, the concept of partisan-ideological sorting noted
above, describing the process by which ideological identities like “liberal” or “conservative”
become increasingly correlated with political affiliations like “Republican” or “Democrat”
(Merkeley, 2023, p. 1). Social sorting, on the other hand, is the phenomena by which societal
groups become more linked with ideological-partisan identities. In other words, identity markers
like religion, gender, class, race or place of residence become increasingly predictive of whether
a person identifies as Republican/conservative or Democrat/liberal (Merkley, 2023). These lead
to the creation of what are referred to as mega-identities, which are large, overarching,
increasingly homogenous sides or coalitions (Mason, 2018). For example, during the years of the
Trump administration, Mason found that black, hispanic, university-educated white and secular
identities were more sorted into a Democratic-liberal mega-identity, while rural, high
school-educated white, religious and middle-class groups were more sorted in with a
Republican-conservative mega-identity.
Not only has this type of sorting increased in the United States in recent decades, but high
degrees of social sorting are strongly correlated with affective polarization, leading some social
scientists to theorise that the more strongly sorted one’s identities are, (that is, the more of one’s
identities fit into one of the two mega-identities), the more likely one is to be affectively
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polarised (Mason, 2018; Merkeley, 2023). Researchers theorise that this is due to how increased
internal homogeneity can (a) consolidate the relationship between ingroups and outgroups into
one of “us” and “them,” (b) make contact with outgroups less likely to occur or (c) render the
other side deeply unfamiliar and perhaps even culturally threatening (Mason, 2013).
Additionally, Mason (2013, p. 144) claims that the more sorted one’s identities are, the less one
has cross-cutting identities, that is, identities that are associated with both sides of the
mega-identity divide; such cross-cutting identities are thought to mitigate the impact of affective
polarization.
Another two major contributors to affective polarization are elite and group cues. This is when
people look to influential leaders or group dynamics for models of how to engage with outgroups
– when leaders or collectives signal that outgroup disparagement is acceptable, perhaps even
encouraged, this is thought to normalise such behaviour (Mason, 2018). The same goes for
signalling incomprehension, fear or even disgust with the other; voting behaviours may also be
influenced in this manner (Mackie et al., 2000; Nicholson, 2012; Armaly and Enders, 2020;
Bakker et al., 2020). Such cues have been found to impact the perceived scientific credibility of
theories involving climate change or the COVID-19 pandemic (Merkeley and Stecula, 2020;
Hamilton and Safford, 2021). In some cases, ingroup members may mimic group dynamics not
necessarily because they believe in or agree with them, but in order to consolidate or perform
group status, thereby securing their social position or a sense of belonging (Haidt, 2012; Legge,
2019). This becomes especially pernicious when cues are given by opportunistic or bad actors
who influence ingroup opinion or behaviour in order to achieve specific goals. This may work
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both ways: elites and groups can also set norms for toleration or respect for the other side
(Haslam et al., 2019).
Dynamics and consequences of affective sociopolitical polarization
Scholars have identified a number of potential consequences of high polarization, especially
affective polarization. A major grouping of consequences has to do with distorted perceptions,
increased bias and an inability to objectively assess the other side. Partisanship has been shown
to colour what people believe to be true (Bartels, 2002; Kaplan et al., 2016; Iyengar and
Krupenkin, 2018a). For example, highly polarised groups in conflict are thought to be more
likely to frame their allegiances or concerns as virtuous and those of the other as irrational,
immoral or held in bad faith (Ross, 2001; Aikin and Talisse, 2020). These perceptions are
thought not only to resist attempts to change them with evidence, but may in fact be strengthened
when presented with evidence of opposing views (Kaplan et al., 2016; Hessler, 2017; Iyengar
and Krupenkin, 2018b; Mason, 2018). Partisans are likelier to see their ingroup as more popular
or beloved (Mackie et al., 2000) or to see the other side as “not merely incorrect, but depraved,
dangerous, and threatening to democracy itself” (Aikin and Talisse, 2020, p. 4). These
perceptions can lead to the consolidation of narratives that contradict the other side’s
understanding of past and present facts: “disputants are divided not only over the facts, but also
over the criteria for determining what the facts are,” or they may argue about issues in ways that
primarily affirming one’s identity or secure status among ingroup members rather than address
outgroup views in good faith (Aikin and Talisse, 2020, p. 79).
