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The search for peace remains high on the global political agenda and as part of its Sustainable Development Goals, the United Nations hopes to create peaceful and inclusive societies with access to justice and to significantly reduce violence and related death rates globally.

But while last year saw global peacefulness improving slightly, peacefulness has decreased in the last decade (Global Peace Index 2019) and more needs to be done to tackle this crucial political and societal issue.

Frontiers in Political Science is supporting the need for more research in the field with a new specialty in Peace and Democracy. Under the leadership of Chief Editors Dr Thania Paffenholz, Graduate Institute Geneva and Dr Anastassia V. Obydenkova, Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals, the section will focus on better understanding the conditions and factors that enable or hinder advancements towards peaceful democratic societies to shape more effective policies and practices.

DISCOVER THE PEACE AND DEMOCRACY SPECIALTY SECTION

Translating research into action

“Research insights in studies of political regimes (including autocracies and hybrid regimes as well as democracies) will help the fight against discrimination, increase social awareness of respect for human rights and sustainable development. We aspire to contribute to governmental accountability to population, to building peaceful inclusive societies with accountable political actors”, Dr Obydenkova explains.

Dr Obydenkova further clarifies: “Cross-disciplinary dialogue and cross-culture communication are highly important to promote efficient governmental policies at all levels, from environmental protection, mitigation of climate change, to gender rights at national and international levels. We see peace and democracy as intrinsically interdependent issues, where one is impossible without another.”

Dr Paffenholz elaborates on the importance of research having real-world impact: “Peace and Democracy is driven by a group of editors that are not only excellent researchers and educators, but also networked experts that can identify high-relevance research topics and connect these findings to the policy arena”.

“I see myself in the tradition of the founding mothers and fathers of peace research who envisioned this as a science that contributes to changing world politics by studying the conditions of war and peace and do not shy away from sharing these findings with policy makers.”, Dr Paffenholz added.

Get involved

Our first Research Topic ‘New Actors in Peace and Democracy’ is now open for submissions.

Frontiers journals also consistently rank among the world’s most-cited in their fields and in the top Impact Factor and CiteScore percentiles. Discover more.