Localizing Peace Measurement: A Transferable Protocol for Context-Sensitive, Subnational Peace Indices in Developing Societies, with Evidence from Thailand

Global peace indices rank whole countries on a single template and cannot reveal the variation within a country that governs peace policy in developing societies, where peace is unevenly distributed. Drawing on the local turn and composite-indicator methodology, this article sets out a transferable, five-stage protocol for building a context-sensitive, subnational peace index under data scarcity and demonstrates it on Thailand using province-level data for all seventy-seven provinces before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Four findings emerge that a national score conceals. First, the dispersion of peace is large at the indicator level but progressively masked by aggregation, so the composite understates within-country inequality. Second, the four dimensions of peace are almost uncorrelated across provinces, so peace is multidimensional, and no single ranking represents it. Third, the cross-province distribution narrowed asymmetrically, the least peaceful provinces improving while the most peaceful slipped, a robustness split showing the rising floor reflects improvement in recorded conditions, not perception. Fourth, region explains only about four percent of the variation, so peace is local rather than regional. The protocol answers the critique that peace measurement imports external templates and offers a reproducible, transparent instrument for monitoring peace across the Global South.