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Heightened affective polarization may also result in increased anger, aggression, resentment,
hostility toward or marginalisation of outgroup members. Affectively polarised partisans are
more likely to experience feelings of anger, fear and disgust in response to outgroups, as well as
to feel elation at their defeat or humiliation at their victory (Mackie et al., 2000; Mason, 2018).
This may also lead to the delegitimization of outgroup needs, identities and preferences, which
itself is a predictor of dismissing the other side’s legitimate grievances, wishing them ill,
believing that moral duties (i.e. respect, civility, nonviolence) do not extend to outgroup
members, resenting their intellectual freedoms, desiring to limit their political or social agency
by illiberal means, supporting direct or structural acts of harm or oppression towards outgroup
members, downplaying harm committed against outgroups, the inability to hold ingroups
accountable for harm committed against other groups and the moral justification of such
behaviours as well as the beliefs underlying them (Bar-Tal and Avrahamzon, 2017; Hadarics and
Kende, 2018; McCoy et al., 2018; Somer and McCoy, 2019; Aikin and Talisse 2020; Saguy and
Reifen-Tagar, 2022). Additionally, heightened political anger can lead to decreased trust in
governing bodies and institutions, especially when outgroup members are in power (Webster,
2018). This distrust is thought to contribute to gridlock in congress, increased attacks on political
opponents, a decreased interest in active political engagement and a perceived loss in
governmental credibility or even legitimacy (Layman et al., 2006; Hetherington and Rudolph,
2015; Mason, 2018)
It is possible that this increase in hostility, fear and other related emotions contributes to negative
partisanship, which is a trend where Americans cast their votes not in order to support a party
that they agree or identify with, but to prevent the outgroup party from taking power
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(Abramowitz and Webster, 2015, p. 15). In a two-party system, this can create a binary in which
a party wins less out of support for their policies and more out of being seen as a more
acceptable option, perhaps even as a lesser evil. The degree of negative partisanship increased
sharply during the 2016 election, with negative partisanship being twice as able to predict voting
behaviour than the degree of warmth felt towards ingroup candidates (Abramowitz and Webster,
2018). This animosity is also thought to be a major factor in why large numbers of conservatives
and Republicans “who had reservations about Donald Trump nevertheless voted for their party’s
standard bearer, [as they felt] fear and dislike of Hillary Clinton” (Abramowitz and Webster,
2018, p. 133). It may be important to note that the 2016 election was unique in that both
candidates were, historically speaking, the most universally disliked candidates by ingroup
members since comparable data was recorded in the late 1970s.
Affective and other kinds of polarization can also impact seemingly non-political choices or
behaviours. For example, partisans may choose to live in neighbourhoods dominated by ingroup
members and may express dissatisfaction upon finding out that outgroup members live nearby
(Hui, 2013). Matching partisan sentiments has also been found to increase the likelihood of
starting a friendship or romantic relationship (Huber and Malhotra, 2017). Polarised individuals
are likelier to give jobs to ingroup members when all other factors are equal, to accept lower
wages from ingroup employers and to boycott companies associated with outgroups (Gift and
Gift, 2015; Iyengar and Westwood, 2015; Panagopoulos et al., 2016; McConnell et al., 2018).
Partisans are more likely to believe that the economy is stronger when the ingroup president is in
power, which may impact investment or purchasing preferences (Krupenkin et al., 2018).
Lifestyle markers, like clothing, leisure activities or food preferences, may also become
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associated with outgroup members, making some partisans feel aversion to certain products,
brands, hobbies, lifestyle choices or travel destinations (DellaPosta et al., 2015).
