The peace scale: Conceptualizing and operationalizing non-rivalry and peace

Most efforts in international relations scholarship focus on understanding war and conflict. To the extent that peace is considered, it is often treated as an afterthought or a control condition. In this paper we construct a five-level scale of dyadic peace. We then operationalize the scale using indicators suggested by different scholarly literatures as well as measures derived from case studies. Further we advocate the use of "anchor cases" and pair-wise comparisons to code dyadic peace in non-rivalry periods. We conclude with a pilot study of the scale, as applied to pairs of states over the period From 1816 to 2006.