The idea of peace and peace movements before the First World War: Second international and inter-parliamentary union

Peace has been among the fundamental issues of world politics for centuries. Although many explanation frameworks for peace have been formed until today, the dominant approach has been state-centered. Besides, a concept of peace has been developed that corresponds to the absence of war. In this context, peace has been considered at two different ends; a project to be realized by overcoming the state or a situation that cannot be achieved permanently in the state system. Peace is evaluated from a different perspective by this study. It is underlined that peace is a phenomenon that has always existed as a possibility in world politics and must be kept on the agenda continuously through actionality. This historical study, which was carried out within the framework of the aforementioned conceptual framework, reveals the concept of the actuality of peace. The basis of the study was the necessity to rethink the period before the First World War in the context of activism towards peace, which was mainly discussed in the context of the origins of the war. For this purpose, the idea of peace and the action of transnational civil society towards peace in the pre-war period was evaluated through the case studies of the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the Second International. This study supports the argument that the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the Second International were important actors of peace in the pre-war period and concluded that in the considered period, actionality towards peace emerged in the context of transnational mobility in a way that affected the policies of sovereign states.