Polarization also impacts partisan reception of highly politicised facts, which during the Trump
years included assessments of the legitimacy of the 2016 and 2020 elections, as well as the
contentious national response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Partisan loyalties had been shown to
impact vaccine hesitancy prior to the pandemic – polarised Americans on both sides of the divide
were less likely to give their children vaccinations when the president was a member of the
outgroup, potentially indicating a lack of trust in outgroup-aligned government agencies
(Krupenkin, 2018, p. 24).
Partisan vaccination dynamics, however, took a major turn with the onset of the COVID-19
pandemic: Druckman et al. (2021) have demonstrated that COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy was less
correlated with who was in the White House than with cues received from ingroup members.
There were indications liberals and Democrats are more associated with mask-wearing and
taking health precautions more seriously, with conservatives and Republicans more likely to
show scepticism regarding masks and vaccines, highlighting instead the negative impact of
lockdowns and restrictions on mental health and the economy (Lipsitz and Pop-Eleches, 2020).
But affective polarization proved a key factor in how these preferences were expressed; in
counties that were more affectively polarised, Democrats and liberals were especially likely to
display caution and take protective measures, while Republicans conservatives were more likely
to criticise restrictions. Druckman et al. (2021) interpret these data as evidence that highly
polarised partisans base their decisions less on the science than on what one’s ingroup presents as
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normative, which can have major economic or health-related consequences during a major
pandemic. One major caveat the researchers noted, however, was that this effect was mitigated in
counties that possessed high case counts, potentially indicating that affective polarization may
have greater consequences in contexts where partisan lives are less directly impacted by crisis.
Similar dynamics are not limited to pandemic-related beliefs and behaviours but may extend to
other phenomena that are highly politicised, especially those associated with a particular side of
the divide. For example, some researchers attribute Republican scepticism of the mainstream
scientific consensus regarding climate change not to a distrust in science, but a distrust in
perceived Democratic interpretations of the science (Merkley and Stecula, 2020). Science, in this
case, may not be perceived as neutral but as instrumentalized, biassed and potentially
weaponized by the outgroup against the ingroup. In other words, a belief or attitude strongly
associated with outgroups in highly affectively polarised contexts will likely appear suspicious or
even morally compromised to ingroup members. This may indicate that controversies over
certain issues are more relational than intellectual, and that attempts to change such positions by
presenting facts may only further intensify distrust and rejection of what is being said, regardless
of its accuracy.
I hold that the strengthening of polarization, and especially affective polarization, has major
relevance for the study of positive and negative peace preferences among liberal and
conservative activists during the Trump-era culture wars. The data shows that ideologically and
politically diverging groups have become increasingly hostile to each other, as well as more
likely to view the other not as opponents or competitors in the public sphere, but as irrational or
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even evil enemies that need to be stopped. Furthermore, the sorting of ideological and political
identity markers (liberal-Democrat and conservative-Republican) into mega-identities creates
more distinct divisions between the two sides, even if these divisions are not backed up by
significantly differing policy preferences or ideological beliefs among the majority of the
populace. This focus on ideological identity rather than policy preferences means that space for
cooperation may seem to shrink or that contact may appear socially, morally or cognitively
unacceptable (Iyengar et al., 2012; Mason, 2018; Aikin and Talisse, 2020). These dynamics very
likely exacerbate the disputes over public values, morality, culture and institutions reviewed in
the previous chapter. They also shaped participant responses to the interviews that I present in
chapter five regarding preferences for visions of peace, strategies used to build peace and
preferences for either – all of which are explored in the following chapter.
Chapter Four: Positive and Negative Peace Theory
Johan Galtung’s idea of peace
Historically speaking, the notion of positive or negative forms of peace predates Johan Galtung’s
work. Nobel Peace Prize winner Jane Addams’ “positive ideals of peace” (Addams, 1907, p.
xvii) was an early forerunner, as were Quincy Wright’s (1954) and Martin Luther King Jr.’s
(1963) distinctions between positive and negative peace. That said, it was the Norwegian
sociologist who refined and popularised the concept in the 1960s, eventually developing a
theoretical framework that would shape the emerging field of PACS.
