define ethnic conflict essay

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12 Ethnicity and Ethnic Conflict

Ashutosh Varshney is Professor of Political Science, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

• Published: 02 September 2009
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This article focuses on ethnic conflict and ethnic identity. It begins by differentiating these from nationalism, national identity, and civil wars. It presents a survey of the explanations provided in four traditions of enquiry, and also provides an analysis of the inadequacies or merits of arguments within each tradition. The article also reviews the evolution of arguments related to this field.

“ Until recently,” wrote Donald Horowitz in 1985 , “the field of ethnic conflict has been a backwater of the social sciences.” 1 This statement is to be taken seriously. Horowitz's Ethnic Groups in Conflict was a seminal text. For the first time in scholarly history, a book on ethnic conflict covered a whole variety of topics, ranging from concepts and definitions to those spheres of institutional politics (party politics, military politics, affirmative action) in which the power of ethnicity had become obvious and could no longer be ignored. Some important social science arguments had emerged earlier, especially on the relationship between ethnicity and nation building, 2 ethnicity and modernity, 3 ethnicity and consociational democracy ( Lijphart 1969 ; 1977 ), and migration and ethnic conflict ( Weiner 1978 ). But each of these works covered a specific problem at hand. Ethnic Groups in Conflict covered a wide array of topics under the umbrella of ethnicity, becoming thereby the founding text of the field. 4

Over two decades have passed since then. There has been such an explosion of research on ethnicity and ethnic conflict that the field can no longer be called a “backwater of the social sciences.” Especially since the end of the Cold War, the rise of ethnicity has coincided with the weakening of the customary left—right ideological axis in politics the world over, both in the developed and developing world. As a research field, too, ethnicity has become a growth industry, straddling a variety of disciplines, topics, and methods, and attracting a large number of scholars.

But have we made progress? And if so, in what ways? In a widely read evaluation of the field, published in 1998, Brubaker and Laitin were negative about the progress made:

Notwithstanding the increasing scholarly interest in ethnic and nationalist violence, there is no clearly demarcated field of social scientific inquiry addressing the subject, no well‐defined body of literature, no agreed‐upon set of key questions or problems. It is not simply that there is no agreement on how things are to be explained; more fundamentally, there is no agreement on what is to be explained, or whether there is a unitary phenomenon (or a coherently related body of phenomena) to be explained. Rather than confronting competing theories or explanations, we confront alternative ways of posing questions, alternative approaches to or “takes” on ethnic and nationalist violence, alternative ways of conceptualizing the phenomenon, and situating it in the context of wider theoretical debates. 5

Two things should be noted about this evaluation. First, it relates only to ethnic and nationalist violence, not to the whole field of ethnicity. The latter term now covers topics as varying as ethnic identity formation, ethnic movements and protests, ethnic voting and ethnic parties, ethnic heterogeneity and allocation of public goods, ethnic diversity and economic growth rates, and ethnic riots, pogroms, and civil wars. No essay can cover all of these topics adequately. I will confine myself to only two topics: ethnic identity and ethnic conflict. I will distinguish them especially from national identity and nationalism on the one hand, and civil wars on the other. These latter topics are covered elsewhere in this volume. I will use arguments about nationalism and civil wars only to the extent that they clarify my analytic overview of the literature on ethnic identity and conflict.

Second, what Brubaker and Laitin find troubling may, in part, be viewed as a reflection of the field's age. As King, Keohane, and Verba (1994) argued, the younger fields are like a double‐edged sword. Typically, they do not have a body of theory that most scholars agree with, but the returns to entry may be great. In the established fields, strong theory exists and progress is typically marginal. In younger fields, big theoretical strides can be made.

Has the field made great strides since Brubaker and Laitin wrote their evaluation? I argue below that progress has been substantial. I also argue that wide acceptance of two concepts—mechanisms and variations—has driven the evolution of research, especially in the last ten years.

In earlier times, scholars often used to leave theory building to a link, or affinity, between structural conditions and the rise of ethnic conflict or nationalism. Gellner (1983) is the most illustrative, and well‐known, example of this tendency. Gellner essentially theorized that the rise of the industrial age required nationalism, as linguistic standardization became necessary for communication between citizens and the rural masses left their village particularities behind, moving to unknown cities in search of industrial employment. Given the social science norms of the 1990s, a critique was easy to launch. The fact that industrialization required nationalism did not mean that it would happen. Why should need create its own fulfillment? At the very least, we need an account of the organizations, movements, or leaders that would undertake the task of converting objective needs into actual outcomes.

The idea of variance, similarly, has made advances possible. Theorizing about ethnic violence used to be based on establishing commonalities across the many cases of violence (or sometimes based on an in‐depth case study or two). 6 By the mid‐1990s, following the popularity of King, Keohane, and Verba (1994) , this came to be called “selection bias,” and deemed inadmissible for theory construction.

Selection on the dependent variable, it was later recognized, was not entirely without its uses. It could, for example, knock down an existing theory, if the generalizations based on similar cases led to an argument opposed to the existing theoretical orthodoxy. But in and of its own, it was not enough to generate a new valid theory. 7 Outcome variation was a better principle to follow for theory construction. Most research in the field has followed this principle over the last decade.

Despite these advances, Brubaker and Laitin are right in one sense. Cumulation has been quite slow. Very few theories have been fully knocked over. A more rapid “creative destruction” is likely to take place in the future, especially because testing has become a norm in the field.

Existing arguments about ethnic identity and/or ethnic conflict can be divided up into five traditions of enquiry: essentialism, instrumentalism, constructivism, institutionalism, and realism. There are theories within each tradition. I will concentrate on the first four traditions in this chapter, concentrating on the core idea of each tradition and how it has evolved over time .

I will leave out realism. Brought in from the field of international relations, realism is driven by the concept of security dilemma. Realists argue that when an existing state collapses, relations between ethnic groups begin to resemble those between states in the international system, the difference between defensive and offensive ethnic mobilization disappears, and neighbors kill neighbors to ensure that they are not possibly killed in the future. Such situations are more applicable to civil wars, excluded from the purview of this essay, and discussed elsewhere in this volume.

Section 1 is conceptual. Given the number of terms moving imprecisely about in the field, clarity about what we mean by the various terms is necessary for constructing a clear analytic domain. Section 2 surveys explanations provided in the four traditions of enquiry, analyzes the inadequacies or merits of arguments within each tradition, and reviews the evolution of arguments. Section 3 presents conclusions.

1.1 What is Ethnicity?

Following Horowitz (1985) , ethnicity as a term designates a sense of collective belonging, which could be based on common descent, language, history, culture, race, or religion (or some combination of these). Some would like to separate religion from this list, letting ethnicity incorporate the other attributes. From the viewpoint of political identities and group solidarity, this separation is a semantic quibble. It becomes critical, however, when ethnicity and religion clash (East and West Pakistan before 1971, Kashmiri Hindus and Muslims, Irish Protestants and Catholics, black and white American Christians). 8

How is a nation different from an ethnic group? An ethnic group may do without a state of its own; a nation implies bringing ethnicity and statehood together. Nationalism therefore becomes a principle that “the political and the national unit should be congruent” ( Gellner 1983, 1 ). This congruence may be satisfied in a federal arrangement, or may head for nothing short of sovereignty.

In official as opposed to academic terminology, another term “nationality” is also used, particularly in the former Soviet bloc. In this three‐tiered classification, a nation is a group with a political and territorial home; a nationality is a large ethnic group without such a home (but with cultural rights pertaining to language and sometimes religion); and an ethnic group is a smaller collectivity, different from a nationality but not large enough to be called a nationality. In the post‐1945 Yugoslavia, Croats, Macedonians, Serbs, Slovenes, and Montenegrins were called nations; Albanians, Hungarians, Bulgarians were nationalities; and Austrians, Greeks, Jews, Germans, and Poles were “other nationalities and ethnic groups.” In the 1971 constitution, Muslims of Yugoslavia were promoted from a nationality to a nation.

For a transition from an ethnic group to nationhood, territorial concentration remains central. Dispersed ethnic groups typically demand affirmative action (preference in jobs, education, political representation) and protection of language, religion, and culture. National demands for sovereignty or federalism normally come from territorially concentrated ethnic groups (Québécois, Basques, Sikhs, Kashmiris, Bengali Muslims, Eritreans, Filipino Muslims, Sri Lanka Tamils, Acehnese).

This does not, however, have to be so. The Basques in Spain have had a separatist movement; the Catalans, though territorially concentrated, have not. Tamil Nadu in India saw signs of separatism till 1962; its neighbors Kerala, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh never did. All of these are linguistically cohesive, territorially concentrated, and culturally distinctive states. In other words, a conjunction of territorial concentration and ethnicity may be a necessary condition for nationalism, though it is manifestly not sufficient.

When the national demand goes beyond a federal arrangement of power, the preexisting larger territorial nationalism is challenged: ethnicity begins to seek territoriality and therefore nationhood. Given that territoriality in the current state system also generally tends to define citizenship, a challenge to the existing notion of citizenship is also posed. Three sacrosanct principles of the nation‐state system, thus, become vulnerable: territoriality, citizenship, and sovereignty. Since the number of territorially based ethnic groups is currently larger than the number of nationstates, the existing nation‐state system must be considered vulnerable. Some ethnic conflicts may not remain simply ethnic; they may eventually take steps towards separatist nationalism.

1.2 Conflict and Violence

A distinction between violence and conflict is also necessary. In an ethnically plural society, where freedom of expression is not curtailed, some conflict on identity‐based cleavages is typically to be expected. Indeed, such conflict may mark all multiethnic polities, authoritarian or democratic. As compared to an authoritarian polity, a democratic political system may simply have a more open expression of such conflicts. In pursuit of political order and stability, authoritarian polities may push ethnic discontent under the surface and induce long phases of ethnic silence, but a coercive outlawing, or forcible containment, often increases the odds of an accumulated outburst, when an authoritarian system starts liberalizing, or when its legitimacy begins to unravel.

