Anomie and Peace: A Cross-National Study

In today’s world, which is rife with civil wars, terrorist activities, and different forms of violence, peace has become a complex concept, affected by various social, economic, cultural, political and psychological factors. One of the states of the society, which may pave the way for conflict or other forms of violence is anomie. Anomie, as a societal state, in which there is a threat of violence, war or terrorist activities, provides a rich area of study to develop deeper insights into conflictive contexts. After developing a theoretical framework and using formerly developed measurements and sequence results, we conduct two studies to further investigate the relation between anomie and peace/conflict. Results indicate that internal peace is associated with the breakdown in leadership and social fabric (Study 1A). Therefore, dysregulated and disintegrated societies as the result of breakdown in leadership and social fabric respectively, pave the way for direct and indirect violence. In addition, our results illustrate that anomie has an important role in predicting the contexts where conflict exists (Study 1B). Findings indicate that anomie data can be useful to forecast the contexts in which there is a potential conflict. They also highlight the importance of anomie in peacefulness or conflictiveness of societies.