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Galtung’s theory emerged from a sharp critique of the approaches to peace that were popular in
his time. He highlighted how most contemporaneous notions of peace amounted to the absence
of direct violence (Galtung, 1969, p. 169), which refers to visible acts of physical attack such as
war, assault and similar actions. For him, this was an unsatisfactory framework as it ignored
what he called structural violence: the less visible socio-cultural factors preventing individuals
and groups from meeting their basic human needs or otherwise thriving in society (Galtung,
1969, p. 171). For Galtung, common examples of structural violence included racism, religious
oppression or the unequal distribution of resources. In his opinion, vertical structural inequities
like these could lead to deep-seated grievances that eventually lead to direct violence or armed
conflict – in other words, he claimed, “violent relations and structures produce more violent
relations” (Galtung, 2010, p. 22).
In his view, it was thus necessary for discussions about peace to be expanded in order to take into
account the less visible factors that nevertheless contribute to conflict onset. He began to
promote the paired concepts of negative peace, with the word negative referring not to a value
judgement but to the absence of direct violence, and positive peace, which refers to the presence
of factors that lead to harmonious relationships and result in a state in which human needs are
met in a way that makes direct violence unnecessary, perhaps even unthinkable. Initially, Galtung
described positive peace as synonymous with the presence of social justice, which for him was
effectively the absence of structural violence (Galtung, 1964, 1969).
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The reception of Galtung’s original formulation
Although Galtung’s theory proved majorly influential in the emerging field of PACS, which
Galtung himself played a key role in shaping, Sharp (2020) notes that it took time for the
innovation of positive peace to make inroads in academic and policy-based discourse elsewhere.
In fact, the very issue of the journal where Galtung first proposed the theory was otherwise
dominated by discussions of what he would have deemed negative peace (Regan, 2013).
Nevertheless, the acknowledgement of peace as being more than the absence of war, and
eventually of positive peace as a necessary component of conflict resolution practice, gained
increasing prominence in PACS through the 1980s and ultimately achieved global acceptance as
a liberal policy paradigm following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the perceived victory of
western peacemaking models globally (Christie et al., 2008; Pureza and Cravo 2009; Sharp,
2020). This was codified in UN documents such as An Agenda for Peace: Preventive diplomacy,
peacemaking and peace-keeping (1992), in which UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali
proposed a number of activities that would address the perceived roots of conflict, thus aiming to
achieve a deeper form of peace than the mere absence of war. Importantly, the concept of
constructing the necessary infrastructure for sustainable peace, which Galtung had previously
called peacebuilding (Galtung, 1975), was codified as official UN policy. This turn towards
peacebuilding and positive peace was further emphasised in the influential Report of the Panel
on United Nations Peace Operations, also known as the “Brahimi report,” which highlighted the
need to “reassemble the foundations of peace and provide the tools for building on those
foundations something that is more than just the absence of war” (UN, 2000). Given the
increasingly liberal nature of the emerging post-Cold-War world order, this approach to positive
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peace became associated with the so-called liberal peace, a model assuming that peaceful
societies emerge following the establishment of a state monopoly on violence, institutions
guaranteeing rule of law, freedom of the press, free markets and fair election processes (Sharp,
2020).
This liberal approach represents something of a pivot from Galtung’s original concept. It
certainly embraced Galtung’s notion that positive peace involves building societal infrastructure
that facilitates the peaceful resolution of disputes, but it did not reflect Galtung’s prioritisation of
social justice as a means of conflict prevention (Sharp, 2020). This may have been partially due
to how the original conception of positive peace as social justice, or the absence of structural
violence, faced major criticism in the years since Galtung first promoted the theory. Some of
these criticisms focused on how Galtung’s original concept of positive peace was not seen as
particularly actionable. For example, it was suggested that, in contrast to liberal peacebuilding
practices like the establishment of fair elections or a free press, social justice-aligned values like
equality or equity proved too vague to provide concrete guidance for peace-minded actors (IEP,
2022). Social justice, as a value system, could be interpreted variously and give rise to
contradictory approaches and policies, which may complicate intervention design (Turan, 2015)
or itself be implemented in coercive, conflict-conducive ways (Standish et al., 2022). Another
factor complicating possible interventions is how focusing on social justice requires defining
when and where injustice has occurred, which can prove difficult should competing groups claim
victim status and delegitimize outgroup grievances and claims (Noor et al., 2012).
