Conceptualising peace and its preconditions: The anti-Pelagian imagination and the critical turn in peace theory
| Date | 01 October 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1755088220951592 |
| Published date | 01 October 2021 |
| Author | Sophia Dingli |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1755088220951592
Journal of International Political Theory
2021, Vol. 17(3) 468 –487
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1755088220951592
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Conceptualising peace and
its preconditions: The anti-
Pelagian imagination and the
critical turn in peace theory
Sophia Dingli
University of Glasgow, UK
Abstract
This article examines the conceptualisations of peace and its preconditions manifested
in the critical turn in peace theory: bottom-up approaches which begin with particular
contexts and postulate diverse local actors as integral to the process of peace-building.
This article argues that the turn is at an impasse and is unable to address the crucial
charge that its conceptualisation of peace is inconsistent. To explain the persistence of
inconsistency and to move us forward, the article analyses, evaluates and responds to
the turn through the lens of Nicholas Rengger’s work on the anti-Pelagian imagination
in political theory. This is defined as a tendency to begin theorising from non-utopian,
anti-perfectionist and sceptical assumptions. Through this examination the article
argues that the critical turn is anti-Pelagian but not consistently so because it often gives
way to perfectionism, adopts naïve readings of institutions and postulates demanding
conceptions of political agency and practice. This inconsistency with its own philosophical
premises makes the turn’s conceptualisation of peace and its preconditions incoherent.
Finally, the article sketches an alternative account of peace which draws upon a number
of anti-Pelagian scholars and mobilises Rengger’s particular defense of anti-Pelagianism.
The suggested alternative, the article argues, provides us with a more coherent theory
of peace and a way out of existing dead ends.
Keywords
Anti-Pelagianism, critical turn, Nicholas Rengger, peace
Corresponding author:
Sophia Dingli, University of Glasgow, Adam Smith Building, 40 Bute Gardens, Glasgow G12 8RT, UK.
Email: sophia.dingli@glasgow.ac.uk
951592IPT0010.1177/1755088220951592Journal of International Political TheoryDingli
research-article2020
Article
Dingli 469
The critical turn in peace theory1 is at an impasse. Having successfully challenged the
hegemony of the liberal peace the turn has been mired in endless and somewhat repeti-
tive debates, the most significant of which between critical and problem-solving accounts
(Chandler and Richmond, 2015; Richmond and Mac Ginty, 2015) and between
Eurocentric and properly de-colonial approaches (Sabaratnam, 2013; Shani, 2019).
Though these debates have been valuable, they have yet to effectively confront or resolve
the most damaging challenges to the critical turn: the argument that the critical turn’s
conceptualisation of peace is inconsistent because its proponents do not adequately
acknowledge their own positionalities and the political and often paradoxical nature of
their suggestions (Randazzo, 2016) and the argument that the critical turn threatens the
transvaluation of peace itself (Bargués-Pedreny, 2018). Existing critiques have been
unable to effectively explain the underlying reasons for and the persistence of these
issues. Moreover, they have been either uninterested or unwilling to suggest alternative
conceptualisations which may help us out of the current impasse and that can counteract
the transvaluation of the concept of peace inherent in the critical turn.
This article addresses this twin problem by employing the framework of analysis of
non-teleological and sceptical political thought outlined by the late Nicholas Rengger
(2017). As I show below, this framework is appropriate to an analysis and evaluation of
the conceptualisation of and preconditions for peace found in the critical turn because
these accounts are premised on the three philosophical assumptions that Rengger argues
characterise what he called ‘the anti-Pelagian imagination’ in political theory. These
assumptions are (1) a complex understanding of human nature and institutions, (2) a non-
teleological understanding of politics and (3) scepticism regarding the ability of theory
to positively affect practice. It is the article’s contention that though they have not
claimed the label for themselves, theorists in the critical turn can be accurately character-
ised as anti-Pelagians. Through an analysis of the framework and by using it to read and
analyse the turn, the article illustrates that a fundamental problem for the turn is that it is
not consistent in its adherence to this set of underlying assumptions. This leads it to fall
into one of the traps that anti-Pelagian thought tends to: perfectionism. Thus, the article
demonstrates that the underlying reason behind the impasse in the critical turn in peace
theory is that it indulges in some forms of ontological and teleological perfectionism
which undermine the consistency and coherence of its theorisation of peace.
Moreover, by mobilising Rennger’s type of anti-Pelagianism, found in his own work
and in the work of theorists he admired, this article proposes an alternative conceptuali-
sation of peace and its preconditions. This takes the form of accounting for and accepting
the more general patterns of our politics, studied by anti-Pelagians and to an extent
embraced by the critical turn, and developing a formal rather than substantive conceptu-
alisation of peace and its preconditions which is consistent with those patterns and coher-
ent in itself. Thus, the conception developed here provides a much needed alternative and
corrective to the theorisation of peace current in the existing literature.
The article proceeds in three sections. The first section outlines Rengger’s framework.
The second section analyses and evaluates the critical turn’s approach to peace. The final
section sketches an alternative conceptualisation which draws from the work of Rengger
and various anti-Pelagian thinkers. Finally, the conclusion discusses the consequences of
this approach.
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