Indonesia is an excellent example. During the Suharto era (1966–98), on ethnocommunal issues the government had a so‐called SARA policy. SARA was an acronym for ethnic ( suku ), religious ( agama ), racial ( ras ), and inter‐group ( antargolongan ) differences. These differences were neither to be mobilized, nor discussed in the public realm. In the 1980s, Suharto's Indonesia came to be widely viewed as a stable and well‐ordered society. However, by 1998, as the system began to lose its legitimacy, horrendous group violence took place on ethnocommunal lines ( Bertrand 2004 ). The former Yugoslavia is another example, although it remains unclear whether ethnic rivalries there were contained more by laws or by an ideological system which, much like the former Soviet Union, sought to create a new communist identity overriding the ethnic and national identities that had so hobbled the Balkans in the first half of the twentieth century.

In contrast, conflicts are a much more regular feature of pluralistic democracies, for if different ethnic groups exist and the freedom to organize is available, there are likely to be struggles over: which language should be used in schools and employment; whether migrant ethnic groups should be allowed entry into the country and/ or given restricted rights; whether different groups should be under one civil law for marriages, divorce, and property inheritance, or multiple family laws should be derived from the diverse religious or customary codes; whether religious dress can be allowed in public spaces; whether some groups should be given the benefits of affirmative action, how, and to what extent; whether the allocation of public resources favors some ethnic groups more than others. India and the United States are good illustrations of how democracies frequently witness such conflicts. Democracy is no guarantee that ethnic conflicts will not flare up. Indeed, some argue that democracies might give politicians incentives to play the ethnic card ( Snyder 2000 ; Wilkinson 2004 ).

The conceptual issue is whether conflict is violent, or it is pursued within the institutionalized channels of the polity. When ethnic protest is channeled through parliaments, assemblies, and bureaucracies, or when it takes the form of strikes and non‐violent demonstrations on the streets, it is an expression of conflict to be sure, but it is not a form of ethnic violence. Such institutionalized conflict, which can be quite healthy for a polity in many ways, must not be equated with riots, pogroms, and civil wars. The explanations for violent and non‐violent conflict may also be different.

1.3 Types of Violent Conflict

One more conceptual clarification concerns the various forms of violent conflict. Collective violence, not individual violence or homicides, is at issue here. Collective violence can be defined as violence perpetrated by a group on another group (as in riots and pogroms), by a group on an individual (as in lynchings), by an individual on a group (as in terrorist acts), by the state on a group, or by a group on agencies of the state (as in civil wars).

The most widespread collective violence is typically divisible into three forms— riots, pogroms, and civil wars. Riots refer to a violent clash between two groups of civilians, often characterized as mobs. While, in riots, the neutrality of the state may be in doubt, the state does not give up the principle of neutrality. In pogroms, typically a majority community attacks an unarmed minority, and the principle of neutrality is for all practical purposes dropped by the state. The state administration either looks away, or sides with the attacking group. In civil wars, the state not only abandons the principle of neutrality, but it either becomes a combatant fighting an armed rebel group, or is physically unable to arbitrate between two armed groups fighting each other ( Kalyvas 2006 ).

The key difference between pogroms and civil wars is that in the former, the target group—typically a minority—is hapless and unarmed, whereas in civil wars both combating sides are armed. Riots or pogroms typically precede civil wars, as in Sri Lanka in the 1980s, but all riots and pogroms do not lead to civil wars. Unlike Sri Lanka, the massive 1969 Malay—Chinese riots in Malaysia did not culminate in a civil war, nor for that matter have the Muslim—Christian riots of northern Nigeria in the 1990s led to a civil war there. 9

2 Traditions of Explanatory Enquiry

2.1 essentialism.

Essentialism is the oldest tradition of enquiry in the subfield of ethnicity and has been seriously under attack of late. It emerged at a time when the early enthusiasm, witnessed at the birth of the newly decolonized nations after the Second World War, had begun to ebb. In country after country, the story seemed to be similar. Nation building encountered serious ethnic resistance from within. Why was that so? Why could smaller ethnic identities not be subsumed under larger country‐or state‐level identities that governments were ostensibly seeking to create?

The first scholarly response was simply that the decolonized states were new, but ethnic, or communal animosities—sometime also called national animosities—were old and, therefore, deeply historically rooted. The primordialism of ethnic groups was a stronger bond and a more powerful motivator of human conduct than the pull of civic ties being forged by the new states ( Geertz 1963 ; Shils 1957 ). This view found its most systematic exponent in Connor (1972 , 1994 ). As late as the early 1990s when, as discussed later, the constructivist attack on essentialism was at its full cry and only journalists were willing to use the term “ancient hatreds” ( Kaplan 2003 ), Connor was willing to argue that “man is a national,” not rational, “animal,” and at the core of nationalism lay the notion of “shared blood” or “shared ancestry” ( Connor 1994 ).

Essentialism in this form had three primary weaknesses. The first had to do with variations. If ethnic antagonisms were so deep‐rooted, why did ethnic violence rise and fall at different times? Yugoslavia may have come apart with a nearly all‐consuming violent thud in the 1980s and 1990s, but there was a long stretch of peace during the socialist period. Do institutional designs not change human motivations? Did violence at the time of Yugoslavia's break‐up show that in times of state collapse, ethnic antagonisms flare up, or that ethnic hatreds caused the collapse of Yugoslavia? Another type of variation is interspatial. Why did the same groups live peacefully in some places, but not in others? Hindu—Muslim violence often flared up in certain parts of India, not all over India ( Varshney 2002 ; Wilkinson 2004 ).

Second, a lot of ethnic conflict in the world had nothing to do with old hostilities at all. Rather, older inhabitants of a land clashed with a relatively new migrant group, with little or no long history of contact. Can one establish the “primordial” or “ancient” roots of Chinese—Malay violence in Malaysia? The Chinese, after all, arrived in Malaysia mostly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Similarly, it was primarily in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that the Chinese came to Indonesia, and the Ibos flowed to northern Nigeria. Yet the anti‐Chinese violence in Indonesia and the anti‐Ibo violence in the Hausa‐dominated northern Nigeria in the twentieth century was as ferocious as that between Hindus and Muslims, both older groups, in India.

The third attack on essentialism emanated from what came to be called the constructivist school. To talk about nations having primordial animosities, the constructivists argued, was wrong. In arguments that over time shook the foundations of essentialism and became mainstream wisdom, constructivists argued that nations were constructed only in modern times ( Anderson 1983 ). Before the rise of modernity, most human interactions were on a small scale. Only ecclesiastical and dynastic communities spread beyond the local and the regional. The implication was that religious or dynastic animosities could be said to be pre‐modern, even primordial, but ethnic animosities had local or regional protocols. By bringing far‐flung people into the frame of human consciousness, it is modernity that changed the meaning of ethnicity and also led to nationhood. To speak of primordial ethnic or national antagonisms was historically false.

Essentialism, however, did not fully disappear, as was predicted and expected. These attacks—variations, modern provenance of conflicts, and constructivism—led to a fresh honing of arguments. Accepting the inadequacies of a Connor‐style argumentation, Petersen (2002) recast essentialism with psychological theories about emotions.

On “ancient hatreds,” he argued:

Most academics dismiss the “ancient hatreds” argument. They show how violent interethnic “histories” are often fabrications, inventions that serve the interests of rabble‐rousing elites. If “ancient hatreds” means a hatred that has produced uninterrupted ethic warfare, or an obsessive hatred consuming the daily thoughts of great masses of people, then the “ancient hatreds” arguments deserves to be readily dismissed. However, if hatred is conceived as a historically formed “schema” that guides action in some situations , then the conception should be taken more seriously. ( Petersen 2002, 62–3 , emphasis mine)

In short, the existence of hatred did not require a proof about its ancient origins. Even if hatred had non‐ancient origins, it could profoundly shape human behavior. Human nature was quite capable of expressing hatred. In what might be called a neo‐essentialist twist, Petersen turned an argument about primordial hatreds into an argument about human nature :

the motivation to participate in or support ethnic violence and discrimination [is] … inherent in human nature. Until we realize that the capacity to commit ethnic violence lies within all of us we are in danger of constantly being surprised at the emergence of forces from the “dark ages.” ( Petersen 2002, 1 )

Petersen built four models, based on four different kinds of emotions: fear, hatred, resentment, and rage. Fear as an emotion guides individuals in situations of security threats; hatred in conditions of historical grievance; resentment in settings of status discrepancies; and rage simply expresses a desire to “lash out” due to accumulated emotions, but without a specific target. A prediction was made with respect to how each emotion would work, and a test devised in Eastern Europe. Petersen's general argument, finally, was that resentment born out of status reversals explained most of the ethnic violence in twentieth‐century Eastern Europe during periods of state collapse (during and after the First and Second World Wars, and at the end‐game of communism). Hatred, fear, and rage explained fewer cases of violence, but they were also present.

Emotions have been, on the whole, neglected in social science theories about ethnic conflict. It is now clear that the field will have to engage Petersen's neo‐essentialist arguments. One potential line of engagement is obvious. What is the role of institutions in reining in, or redefining, emotions? Why do these emotions explode in times of state collapse, not when state authority is firmly anchored? Does that variation indicate something about our deep‐seated human nature, or about the causal role of institutions, in the outbreak of ethnic violence? A second question is about whether state collapse, even in Eastern Europe, necessarily leads to horrendous violence. Laitin (1998) argues that new identity formation after the end of communism was peaceful in the Baltic republics and Kazakhstan. What accounts for such dramatic variation?

2.2 Instrumentalism

The core idea of instrumentalism is that ethnicity is neither inherent in human nature nor intrinsically valuable. Ethnicity masks a deeper core of interests, which are either economic or political. Ethnicity is useful for gaining political power or for drawing resources from the state. That is why it is deployed so often in multiethnic societies. Conflicts take place because leaders strategically manipulate ethnicity for the sake of political power, or for extracting resources from the state ( Bates 1974 , 1983 ; Chandra 2004 ; Hechter 1986 ; Rabushka and Shepsle 1972 ).

This line of reasoning runs into several difficulties. 10 Even if we accept that leaders gain by mobilizing ethnicity and that is why they deploy ethnic symbols and idioms in politics, why should the masses come along? Why do leaders in multiethnic societies so often think that ethnicity is the means to power or for extracting resources from the state, not mobilization based on economic or ideological programs? Second, if the masses were also instrumental, would ethnic collective action not be crippled by free rider problems? One can perhaps understand why it would be instrumentally rational for someone to join an ethnic movement when it is close to capturing power, but why would ethic mobilization begin at all? A fuller account or inclusion of “selective incentives” ( Olson 1965 ) or “commitment” ( Sen 1973 ) is required. Third, if ex‐ante odds are quite high that ethnic mobilization or protest would lead to violence by another group, or to punitive action by the state, why should anyone participate in ethnic mobilization at all? Why would instrumentally rational people take such high risks? One could propose that people are coerced into participating in ethnic mobilization, but that would have to be demonstrated, not assumed.