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Furthermore, others brought forward ideological criticisms of Galtung’s equation of positive
peace with social justice. Galtungian social justice, for example, was criticised for focusing on
top-down power structures such as race, class, gender while saying relatively little about other
grounds for conflict, such as horizontal competition between identity groups (Turan, 2015). This
emphasis on vertical power structures of marginalisation was also challenged for allegedly
privileging leftist thought, structurally excluding centre- and right-leaning approaches to peace
that focused more on maximising personal freedoms and appealing to individual responsibility
(Rummel, 1981). In a similar vein, Boulding (1977) highlighted how certain modes of equity
promoted by Galtung as a way of achieving positive peace, such as resource-sharing, could
themselves involve “a loss of liberty” (p. 80) if implemented by a centralised state, potentially
lead to other forms of structural violence or oppression. Additionally, other critics claimed that
peacebuilding interventions aimed at changing local norms in order to establish social justice in
conflict-affected societies, particularly by means of broad societal transformation, would prove
deeply neo-colonial – especially as this often involves Western countries intervening in the
Global South (Schellhaas and Seegers, 2009; Cunliffe, 2012; Sharp, 2020).
Galtung continued to update positive and negative peace theory in a way that reflected
developments in PACS and peacebuilding practices generally. While his classic formulation
equating positive peace with the absence of structural violence – and thus the presence of social
justice – continues to resonate in recent literature (Pureza and Cravo, 2009; Paulson and Bellino,
2017; Shields, 2017), he went on to codify a broader approach described in the following section.
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Galtung’s updated theory of positive and negative peace
Galtung’s updated positive and negative peace theory (Galtung, 2013) takes into account a
number of developments in his understanding of conflict and violence. First, he acknowledges
the concept of cultural violence, which he developed in the late 1980s (Galtung, 1990). In
Galtung’s own words (1990, p. 291), cultural violence involves “those aspects of culture, the
symbolic sphere of our existence – exemplified by religion and ideology, language and art,
empirical science and formal science (logic, mathematics) – that can be used to justify or
legitimise direct or structural violence.” Examples of such cultural violence include sexist music
lyrics, religious practices normalising war or school curriculums marginalising the histories of
particular groups – all of which may render direct/structural violence invisible or, in some cases,
promote them explicitly. This effectively creates a triangle composed of direct, structural and
cultural forms of violence, all of which are thought to support, lead to or sustain the others.
Similar to Hunter’s (1991) notion of culture war, the theory of cultural violence draws attention
to the capacity of symbols, discourses and institutions to serve as an arena within which conflict
can take place.
Second, Galtung suggests that direct, structural and cultural violence each have positive and
negative aspects, which is a major shift from his original conception of negative peace as the
absence of direct violence and positive peace as the absence of structural violence (Galtung,
2013). In this updated approach, negative peace is seen as the absence of any (if not all) of the
three types of violence, while positive peace involves addressing deep-rooted barriers to peace,
often through the meeting of needs, the exchange of “goods” instead of “evils” and the
construction of a peaceful, thriving social order inclusive of all persons and groups (Galtung,
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2013, p. 174). While his previous approach to positive peace was sometimes perceived as
prioritising social justice for “underdogs” (Galtung, 1969, p. 181), this updated framework
highlights diverse components of societal transformation not limited to equity and social justice,
but also including, for example, cooperation between formerly hostile parties and the promotion
of dialogue. The following table illustrates examples of this approach and is adapted from his
article “Positive and Negative Peace” (Galtung, 2013):
Direct Violence
Structural Violence
Cultural Violence
Negative Peace
No invasions, attacks,
harassment, etc.
No discrimination,
repression, etc.
