| Summary/Abstract |
Peace researchers have recently started to develop datasets that allow distinguishing between different levels of interstate peace. In this article, I first argue that existing conceptualizations and measurements suffer—to varying degrees—from two major specification problems: on the one hand, they face problems of what I call “ontological underload,” as they do not include all essential constitutive dimensions. On the other hand, they face problems of “ontological overload,” as they integrate factors as endogenous dimensions that should better be understood as exogenous causes of different levels of peace. I propose a new concept P* that avoids both problems. P* is based on a profound and parsimonious ontology that allows for straightforward theory formulation and empirical analysis. It incorporates three dimensions—behavior, expectations, and duration/stability—that allow us to differentiate between different levels of interstate peace. In this article, I also discuss how P* can be operationalized for a dataset of 126 dyads.
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