In different ways, some of the more widely noted instrumentalist scholarship of the last decade and a half seeks to address these problems ( Hardin 1995 ; Fearon and Laitin 1996 ; Collier and Hoeffler 1998 , 2004 ; Collier, Hoeffler, and Sambanis 2005 ). Extending the idea of “focal points” originally proposed by Schelling (1963) , Hardin argues that the central strategic problem in ethnic mobilization is one of coordination, not one of collective action. In the latter, it is rational to “free ride,” but in coordination games, it is rational to cooperate so long as others are cooperating. A “charismatic leader,” a “focus,” is what one needs to reinforce expectation about the behavior of others.

To understand this point better, it is worth recalling the famous Schelling example:

When a man loses his wife in a department store without any prior understanding on where to meet if they get separated, the chances are good that they will find each other. It is likely that each will think of some obvious place to meet, so obvious that each will be sure that the other is sure that it is obvious to both of them. 11

The “lost and found” section of the department store, argued Schelling, could serve as one such obvious place, but not if there were many “lost and found” sections in the store. “Prominence” or “uniqueness” distinguished a focal point. That is why it could be used to facilitate the development of mutually consistent expectations. Seen this way, ethnicity could serve as a “focal point,” and ethnic mobilization would simply require coordination of expectations. Ethnicity did not have to be intrinsically valued for it to be politically useful.

Though ingenious, this resolution has its own difficulties. Two come to mind immediately ( Varshney 2003 ). First, why is ethnicity‐based mobilization akin to a coordination game, but class‐based mobilization a form of collective action saddled with free rider problems? Hardin's answer is that ethnicity provides “epistemological comforts of home,” but that restates the problem. Why should ethnicity provide these comforts, not class or party? After all, the Marxists‐Leninists had believed for much of the twentieth century that the Communist Party would be home to the new socialist man, replacing ethnicity or nationhood. Second, why should it be easier to mobilize ethnicity, despite the risks of injury, incarceration, or death? Saying ethnic mobilization is a mere coordination problem does not square with the well‐known risks of ethnic conflict. In short, can one really explain ethnic preferences in an entirely instrumental way, or is recourse to the psychological or cultural foundations of ethnicity necessary?

Fearon and Laitin (1996) respond to these difficulties by restricting the domain of instrumental rationality, even while using instrumentalist assumptions for developing their core argument. Instead of asking why there is so much ethnic conflict and violence in the world, they first note that the incidence of ethnic violence is lower than is normally believed. Instead of engaging in killings, many ethnic groups, in fact, live in peace. There is a gap between actual violence and what is theoretically possible.

What would explain inter‐ethnic peace and cooperation? Relying on the notion of ethnic groups as information networks, they game‐theoretically generate a powerful and unexplored idea as an equilibrium solution: “in‐group policing.” 12 Faced with provocation or attacks, a group could restrain its members from hitting back, and rely on similar restraining exercised by the other group. This is possible because each ethnic group has better information about its own members than about those of the other group, which in turn can allow each group to check who the in‐group “opportunists” are, meaning those who would use the provocation to retaliate.

Does this mean that explanation of ethnic conflict requires no recourse to psychological theories of grievance? Careful not to make universalistic claims, Fearon and Laitin explicitly lay out the limits of their theory:

We should emphasize … that we are not offering a full causal theory of either ethnic peace or ethnic violence. We specify what we believe are important causal mechanisms that appear to have been systematically neglected…But we do not pretend that our formulation or… mechanisms we identify tell the whole causal story. A richer story would surely include … narratives of interethnic injury. It might also include the motivations stemming from indignities suffered by peoples who are considered of lower rank and who seek to overturn a rigid social ordering. ( Fearon and Laitin 1996, 715 )

In short, an instrumental use of ethnicity—in this case, ethnicity as a communication and information device rather than an intense form of group attachment—may explain part of the phenomenon of violence, but historical indignities and injuries may well be relevant. Exploring a variety of conflicts indifferent settings should begin to show which motivations are present where. This argument leads to the possibility that ethnic conflict could have pluralistic microfoundations.

Let me now turn to another new argument. Collier and Hoeffler (1998 , 2004 ) are associated with the famous “greed versus grievance” framing of ethnic violence. Though they concentrate only on civil wars, an extreme form of ethnic conflict, their argument is worth considering here. The strength of their belief in instrumentalism has evolved in an educative manner.

Based on a large‐N statistical model, Collier and Hoeffler (1998) first argued that social scientists had been wrong to believe that civil wars were the consequence of accumulated grievances of a victimized or targeted ethnic group in society. A grievance‐based argument was simply equal to accepting the discourse of rebels. Instead, a greed‐based model had an infinitely better fit with data.

They model rebellion as an industry in which looting generated profits. Leaders of rebellions are driven by a desire to amass fortunes, and the masses join them, for in poor societies with very few economic opportunities, the opportunity costs of participation in a rebellion are low and the benefits—in the form of a share of the loot—quite substantial. Given their geographical concentration, natural resources are an especially “lootable commodity.” Civil wars predominantly erupt in economies highly dependent on natural resource extraction.

This was, arguably, the sharpest framing of the instrumentalist view ever witnessed in the field. And the notion that both models—greed and grievance—were tested with a large‐N dataset added a new punch. Instrumentalist arguments used to be about ethnic mobilization, something decidedly less violent than civil wars, and large‐N datasets were rarely, if ever, used for testing.

However, as the Collier—Hoeffler argument evolved, its sharpness and universality steadily diminished. When the dataset was enlarged, coding further finessed, and model specifications changed, they concluded that “we cannot reject one model in favor of the other” and “while the (greed) model is superior, some elements of the grievance model are likely to add to its explanatory power” ( Collier and Hoeffler 2004, 577 ). Still later, the findings of the statistical model were subjected to carefully chosen case studies because even if the statistical model “predicted all cases of civil war onset perfectly, it would still not be able to tell us much about the process through which these outcomes (war or peace) are generated. By contrast, analyzing the process—the sequence of events and the interaction of variables in the (statistical) model over time—is the comparative advantage of case study designs. … Qualitative analysis can help us sort out the endogenous from the exogenous variables in the model” ( Collier Hoeffler, and Sambanis 2005, 2 ).

What, then, was the final conclusion? “The distinction between greed and grievance,” they argued, “should be abandoned for a more complex model that considers greed and grievance as inextricably fused motives for civil war” ( Collier, Hoeffler, and Sambanis 2005, 2 ).

Just as pure essentialism could not survive empirical scrutiny, pure instrumentalism also could not. Future work in this tradition is likely to be highly domain specific. Instrumental uses of ethnicity do exist and will continue to. But one will have to be clear about the kinds of questions for which either instrumentalist assumptions can be made, or instrumentalist claims can be sustained. Not all forms of ethnic behavior, or ethnic conflict, can be linked to instrumental rationality.

2.3 Constructivism

Constructivism is the new conventional wisdom in the field of ethnicity and nationalism. Its central idea is that our ethnic and national identities are constructs of the modern epoch. This claim is relatively straightforward for national identities, for work across a whole range of traditions shows that nations were born with the rise of the industrial age. 13 Political units took the form of city‐states or empires before that. 14

But the argument is also made with respect to ethnic identities ( Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983 ; Mamdani 1996 ; Vail 1989 ; Suny 2001 ). The claim is not that there were no Turks, Han Chinese, Tibetan, Zulus, or Scots in pre‐modern times. Rather, in pre‐modern times, mass identities were locally or regionally based. Only some kinds of identities—for example, the aristocratic or ecclesiastical—were extra‐local or extra‐regional. Modernity transformed the meaning of ethnic identities by bringing the masses into a vastly expanded framework of consciousness and meanings.

Three kinds of mechanisms have generally been identified to show how this came about—technological, ideational, and, in the former colonies, colonial policies, institutions, and practices. Anderson's Imagined Communities   (1983) , arguably the most influential text in the field of ethnicity and nationalism, calls attention to the rise of “print capitalism”—the arrival of the printing press and capitalism—as the basic mechanism through which local identities were transformed into larger national identities. 15 The boundaries of the political community typically depended on the spread of the vernacular and the decline of “truth languages” such as Latin or Sanskrit.

The second mechanism that constructivists now routinely embrace relies on the arguments made by Taylor (1994) about how modernity brought about ideational changes in human life. In pre‐modern times, one's identity—who am I?—was given by one's place in the traditional social structure. People accepted ascriptive social hierarchies, or their “stations” in life. In modern times, hierarchies may exist, but ascriptive hierarchies are not easily accepted. In pre‐modern times, the notion of honor , reserved only for a few, marked relations between people of different ranks. Modernity has introduced us to the notion of dignity , to which all regardless of rank are entitled. Finally, the pursuit of dignity is dialogical, not monological—that is, it takes place in interaction with others. Our identity is

partly shaped by recognition or its absence, often my misrecognition of others, and so a person or groups of people can suffer real damage, real distortion, if the people or society around them mirror back to them a confining, demeaning, or contemptible picture of themselves. Nonrecognition or misrecognition can inflict harm, can be a form of oppression, imprisoning someone in a false, distorted and reduced mode of being. ( Taylor 1994, 25 )

Though acceptable and internalized in the past, much of ethnic or national assertion in the modern world is about resisting such “confining, demeaning or contemptible” pictures that the dominant groups—through colonial rulers and state bureaucracies—have often relayed to the subordinate groups. The keyword here is dignity, not material self‐interest. 16

Given the heavy reliance on historical detail, constructivism first flourished in the discipline of history ( Weber 1976 ; Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983 ; Vail 1989 ). In comparative politics, Anderson (1983) was the first to make the constructivist argument. Some others also joined in, especially concentrating on the structure of colonial rule and colonial policies. Laitin (1986) explained why in Yoruba politics in Nigeria, religious cleavage was missing, even though both Islam and Christianity dominated the religious landscape. He argued that for reasons of their own, the British did not allow religion to be the basis of politics in Yorubaland, electing instead to emphasize tribal cleavages. By the time they left, the tribal cleavages were so deeply institutionalized that they became the political common sense of Yorubaland. Chatterjee (1986) argued that the images of Indians British rulers created and propagated, once they conquered India, led to the development of nationalism in India. These three examples notwithstanding, constructivism remained on the margins of how ethnicity was studied in comparative politics in the 1980s and for much of the 1990s. Constructivism's rise in other disciplines, especially history, far preceded its incorporation in political science.