No cultural justifications
of violence
Positive Peace
Cooperation between
former enemies
Equality, equity
Culture of peace and
dialogue
Fig 2. Galtung’s updated (2013) formulation of positive and negative peace theory
As with his original formulation, Galtung’s updated approach to negative peace points to the
absence of violence which, while important in its own right, does not necessarily imply
harmonious or thriving societal relations. Positive peace, on the other hand, points to the
presence of factors that lead to harmonious relationships, thriving societies and, importantly,
sustained nonviolence. Even so, many scholars nevertheless draw attention to a key point: while
negative peace may be insufficient to create long-term, sustainable peace (Turan, 2015), it is
often a major achievement in and of itself and is certainly preferable to many forms of violence
(Cleven et al., 2018; Sharp, 2020). Positive peace, on the other hand, points to the presence of
factors that lead to integrated relationships, fair societies and, importantly, sustained
nonviolence.
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It is important to note that not every instance of peace includes all three of Galtung’s
components. For example, when discussing East Asia’s pivot to stability following a bloody
mid-20th century, Bjarnegård et al. (2017) note that China’s hegemony in the region indeed
established direct negative peace between nations (called the “East Asian Peace”), but did so
using mechanisms involving structural violence and geopolitical domination of minority
populations or neighbouring nations. Thus, it is important to note that, while negative peace
amounts to an absence of violence, this absence may exist only with regard to one of the many
parties involved.
Positive peace may also be generated within one, but not all, of Galtung’s three categories. Two
or more formerly belligerent nations, for example France and Germany, can create a “security
community” that not only guarantees they will not go to war, but that they will in fact actively
assist the other in cases of military activity elsewhere (Klein et al., 2008, p. 75). This amounts to
a kind of direct positive peace between two nations that can exist independently of just relations
or mutual understanding.
Visions and strategies: The applicability of positive and negative peace
When applied in the field to analyse conflicts or to plan interventions, positive and negative
peace theory is often used in one of two ways. The first involves describing a desired end state to
a conflict, which I refer to in this project as a vision of peace. The examples in Figure 2 above
detail various visions, such as a lack of invasions and hate crimes, or the presence of equality,
cooperation or reconciliation (Galtung, 2013). These different visions of peace can be identified
as positive or negative in nature, creating conceptual categories for analysis and discussion. The
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second common way the theory is applied is to classify the strategies thought to build positive or
negative peace. Standish et al., in the Palgrave Handbook of Positive Peace (2022), distinguish
between negative peacebuilding5, which works to “halt to overt aggression,” and positive
peacebuilding, which aims to create interventions that are more “sustainable, legitimate,
far-reaching, and conceptually comprehensive” (p. 5).
Examples of negative peacebuilding include the signing of a ceasefire, as in
Nagorno-Karabakh/Artsakh (Arslanli, 2022), the segregation of populations formerly involved in
an armed conflict, as in Bosnia-Herzegovina (Kulkova, 2019), the repression of armed groups, as
in Chechnya (Lewis et al., 2018), or official policies encouraging silence on past political
violence, as in Mozambique (Igreja, 2013). Here a central irony must be noted: negative
peacebuilders can themselves use violence in attempts to build negative peace, as in a
pre-emptive strike meant to deter future hostilities or a pogrom aimed at neutralising political
opponents, even though such attempts may inadvertently escalate the violence itself. Positive
peacebuilding strategies instead attempt to resolve the root causes of violence using approaches
like the creation of liberal democratic institutions (IEP, 2020), fostering societal reconciliation
(Clark, 2009), proactive dialogue between at-risk populations (Turan, 2015), alleviating group
inequalities (Pureza and Cravo, 2009) or other measures. Examples of different visions of peace,
with a corresponding strategy, are listed in Fig. 3 below:
Vision of Peace
Type of Peace
Corresponding Strategy
Absence of armed conflict
Direct negative peace
Negotiated ceasefire
(Richmond, 2008)
5Sometimes called peacemaking or peacekeeping (Reychler, 2010).