Pioneers of peace research VII: Edward E. Azar: Apostle of events

Azar's COPDAB is the most comprehensive world events data bank for the years 1948–1978. His scale from cooperation to conflict has been researched more than any other such scale. More research is needed on the concepts of cooperation and conflict so far as these have been operationalized by judges’ values. While cooperation is generally desirable in our culture, and conflict is generally undesirable, empirical results suggest that cooperation also has its undesirable component and conflict also has its desirable component, so far as it is sometimes directed toward the elimination or reduction of structural violence. Consequently, both cooperation and conflict are more complicated than they seemed at first glance. Events data have their limitations in that they hardly explain themselves, so that events studies have to be supplemented by attitude studies, attribute studies, historical studies, and social studies. Peace was defined in terms of containing and managing behavioral violence in the beginning of Azar's work, but it was later defined in terms of development defined in terms of equality rather than growth. Since the research results themselves motivated these theoretical changes, this suggested that peace research is a self‐correcting and self‐developing process that facilitates and promotes its own progress.