Although it is by now customary to state that constructivism has become the dominant mode of argumentation about ethnicity within political science as well, one of its key weaknesses ought to be noted. Constructivism accounts for identity formation well, but it does not do a good job of explaining ethnic conflict. Often, a distinction between identities and conflict is not drawn. The key constructivist idea on conflict is that each society has a historically constructed “master cleavage”— Protestant versus Catholic in Northern Ireland, Hindu versus Muslim in India, black versus white in the USA—and political entrepreneurs can easily insert local, often trivial, incidents, events and rumors into the “master narrative,” creating inflammable situations and instigating violence ( Brass 1997 , 2003 ). In social scientific terms, a causal role is thus assigned to master narratives and political entrepreneurs.

The problem is that the master cleavage is typically at the national level and political entrepreneurs are also available throughout the length and breadth of a country, but ethnic violence tends to be highly locally, or regionally, concentrated. In the 1960s, racial violence in the USA was heavily concentrated in northern cities; southern cities, though intensely politically engaged, did not have riots ( Horowitz 1983 ). A mere eight cities in India, holding less than 6 percent of the country's population, accounted for just a little less than half of all deaths in Hindu—Muslim riots during 1950–95 ( Varshney 2002 ). Between 1990 and 2003, fifteen districts of Indonesia, in which less than 7 percent of the nation's population lived, had close to 85 percent of deaths in all forms of group violence short of secessionary wars ( Varshney, Panggabean, and Tadjoeddin 2006 ).

How can one explain local variations with a nation‐level constant (“master cleavage,” “master narrative”) and the countrywide ubiquity of political entrepreneurs? The answer perhaps lies in (a) how local structures of some kind discourage political entrepreneurs from inserting local incidents into the master narrative; or (b) how political entrepreneurs are unable to instigate violence even when they insert local events into the larger narrative; or (c) how the presence of local or regional narratives counters the power of a master narrative ( Varshney 1997 ). Constructivist arguments about violence are thus far built on case studies of violence, not on a comparison of peaceful and violent cases. Selection bias has led to significant weaknesses; studying variations has explanatory promise.

A final question about constructivism remains. Are constructivism and instrumentalism merely two sides of the same coin? Chandra (2001) has argued that divisions in the field of ethnicity and nationalism should simply be viewed as those between essentialists and constructivists. According to her, Geertz (1963) is an example of essentialism, and constructivist arguments include not only those made by Anderson (1983) and Laitin (1986) , reviewed above, but also those made by Bates (1974) , included here as an example of instrumentalist reasoning. To recall, the latter argument is that ethnicity is a conduit for extracting resources from the state; nothing more need be said or assumed. According to Chandra, what distinguishes constructivism is the notion that “ethnic groups are fluid and endogenous to a set of social, economic and political processes” ( Chandra 2001, 7 ).

The instrumentalist and constructivist approaches are undoubtedly opposed to the primordialist view of ethnicity, but that is where the similarity ends. According to instrumentalist reasoning, ethnic identity is not valuable in and of itself; it is basically a mask for a core of “real” interests, political or economic. As interests change, masks also do, making ethnic groups “fluid.” One should, therefore, expect the same people to pick different sides of their multiple identities at different times and at different places.

This view should not be equated with constructivism. Constructivism is not about the radical short‐run fluidity of identities. It is about the long‐run formation, and the consequent stickiness , of identities. In Anderson's case, the argument is epochal: he discusses how the birth of print capitalism in modern times created national identities. Weber (1976) shows how peasants were turned into Frenchmen over more than a century after the French Revolution—through a conscription army and public schools. Colley's argument is about how “Britishness” emerged out of “Englishness,” “Scottishness,” and “Welshness” over more than a century (1707–1837), and how the presence of France as a “Catholic enemy” and a colonial empire especially blunted the historically rooted intensity of English—Scottish rivalries ( Colley 1993 ).

Each of these scholars demonstrates how new identities came about, but it does not follow that they view identities as radically fluid . 17 That identities are constructed does not mean that they do not become internalized and institutionalized, and acquire meaning.

Constructivism is basically about the long‐run stickiness, instrumentalism about the short‐run fluidity. 18 While equally opposed to primordialism, they are fundamentally different in their assumptions, explanatory ambition, and methodological impulse.

2.4 Institutionalism

If constructivism has come to shape the literature of the formation of ethnic identities , institutionalism has long dominated the arguments about ethnic conflict in comparative politics. The core idea here is that the designs of political institutions—consociational or majoritarian polities, proportional representation or first‐past‐the‐post electoral systems, federal or unitary governments—explain why some multiethnic societies have violence, and others, peace.

Ethnic pluralism, it is argued, requires political institutions distinct from those that are suitable for ethnically undivided societies. A mechanical transfer of institutional forms regardless of whether a society is marked by deep ethnic divisions can cause ethnic violence. The foundations of such arguments go all the way back to John Stuart Mill in the nineteenth century. Mill had claimed that common loyalty to a political center was a precondition for a democracy to function. A multiethnic society was likely to have many loyalties, not one. Only under the tutelage of a more politically advanced ethnic group can order be maintained and ethnic violence avoided. Tutelage was necessary until a civic consciousness towards a political center, not to an ethnic group, emerged.

Nobody can suppose that it is not beneficial to a Breton or a Basque of the French Navarre to be brought into the current of ideas and feelings of a highly civilized and cultivated people— to be a member of the French nationality… than to sulk on his own rocks, the half‐savage relic of past times, revolving in his own little mental orbit, without participation or interest in the general movement of the world. The same remark applies to the Welshman or the Scottish Highlander, as members of the British nation. ( Mill 1990, 385–6 )

Colonial tutelage is no longer popular, but the arguments about whether multiethnic societies should have majoritarian democracies continue to be debated. Lijphart (1977) and Horowitz (1985 , 1991 )have defined the field. Lijphart continues to argue in favor of consociationalism, in which each ethnic group's political and cultural affairs are left to its elite, and inter‐ethnic compromises are made only at the elite level. Horowitz argues against it, suggesting that the electoral system should make it impossible for political parties to win power unless they appeal across ethnic groups, not lock them in a permanent intra‐ethnic embrace. The former is more likely to lead to peace, the latter to violence.

This debate has greatly advanced our understanding of ethnic conflict. 19 However, it has left one big problem unresolved. The Lijphart—Horowitz arguments have basically been about national‐level institutions. Using national‐level concepts, we certainly explain why country A, rather than country B, tends to have more ethnic violence, but we cannot understand the regional or local variations within the same country. For institutional explanations to be relevant to local or regional variance, the electoral designs or institutions must themselves vary locally or regionally.

The neo‐institutionalist work of recent vintage goes in the direction of uncovering local institutional variations. Varshney (2002) argues that local variation in conflict is best explained by whether local civic organizations, including political parties, exist and whether they integrate ethnic communities or segregate them. Wilkinson (2004) argues that in a first‐past‐the‐post electoral system, it is the effective number of parties and the need for minority support—both of which can vary regionally and/or locally—that determine whether ethnic violence will occur or peace will obtain.

A second new development in the literature is the focus on the relationship between institutions and identity choice. Lijphart (2001) accepts that when consociational theory was developed in the 1960s and 1970s, an essentialist view of identities prevailed. In line with those times, he also assumed that ethnic identities were fixed, and appropriate political institutions were to be constructed in light of the fixity of ethnic identities.

The new literature shows how institutions can transform the salience of identities. Posner (2005) argues that since colonial times, Zambians have had two axes of identification: language and tribe. Zambia has four language groups and over six dozen tribes. Since independence, Zambia has also had two kinds of overarching institutions: multiparty rule and one‐party rule. Under the former, Zambians embraced language as the basic political identity, and under the latter, they chose tribe. Under a multiparty system, they had to elect a constituency representative as well as the president. This meant that the political arena was national, and the larger identification (language), therefore, made sense. Under one‐party system, only the constituency representative was to be elected, not the president. The political arena was, thus, reduced to the constituency level, and the smaller identification (tribe) became more relevant. 20

Such reasoning, it should be noted, was implicit in Horowitz (1985) . His critique of consociationalism was, in part, based on the fact that identities could change and the elite of an ethnic group, therefore, could not be expected to keep the loyalty of that group for ever. He also argued that the changing political arena would reshape the cleavages. But in the new literature, this idea is explicit. Identity choice is squarely posed as a dependent variable to be explained. As a result, we have a more self‐conscious and focused explication of the institutional determinants of identity choice ( Chandra 2004 ; Laitin 1998 ; Posner 2005 ; Waters 1990 ).

A marriage of constructivism and institutionalism is the third new development in the literature. To recall, a general stickiness of master cleavages is the core idea of constructivism. Institutionalism, in comparison, has begun to accept fluidity of identities, depending on the institutional context. Can historical stickiness and conjunctural fluidity be combined?

Posner (2005) begins to show how. 21 The contemporary choices between language and tribe in Zambia may be determined by whether the country has a one‐party or multiparty rule, as noted above. But colonial history, argues Posner, had already deeply institutionalized only two identities: linguistic and tribal. This was because of the administrative and recruitment policies and census practices of British rulers and companies. Several other axes of identification were conceivable.

The innovative marriage of constructivism and institutionalism on identity formation/choice faces some tougher challenges ahead. Van Evera (2001) has posed the important question of whether identities can be fluid, if formed or deepened by violent conflict . In other words, is Zambia an easy case? In Zambian history, is there anything like India's Hindu—Muslim violence at the time of partition, Malaysia's Malay— Chinese violence 1945–69, Sri Lanka's Sinhala—Tamil violence since 1977, and the several descents into ethnic warfare in the Balkans? Van Evera claims that if violent conflict constructs, or deepens, identities, they cannot be easily reconstructed. Future research under the marriage of constructivism and institutionalism may have to respond to this challenge.

