The Politics of Compassion in a World of Ruthless Power

Kevin Clements

March 14, 2016

Kevin Clements is the Foundation Chair of Peace and Conflict Studies and Director of the New Zealand National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (NCPACS) at the University of Otato, Dunedin, New Zealand, and Secretary General of the International Peace Research Association.

I would like to explain why I’m focusing on the politics of compassion in 2016 even though it sounds somewhat oxymoronic at this particular juncture in history.     I am writing a book about the Politics of Compassion   because the world is far too small to accommodate the application of dominatory, hegemonic , authoritarian and bullying politics . This sort of adversarial zero sum politics is not solving the problems that the global order is currently confronting. John Burton, ( Burton, 1990) one of the founders of our field felt that one of…