3 Conclusion

Three conclusions can be drawn from the arguments above. First, if one thinks of cumulation in Popperian terms—as progress through a systematic disconfirmation of theories—then only two theoretical ideas have been knocked over in the last ten to fifteen years. No one seriously argues any more that ethnic identity is primordial, nor that it is devoid of any intrinsic value and used only as a strategic tool. Pure essentialists or pure instrumentalists do not exist any longer. Nor is it likely that they will re‐emerge, given the force of empirical evidence. Second, the traditions which produced these theories, however, continue. Innovation within has taken place, or a new set of unresolved problems promises innovation. Essentialism has moved towards an argument about human nature, especially in conditions of state collapse. Instrumentalism has sought to restrict its domain, or begun to think of models in which “greed and grievance” will be “inextricably fused.” Constructivism has to sort out whether subnational and local variations in conflict can be explained within its own guiding assumptions and principles. Institutionalism has to ascertain whether identities are fluid only under some circumstances, and how fluid they are. Third, the field has become methodologically highly self‐conscious and sophisticated and that is only to be welcomed. However, methodological disputes or methodological advances alone will not generate significant progress. 22 Some of the most creative work in the future is likely to be problem and puzzle driven and may well emerge from border crossings and mixed approaches. Of course, not all borders can be crossed. It is, for example, not clear whether essentialism and instrumentalism can ever be brought together without grotesque internal inconsistencies. But border crossings between constructivism and institutionalism have been initiated, and should certainly be more easily possible. The results could be highly instructive.

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As stated in the introductory chapter of Horowitz (1985, 13) .

For example, Brass (1974) ; Connor (1972) ; Geertz (1963) ; Shils (1957) ; Smith (1979) .

For example, Rudolph and Rudolph (1968); and Deutsch (1966) .

For whatever it is worth, it may be noted that according to “Google scholar”, as of February 1, 2007, Horowitz's Ethnic Groups in Conflict had been cited 807 times. Some works on nationalism have been cited more, but none more on ethnicity or ethnic conflict.

This essay is reproduced as Brubaker and Laitin (2004) , where the section I have cited is on p. 92.

For example, the arguments about conflict in Horowitz (1985) were based on the commonalities principle. In his more recent work, Horowitz has taken note of variance and dealt with it. See Horowitz (2001 , ch. 12 ).

See Varshney (2006) and Laitin (2006) . It should also be noted that the search for commonalities is quite valid if one is identifying the characteristics of the phenomenon or problem at hand.

See, however, a new proposal in Chandra (2006) .

The last civil war in Nigeria took place in the late 1960s. It had nothing to do with Muslim—Christian divisions. It was ethnically driven.

These criticisms are based on Horowitz (1985 , 2001 ), and Varshney (2003) .

Schelling (1963, 54) . We are, of course, talking about the pre‐cellphone days.

It should be noted that “in‐group policing” remains a deductive idea, still to be systematically and empirically tested. The fear of “spiraling” produces the other equilibrium solution, meaning individuals of one group could be expected to attack the other group indiscriminately in response to an attack, which could lead to escalating violence, which in turn would induce cooperation.

However, see Kedourie (1993) .

For the link between nations and modernity, see, among others, Greenfeld (1992) .

According to “Google scholar”, as of February 1, 2007, Anderson's Imagined Communities had been cited over 6,300 times, followed by Gellner's Nations and Nationalism (1,449 times), and Taylor's Multiculturalism and the Politics of Recognition (1,205 times). All three texts are covered in this chapter.

Technical change—in the form of print capitalism—is the centerpiece of Anderson (1983) , but Taylor's ideational change is often implicit in his arguments about the birth of nationalism in the former colonies. “Creole pioneers” felt humiliated in Spanish America, rebelling against the Spanish rulers ( Anderson 1983 , ch. 4 ).

One should also note that Laitin (1986) was profoundly opposed to an instrumental view of ethnic identity formation, though his positions changed later ( Fearon and Laitin 1996 ; Laitin 1998 ). Consider the following arguments in the earlier book: Rational choice theorists & cannot tell us if ultimately butter is better than guns; it can tell us that at a certain point the production of a small number of guns will cost us a whole lot of butter, and at that point it is probably irrational to produce more guns. Within a political structure, individuals constantly make marginal decisions. (Rational choice) theories can give us a grasp on how individual political actors are likely to make choices within that structure. (Rational choice) theory cannot, however, handle long‐term and non‐marginal decisions. When market structures are themselves threatened, and people must decide whether to work within the new structure or hold on to the old—without an opportunity for a marginal decision—microeconomic theory is not applicable. & Structural transformations—changing the basic cleavage structure of a society—are not amenable to the tools of microeconomic theory. ( Laitin 1986, 148–9 ) Identity choice was not a marginal, but a structural decision. Instrumental rationality, therefore, was inapplicable.

The relationship between the long‐run stickiness of some identities and short‐run fluidity of others may have to be sorted out, but that is another matter altogether. The two should not be conflated.

For a review, see Reilly (2001) .

It should, however, be noted that Posner's argument, though presented as one about identity choice, could as easily be constructed as an argument about electoral choice. It is not the Zambian identities that changed with the alteration in the party system, but only how Zambians voted.

Posner argues that he is, in effect, combining constructivist, institutional, and instrumental‐ rational arguments. The last does not appear to be true. Technically speaking, an instrumental‐rational view requires that (a) the microfoundations be defined in terms of self‐interest, which is not affected by “framing;” and (b) given those microfoundations, collective action problems be resolved, for group action is, by definition, riddled with free rider problems. The fact that colonial rulers created some institutions and rules, to which the subjects responded, is equal to a framing‐induced response, which takes Posner's argument towards cognitive rationality, whose roots lie in psychology, not towards instrumental rationality, whose roots lie in economics. Moreover, Posner assumes group action based on the meanings assigned by the colonial rulers. The free rider problem is not resolved. Posner's argument, thus, combines constructivism and institutionalism, but does not bring in instrumentalist reasoning in its technical sense. To see what is theoretically at stake here, see Sen (2002) ; Taylor (2006) ; Varshney (2003) .

For a recent methodological debate in the Weld, see the symposium on David Laitin's work Qualitative Methods ( 2006 ).

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Ethnic Violence

• Reference work entry
• First Online: 01 January 2023
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• Briones Bedell 3 ,
• Beatrice Conti 3 ,
• Louis Gosart 4 ,
• Ulia Gosart 5 ,
• Madhumita Gopal 6 &
• Isabella Samutin 3  

Ethnic violence refers to the political, ethnic, religious, and cultural motivations which perpetuate violent conflicts between groups, and the actual mechanisms that sustain these conflicts. Within this entry, ethnic violence is defined in the contexts of collective identity and consciousness, the mobilization of groups into military action, and a multifaceted definition of ethnicity.

Introduction

Ethnic violence remains a prominent topic in contemporary journalism, policy, research, and advocacy. Despite the popularity of this subject matter, the actual instances of ethnic conflicts remain infrequent. Ethnic violence assumes a prominent place in public imagination due to the horrifying nature of the violent conflicts, not because they are pervasive or impossible to prevent (Brubaker and Laitin 1998 ). Nevertheless, ethnically framed military struggles continue to occur, such as recent events in twenty-first century Myanmar, in which an ethnic cleansing campaign supported...

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Bedell, B., Conti, B., Gosart, L., Gosart, U., Gopal, M., Samutin, I. (2023). Ethnic Violence. In: Romaniuk, S.N., Marton, P.N. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Global Security Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74319-6_42

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Violence in Twentieth Century Africa

Mwf 10:00-10:50, ethnicity and ethnic conflict.

There is no agreement as to the exact number of ethnicities in Africa, although it is estimated to be in the thousands (Click here for a list of some of the larger ethnicities that have been identified in Africa https://goo.gl/oSC77M ) Cataloguing Africa’s ethnic populations is difficult not only due to the vast number and variety of ethnicities, but also to the fact that individual ethnicities are in a state of constant change. Therefore, it is difficult to generalize how ethnicities come into existence, moreover identify an exact definition of ethnicity. Broadly speaking, an ethnicity is a group of people who share an identity, which is marked by a characteristic such as language, culture, leadership, or inhabited territory. One must understand that an ethnicity is, in essence, a social contract, a product of society and social interaction between people. In Africa, ethnicity as a social construct has been shaped by African and European colonial actions (Berman 9). Africans constructed ethnicity by forming communities where those in power offered protection and wealth (in the form of land and livestock) in exchange for loyalty and labor. These groups created a culture, a language and a hierarchy of power governed by rules and traditions, which made them distinct. During the process of European exploration and colonization, European powers grew attached to the label “tribes” as a reference for the indigenous peoples who had been colonized.

Ethnicity: Reshaped and Transformed

Authors Sharp and Boonazier argue that ethnicity defined in the context of colonialism can be transformed, and that people have the ability to claim and reclaim ethnicity (405). One group that reclaimed their ethnic identity in South Africa is the Nama people. Natives of Namaqualand, the Nama were seen as inferior relative to the white colonizers who took over South Africa. The Nama became a dispossessed people- stripped of their rights and land (Sharp and Boonzaier, 407). The word Nama, in and of itself, took on a negative connotation, as it was associated with being inferior. During apartheid, the National Parks Board operated with no regard for nonwhites who inhabited South Africa. White colonial settlers and their ancestors held power in South Africa, and undermined black communities living in Namaqualand. For years the Nama culture was suppressed and the natives of Namaqualand tried to assimilate to Afrikaans culture. They did so because they aspired to belong to a group that held a higher social status and hoped to be accorded similar benefits. With the establishment of the Richtersveld National Park in Namaqualand in 1991, a surge of Nama pride and identity emerged. The opening ceremony for the communal reserve included a performance by the Nama Choir, which sang Nama songs and the construction of a traditional Nama house called a matijieshuis (Sharp and Boonzaier 406). The Nama people reclaimed their identity in order to lay claim to the land. It is important to note, however, that the Nama songs that were sung were performed in the Afrikaans language. This is evidence that the Nama identity had also evolved as a result of years of Afrikaaner rule and the incorporation of Afrikaaner cultural elements into Nama ethnicity.

Ethnic Conflict Definition and Overview

Ethnic conflict is a concept that is difficult to define and perhaps, more difficult to comprehend. Conflict between ethnicities is a phenomenon that has occurred for hundreds of years and in all corners of the earth. Yet, for an in-depth understanding ethnic conflict it is critical to address the following questions: What precipitates bloodshed between ethnic groups? Why are some parts of the world more susceptible to conflict, whereas others enjoy relative tranquility? And finally, why does ethnic conflict continue to exist in modern society? In Ethnic Conflict authors Karl Cordell and Stefan Wolff define ethnic conflict as such: “ The term conflict describes a situation in which two or more actors pursue incompatible, yet from their individual perspectives entirely just, goals. An ethnic conflict is one particular form of this: that in which the goals of at least one party are defined in (exclusively) ethnic terms, and the primary fault line of confrontation is one of ethnic distinctions”(5). Throughout Africa myriad ethnic groups exist, each with its unique culture, customs, and political institutions. Given its diversity, it is not surprising that Africa has, therefore, experienced a vast number of civil wars and genocides directly related to fissures that have developed along ethnic lines.

The Root of Ethnic Conflict

Many theories have been proposed regarding the genesis of ethnic conflict, one of the most important being the theory of rational choice (Cordell and Wolff 16). Rational choice theory builds its argument on the belief that: “Violence is predicated on the fear of an imminent violent attack by an opponent who threatens the very survival of the group and its members”(Cordell and Wolff 16). In essence, the use of violence is often practiced as a means of security. For example, if ethnic group A is worried that ethnic group B threatens their existence or security, ethnic group A may choose to destroy ethnic group B, and vice versa. Additionally, the origin of ethnic conflict is often closely associated with social status. In Ethnic Groups in Conflict, Donald Horowitz categorizes the societal precursor to ethnic conflict into two separate systems, an unranked societal system and a ranked system (26). Horowitz describes a ranked society stating, “Ranked systems typically have ritualized modes of expressing the lower status or contamination of the subordinate groups. These may include restrictions on eating, dress, marriage, and social contact” (26). Furthermore, Horowitz describes an unranked social system as a system not suffering from internal conflict, but rather scenarios in which two rival ethnicities compete for the superiority within their respective culture (27). Ultimately, the dynamic between and within ethnic groups more often then not leads to widespread exploitation and violence. Moreover, cultural heritage and religion contribute to the genesis of ethnic conflict. People from different ethnic groups immigrate and relocate to new regions or countries, often leading to an outbreak in violence. Maykel Verkuyten, author of The Social Psychology of Ethnic Identity, articulates this phenomenon stating, “ Many people from ethnic minority groups, for example, have cultural background that differs from that of the indigenous inhabitants. Immigrants…can not simply choose to do away with their childhood and everything they have learned culturally” (79). Differences in religion further exacerbate such cultural differences, as ethnicities of Christian or Muslim denominations may use their religious differences as a justification for coercion, exploitation, and violence.

A pile of machetes utilized by the Tutsi to slaughter the Hutu.   Machetes were a common farming tool, and a relatively cheap and effective way to kill. The nature of Machete’s being used kill Hutu, is a testament to the horrifyingly personal nature of the Rwandan Genocide.

The Shadow of Colonialism

Although globally widespread, ethnic conflict has been particularly prevalent in Africa. The pervasion of ethnic conflict within this region is due to the lingering effects of colonial rule. In what is now known as “The Scramble for Africa,” colonial powers divided Africa and subsequently reshaped the political territory constituting African states (Griffiths 207). The issue of regional reorganization has been further complicated by the colonial implementation of indirect rule. Indirect rule was a method utilized by colonial powers to control regions/kingdoms of Africa. Created by Sir Frederick Lugard, indirect rule was an “administrative system in which colonial powers used traditional African Leaders and Institutions to govern and administer”(Meert, Colonial Violence Leture). Although indirect rule initially appeared to be an innocuous form of government, the African populace soon discovered the insidious nature of such a system. In the essay, Reconsidering Indirect Rule: The Nigerian Example , author Obaro Ikime explains the danger of indirect rule stating, “ One of the major objections which some people see in accepting the warrant chief system as one of indirect rule is that the warrant chiefs appointed by the British did not represent the traditional authority of the people of the area and as such were no more than artificial creatures of the British administration” (422). The true danger of indirect rule lay in the mixture of ethnic groups traditionally tied to certain areas of land. Furthermore, corrupt minority governments (ethnic minority) often mistreated and exploited its populace based on the ethnicity of its subjects.

The Repercussions

Sadly, Africa is a continent that has been continually plagued by the effects of ethnic conflict (civil war, genocide). From the conflict between the southern Igbo and the northern Hausa in the Biafra War, to the ethnic cleansings in Darfur and Rwanda, Africa has suffered tremendously as a result of ethnic discord. The Biafra War, also known as the Nigerian Civil War, is an educative example when studying African ethnic conflict. The Biafra War began shortly after Nigeria gained independence from Great Britain, and as a young inexperienced nation the divisiveness of ethnic conflict soon engulfed the nascent country.

During British rule the northern region of Nigeria was largely secluded from the southern and eastern regions. The distribution of wealth was skewed, as the Igbo people of the southeast region had greater prosperity due to palm oil and petroleum resources (Meert, Biafran War Lecture). In contrast to the Hausa who occupied the north and Yoruba who occupied the southwest, the southeastern Igbo were geographically isolated. As a result of their decentralized location, wealth, and religion, the Igbo people were marginalized and labeled as outsiders. In 1966 after the Coup of the Five Majors, Nigeria was thrown into a bloody civil war, and the Hausa- controlled government mobilized drastic measures to eliminate the Igbo population, which had chosen to secede and form the nation of Biafra (Uchendu 395). The civil war soon evolved into an ethnic cleansing, as over 1 million Igbo were starved to death in a systematic procedure known as Kwashiorkor (Meert, Biafran War Lecture).

A Brief Case Study: Rwanda

The African country of Rwanda has a long history of ethnic conflict. The most horrific display of violence occurred from April to July of 1994, between two of Rwanda’s ethnic groups: the Tutsi and the Hutu. The Rwandan Genocide, as it came to be known, was one of the bloodiest ethnic conflicts in history. The attempted extermination of the Tutsi by the Hutu people resulted in 800,000 deaths, the majority being Tutsi (Powers 386). One tool used to perpetuate the genocide was the radio, from which anti-Tutsi propaganda was transmitted. The program Kangura , which translates to “Wake Up,” broadcasted “The Ten Commandments of the Hutu.” This propaganda device declared “All Tutsis are dishonest in business,” and “Hutu must stop taking pity on the Tutsi,” along with other disparaging statement (Powers 338-39). (Click here for a list of the “Ten Commandments of the Hutu” http://goo.gl/m5R2NI ) Four of these commandments referred to women, and Kangura portrayed Tutsi women as dangerous seductresses who thought that they were superior to the Hutu (Nowrojee 13). This anti-Tutsi propaganda served to exaggerate the differences between the Hutu and Tutsi, and cause people to strongly identify with their own ethnicity. Therefore, when Hutu President Juvenal Habyarimana was killed after his plane was shot down on April 6, 1994, the Tutsi militia (The Rwandan Patriotic Front, a.k.a. the RPF) was blamed, and all Tutsis became the target of extreme violence. Both organized Hutu militia, as well nonmilitary citizens who were armed with clubs and machetes, participate in the mass killing of Tutsi. Hutu turned against their Tutsi neighbors, as no Tutsi was to be spared, including women and children (Nowrojee 13). One aspect of the genocide involved the mass rape of Tutsi women. These women were raped, forced to watch the murder of other family members, and then often killed. Tutsi women who managed to survive these atrocities claimed that their Hutu rapists mentioned their ethnicity either before or during the act of rape. The words of the rapists reflected anti-Tutsi propaganda, as victims recall their perpetrators saying, “We want to see if a Tutsi woman is like a Hutu Woman,” and “You Tutsi women think that you are too good for us” (Nowrojee 13). It is clear that much of the sexual violence was ethnically motivated, and that the Hutu who participated in the mass rape of Tutsi women were trying to humiliate and degrade the Tutsi people as a whole.

This photo was posted in the 2001 edition of the Atlantic Monthly. In this picture one may see the skeleton of a Hutu, with fragments of his skull missing. Human Rights experts acknowledge that the chipped skull was due to the bludgeoning of a machete.

A Difference In Opinions

In his review of The International Politics of the Nigerian Civil War 1967-1970 , Scholar Douglas G. Anglin critiques certain aspects of author John J Stremlau’s interpretation of the Nigerian Civil War. In reference to Stremlau’s analysis of the Nigerian Civil War Anglin states, “He has explicitly chosen not to dwell on the righteousness of either side. As a result, his judgments of crucial moral issues are at most implied; on many issues, he remains, as he frankly admits, ambivalent”(Anglin 322). Anglin identifies Stremlau’s inability, or rather unwillingness, to condemn the genocidal actions of the Hausa, an action that Anglin suggests delegitimizes the suffering of the Igbo People. Anglin continues to articulate his criticism stating, “Thus, Colonel Ojukwu is at no time openly denounced as a power-hungry politician who, at least in the later stages of the war sacrificed his people on the altar of his insatiable personal ambitions”(Anglin 322). Anglin furthermore criticizes Stremlau’s relative indifference in regards to the Nigerian Commonwealth: “Dr. Stremlau’s researches have been less than exhaustive is with respect to the Common Wealth—an organization for which he displays a curious antipathy, dismissing it rather disparagingly as the remnant of a former imperial system”(Anglin 333).

Works Cited

Anglin, Douglas G. Review of “The International Politics of the Nigerian Civil War1967-

1970” by John J. Stremlau. International Journal . 34.2 (1979). 332-33.

Web. 28 March 2016.

Berman, Bruce J. “Ethnicity and Democracy in Africa.” JICA Research Institute –

            Ethnic Diversity and Economic Instability in Africa: Policies for Harmonious

            Development. 22 (2010). 1-36. Web. 28 March 2016.

Cordell, Karl and Stefan Wolff. Ethnic Conflict: Causes-Consequences-Responses.

Cambridge:Polity Press. 2010. Print.

Griffiths, Ieuan. “The Scramble for Africa: Inherited Political Boundaries.” Geographical

            Journal 152.2 (1986): 204-16. Web. 28 March 2016.

Horowitz, Donald L. Ethnic Groups in Conflict. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1985.

Ikime, Obaro. “Reconsidering Indirect Rule: The Nigerian Example.” The Historical Society of

            Nigeria 4.3 (1968): 421-38. Web. 29 March 2016.

Meert, Abigail. “Biafran War: 1967-1970.” HIST 285-002 Violence in 20 th Century Africa.

Emory University. Rich Memorial Building, Atlanta. 10 March 2016. Lecture.

Meert, Abigail. “Institutional Violence and Colonial Rule: Colonial Rule in Bunyoro.”

HIST 285-002 Violence in 20 th Century Africa. Emory University. Rich Memorial

Building, Atlanta. 20 February 2016. Lecture.

Nowrojee, Binaifer. Shattered Lives: Sexual Violence During the Rwandan Genocide and Its

            Aftermath . New York: Human Rights Watch (1996). Web. 28 March 2016.

Powers, Samantha. A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. New York:

Basic Books. 2013. Web. 29 March 2016.

Sharp, John and Emile Boonzaier. “Ethnic Identity as Performance: Lessons from

Namaqualand.” Journal of Southern African Studies 20.3 (1994): 405-414. Web.

28 March 2016.

Uchendu, Egodi. “Recollections of Childhood Experiences during the Nigerian Civil War.”

Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 77.3 (2007): 393-418. Web. 28

March 2016.

Verkuyten, Maykel. The Social Psychology of Ethnic Identity. New York: Psychology Press.

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Article contents

Culture, religion, war, and peace.

• Yehonatan Abramson Yehonatan Abramson Department of Political Science, Johns Hopkins University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.44
• Published in print: 14 December 2013
• Published online: 30 November 2017

Religion and culture have historically been neglected in international relations (IR) theories and in political science more generally. It was only recently that IR began to consider the role of culture and religion in war and peace. Several main scholarly trends in the study of culture, religion, conflict, and peace can be identified, starting with the definitional problems that IR scholars had to deal with as they tried to incorporate culture and religion. The first major attempt in the IR field to understand war almost exclusively through the religious prism was that of Samuel Huntington, who in his Clash of Civilization (1993, 1996) identifies two main reasons why religion can cause war: first, religion can be considered as a primordial and immutable identity; and second, religion is a form of ideology rather than identity. The scholarly literature has also addressed themes such as religious fundamentalism and violence, the role of religious actors in international conflict, the practical use of religion and culture to promote peace via diplomacy, and engagement of religion and culture in existing peace theories such as democratic peace theory. Avenues for future research may include the relational and constantly changing aspects of religion; what, when, and how various religious interpretations receive political prominence in promoting conflict or peace; how religion can be used as an independent variable across cases; and the hidden set of assumptions that are embedded in the cultural and religion labels.

• international relations
• Samuel Huntington
• religious fundamentalism
• democratic peace theory

Introduction

Historically, international relations (IR) theories neglected ideational factors such as identity, religion, and culture. Although culture was a part of political science since Almond and Verba's seminal book in 1963 , IR's dominant schools of thought (Realism and Liberalism) overemphasized material, structural, and “objective” factors in explaining states’ behavior. Religion was ignored altogether not only in IR, but also in political science in general (Wald and Wilcox 2006 ; Bellin 2008 ). In recent years, IR began to consider the role of culture and religion. Culture as a variable appeared during the end of the Cold War together with the “constructivist turn” (Lapid and Kratochwil 1996 ; Checkel 1998 ; Finnemore and Sikkink 2001 ). Religion entered the field a decade later alongside a scholarly focus on ethnic and religious conflicts and religious-inspired terrorism (Fox 2001 :53; Philpott 2009 :184; Snyder 2011 :1).

This essay reviews the main scholarly trends in the study of culture and religion as sources for conflict and resources for peace. After a brief survey of the early works of political theorists regarding religion and war, this essay turns to review how the topic has been understood within IR. As the essay demonstrates, the attempt to deal with religion and culture as part of identity is a source of much confusion. In order to avoid confusion and reiteration of other comprehensive review essays on culture and IR (such as the essays titled “Culture and Foreign Policy Analysis” and “Nonrealist Variables: Identity and Norms in the Study of International Relations” in this work), this essay gives special focus to the topic of religion in studies of conflict and peace. In IR, religion is usually an independent variable that causes war or peace, or an intervening variable that shapes the probability of a conflict and its violent potential (Hasenclever and Rittberger 2000 :644–8). Some scholars focus on what religion says, while others research what religion does; some scholars deal with religion in the individual level, while others emphasize the societal and organizational aspects of religion (Haynes 1998 ). The next section reviews the ways IR scholars define culture and religion and suggests that religion should be viewed as a part of culture. The following sections discuss the clash of civilizations debate; the relationship between fundamentalism and violence; religion as a cause of war; religion and the intensity of war; culture, religion and diplomacy with some references to cross-cultural negotiation; and culture and the democratic peace with some references to the debate regarding religion and democracy. The essay concludes with suggestions for future directions for research.

Conceptualizing Culture and Religion in IR Scholarship

Despite some exceptions, such as Adda Bozeman ( 1960 ), Jack Snyder ( 1977 ), and to some extent Robert Jervis ( 1976 ), IR scholars did not realize the importance of culture and religion to the understanding of peace and conflict until the post-Cold War era and the introduction of constructivism. The first task facing IR scholars trying to incorporate culture and religion is the task of definition. The understanding that these concepts can be rather distinct, but at the same time intrinsically connected has been a source for much confusion and contention. As this section suggests, different IR scholars treat culture and religion in different ways and sometimes use these concepts interchangeably with other concepts, such as norms, identity, and ethnicity.

The first example for such confusion exists in the writings of IR scholars from the English School, who understand religion as the main component in a society's culture. To Bozeman ( 1960 , 1971 ), for example, culture means civilization, and what dictates the mode of thinking and the normative order in a civilization is religion. Similarly, as Buzan ( 1993 :333) and Thomas ( 2005 :153–4) describe, Martin Wight argues that international societies can be formed on the basis of shared culture, but underlines the role of religion in not only promoting such peaceful unity but also holy wars. This view of religion as the core component of civilization is also shared by non-English School scholars such as Huntington ( 1996 ) and some of the authors in the volume edited by Katzenstein ( 2010 ).

While English School theorists understand culture as part of religion, the constructivist theoretical framework does the opposite. In constructivist studies, culture includes religion as well as other concepts such as identity, norms, or ideas (Lapid and Kratochwil 1996 ; Katzenstein 1996 ; Checkel 1998 ; Desch 1998 ). Cohen ( 1997 :11–12), for example, defines culture as “an acquired unique complex of attributes of a society that is subsuming every area of social life,” and we can find a similar approach in Mary Adams Trujillo et al. ( 2008 ). For others, such as Avruch ( 1998 :17) and Abu-Nimer ( 2001 :687) who draw on Theodore Schwartz's definition, culture is a less homogeneous and static concept and it “consists of the derivatives of experience, more or less organized, learned or created by the individuals of a population, including those images or encodement and their interpretations (meanings) transmitted from past generations, from contemporaries, or formed by individuals themselves.”

Subsuming religion under culture kept the concept under-theorized. It is notable that a canonical constructivist text, Alexander Wendt's Social Theory of International Politics ( 1999 ), does not include “religion” in the index (Snyder 2011 :2). An exception is Kubálková ( 2000 ), who brings religion into the study of IR through rule-oriented constructivism. However, the increasing interest in communal conflicts, such as ethno-national wars, and especially the September 11th attacks, have led to a resurgence of religion in the study of world politics (Fox 2001 :53; Philpott 2009 :184; Snyder 2011 :1).

Religion presents further definitional problems. The definition must encompass numerous but exclude from other phenomena such as ideologies or cults (Philpott 2003 ). Some of the early studies that deal with religion and international conflict, such as Ryan ( 1988 ), Azar ( 1990 ), Gurr ( 1994 ), and Gagnon ( 1994 ), consider religion to be part of a larger concept of ethnicity, or communality. Seul ( 1999 :553) tries to explain “the frequent appearance of religion as the primary cultural marker distinguishing groups in conflict,” and concludes that religion often exists “at the core of individual and group identity” (Seul 1999 :558). For Rothschild ( 1981 :86–7), however, religion is subsumed under the concept of ethnic identity. Correlation of War (COW) data uses both religion and ethnicity in measuring culture (see Henderson 1997 :661). Finally, Anthony Smith traces modern nationalism to religious origins (Smith 1999 ; see also Brubaker 2012 ).

Haynes ( 1998 ) provides a brief discussion about the definition dilemma and draws on Aquaviva while offering two sociological definitions. One sees religion as “a system of beliefs and practices related to an ultimate being, beings of the supernatural,” and the other considers religion to be what is “sacred in a society, that is, ultimate beliefs and practices which are inviolate” (Haynes 1998 : 4). The latter kind of definition is sometime referred to as ‘civil religion’ (Liebman and Don-Yiḥya 1983 ).

Toft ( 2007 :99) lists the common elements in most definitions: “a belief in a supernatural being (or beings); prayers and communication with that being; transcendent realities that might include some form of heaven, paradise, or hell; a distinction between the sacred and the profane and between ritual acts and sacred objects; a view that explains both the world as a whole and a person's proper role in it; a code of conduct in line with that world view; and a community bound by its adherence to these elements.”

On one hand, this discussion provides us some indicators to distinguish between religion and culture: the first belongs to the realm of the sacred and involves a relatively stable doctrine that connects the individual with the transcendental, while the latter belongs to the realm of the profane and involves a malleable combination of practices, customs, and expectations in relation to the society. On the other hand, religion and culture are intrinsically connected by myths, practices, and moral judgments that make religion a part of culture.

War and Peace in the Works of Religious Scholars and Political Theorists

Almost all religious texts have references to war and peace – the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, the Quran, the Iliad and Odyssey, the Rig Veda, Mahabharata and Ramayana, Arthasastra, and so on. These references offer different treatments of war and peace. Some describe human nature as aggressive or as pursuing peace, some explain war and peace as a result of divine intervention and will, and some define the conditions in which war and peace can be achieved. Some references in sacred texts condition peace on the society's moral behavior. Other texts determine with whom, when, and how a war can be held and a peace treaty can be signed. Most of the sacred texts also have detailed historical narratives of war and peace, from which we can draw conclusions how the religion conceives war and peace. Religious figures and leaders are still creating new interpretations and commentary about peace and war, and this rich genre receives a lot of attention from scholars. In the Western world, books on Judaism and Christianity were written focusing on analyzing peace and war in the Hebrew Bible, in the New Testament, and in sermons, letters, and other external texts and exegeses (Arias 1533 ; Belli 1563 ; Benezet 1776 ; Heaton 1816 ; Dymond 1834 ). In the Muslim world, a similar attempt was made (Shaybani 1335 ; Ibn Khaldun 1377 ; Baladhuri 1866 ). This trend is still relevant in contemporary research today in Christianity (Faunce 1918 ; Barrett 1987 ; Swartley 2006 ), in Buddhism (Kraft 1992 ; Jerryson and Juergensmeyer 2010 ), in Islam (Khadduri 1940 ; Khadduri 1955 ; Kelsay and Johnson 1991 ; Abu-Nimer 2003 ; Mirbagheri 2012 ), in Judaism (Homolka and Friedlander 1994 ; Eisen 2011 ), in Hinduism (Banerjee 1988 ), and in some of them together (Jack 1968 ; Ferguson 1978 ; Smock 1992 ; Gort et al. 2002 ; Nelson-Pallmeyer 2003 ; Nan, Mampilly, and Bartoli 2012 ).

Political philosophy also includes religion in its scholarship. Religion, God, and faith exist in the writings of Hobbes, Machiavelli, Grotius, Rousseau, Locke, Kant, and other early Western political thinkers. All of them considered religion to be an inherent part of life and society that had to be accounted for in political analysis. Some perceived religion as a moral and ethical guideline for individuals and society, and some debated whether religion is an obstacle for government and society or an integral part of it. The relationship between religion and political life remains a vibrant subject of debate to this day (Eisenach 1981 ; Beiner 1993 ; Martinich 2003 ; De Vries 2003 ). Despite the richness of the contributions of religious scholars and of philosophers, these works have not yet offered a scientific theory regarding the role that religion plays in war and peace.

Religion and Conflict: The Clash of Civilization Debate

The first major attempt in the IR field to understand war almost exclusively through the religious prism was that of Samuel Huntington in his well-known article and book Clash of Civilization ( 1993 , 1996 ). Huntington, rejecting Francis Fukuyama's notion of the “End of History,” divides the world into seven or eight major civilizations that are fundamentally different from each other “by history, language, culture, tradition and, most important, religion” (Huntington 1993 :25). Instead of the traditional territorial nation-states, Huntington recognizes a world comprised of various identities that are not necessarily delineated by national boundaries. He argues that the end of the Cold War and the ideological battle between the West and the East will be replaced by a battle of civilizations, which is the broadest category of identification for individuals and is mainly determined by religious beliefs. More specifically, Huntington predicts that the main civilizational conflict will be between the Islamic civilization and the Judeo-Christian Western civilization, due to conflictual history from both sides, a large gap in values, the rise of Islamic extremists and fundamentalism, and a clash of identities as a result of Muslim immigration.

In sum, Huntington's view clarifies two main reasons why religion can cause war. First, religion can be considered as a primordial and immutable identity. The Manichean perception of ‘us’ versus ‘them’ that religion provides is a main source of conflict (Dark 2000 :4–5, 11). Second, globalization, which folds within it rapid economic development and an increase in interactions between individual groups, creates a clash between traditional customs and Western modernity (Fox 1997 :3; Thomas 2000 :5). The desire of other civilizations to maintain their core values and traditions, and to prevent the domination of Western culture lead Huntington to claim that civilizational differences will be the main source of future wars (Huntington 1993 :29–31, 40).

Huntington's thesis received a lot of interest in scholarly and political discourse, and his thesis was tested and criticized from many angles. Ajami ( 1993 ), Bartley ( 1993 ), and Weeks ( 1993 ), for example, argue that states are still the main actors in the international system and that the English-Western secular modern force is more powerful than Huntington thinks. Kirkpatrick ( 1993 ) claims that intra-civilizational conflicts are more common than inter-civilizational conflicts. Others, such as Tipson ( 1997 ), Pfaff ( 1997 ), and Said ( 2001 ), criticize Huntington's facts and methodology (for more comprehensive reviews of the clash of civilization debate see O'Hagan 1995 ; Fox and Sandler 2004 ; Fox 2005 ). Katzenstein ( 2010 ) rejects Huntington's conception of civilizations as homogeneous in favor of a pluralistic view recognizing internal diversity. Katzenstein ( 2010 ) further questions the Huntingtonian “clash” with the evident capacity for inter-and trans-civilizational encounters.

Scholars have also made quantitative attempts to test Huntington's theory. Russett, Oneal, and Cox ( 2000 ) examine inter-state wars between 1950 and 1992 and conclude that realist and liberal variables provide better explanations of these conflicts than civilizational factors. Henderson and Tucker ( 2001 ) examine international wars between 1816 and 1992 and find no connection between civilization membership and international wars. In addition, Henderson and Tucker find that conflicts within civilizations are more likely than conflicts between civilizations. More recent attempts also do not find support for the clash of civilization thesis (Chiozza 2002 ; Ben-Yehuda 2003 ; Bolks and Stoll 2003 ; Fox 2004 ; Henderson 2005 ). However, Henderson's ( 1997 :663) findings suggest that “the greater the religious dissimilarity between states, the greater the likelihood of war.” Similarly, Roeder ( 2003 ) examines ethnopolitical conflicts and finds support for Huntington's thesis. Fox, James, and Li ( 2009 ) bring a different angle to the clash of civilizations debate in examining international interventions on behalf of the same ethno-religious group in another state. Although they focus only on conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa, their findings show that Muslim states are more likely to intervene on behalf of other Muslim minorities. Moreover, ethnic conflicts with a religious dimension seem more likely to attract intervention than other ethnic conflicts.

Another view of religion as a cause of war sees religion as a form of ideology rather than identity. In this kind of approach, the emphasis is not on how clashing religious identities create conflict, but rather how religious ideas shape worldviews that justify or are consistent with conflict (see also Desch 1998 ). According to Beker ( 2008 ), for example, the Jewish notion of the “chosen people” has fueled many ideological conflicts between Jews and non-Jews. He further demonstrates how the battle over “chosenness” is evident in modern anti-Semitic discourse. Khadduri ( 1955 ) makes an analogous point with the concepts of dar al-harb (territory of war) and dar al-Islam (territory of Islam) in Islamic laws of war. Similarly, in examining Chinese thought and culture and their influence on Ming strategy towards the Mongols, Johnston ( 1995 :xi) finds that the non-militant ideas usually associated with Confucianism may be “inaccurate, misleading, or plainly wrong.” Juergensmeyer ( 2003 ) focuses on ideas that affect “cultures of violence.” Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, and others, Juergensmeyer claims, share a worldview of cosmic war between darkness and light (Juergensmeyer 2003 :13, 35). Because religious ideology is a defined non-negotiable set of rules, resolving a religious dispute peacefully is harder than with other disputes (Dark 2000 :1–2).

Religious Fundamentalism and Violence

The relationship between religious worldviews and war leads us to religious fundamentalism and violence. Of special note is the five-volume work by Marty and Appleby ( 1991 –5) that encompasses different approaches and case studies related to fundamentalism. Marty and Appleby ( 1992 :34) define fundamentalism as “a distinctive tendency – a habit of mind and a pattern of behavior – found within modern religious communities and embodied in certain representative individuals and movements … a religious way of being that manifests itself as a strategy by which beleaguered believers attempt to preserve their distinctive identity as a people or group.” They recount the ideological extremism in social, political, and structural conditions, such as social deprivation, repressive regimes, reaction to secularization, and economic crises. Marty and Appleby argue that religious ideas are not the goal for the fundamentalists, but rather they use religion as a means to achieve political ends. Fundamentalists use “old doctrines, subtly lift them from their original context … and employ them as ideological weapons against a hostile world” (Marty and Appleby 1991 :826). Fundamentalism, in this view, is a religious backlash against secular rule (see also Tibi 1999 ). Juergensmeyer ( 1993 ) shares this view but opposes labeling this religious fervor as fundamentalism due to the accusatory and ambiguous meanings of the term.

Eisenstadt ( 1999 ) agrees with Marty and Appleby that “contemporary” fundamentalist movements are thoroughly modern movements, but disagrees with the link they draw between religious force and fundamentalism. For Eisenstadt, contemporary fundamentalist movements rest on the same universal, utopian, totalistic, and secular claims of modernity that the Jacobins and the communist revolutions were based upon but “promulgate anti-modern or anti-Enlightenment ideologies” (Eisenstadt 1999 :1). The direction which a fundamentalist movement takes depends on its civilization, the political and social circumstances surrounding the movement, and the international setting (Eisenstadt 1999 ). Reviews of religious fundamentalism and violence include Gill ( 2001 ) and Ozzano ( 2009 ).

Religious Actors and International Conflict

Scholarship has gone beyond the clash of civilizations debate and the study of fundamentalism to explore further questions about how and under what conditions religion leads to war. One approach has been to consider individual values and mindsets in the lists of factors that affect decision making by leaders, including decisions about war. Brecher ( 1972 ), Jervis ( 1976 ), and Fisher ( 1997 ) focus on culture, while Fox ( 2001 ), Sandal and James ( 2010 ), and Warner and Walker ( 2011 ) focus specifically on religion. On the collective level, society's core values, conceptions, and assumptions about the world and the enemy can influence foreign policy outcomes (Booth 1979 ; Hudson and Vore 1995 ; Reeves 2004 ). Religious beliefs should not be dismissed as irrational or marginal, but should be included in the strategic calculations of leaders and states (Toft 2007 :129).

Religious affinities on the collective level are not confined to traditional territorial state boundaries. Transnational religious actors are another good example of the role of religion in conflict. Religious terrorist groups that have cells in different countries can initiate a conflict between states, and global riots can result from injury to religious sentiment, as in the Danish caricature case (Dark 2000 :5–10; Fox 2001 :67–9; Haynes 2001 ). These kinds of conflicts can be international, when religious diaspora is engaged in the conflict, or remain domestic (civil wars). Fox and Sandler show how local wars can capture the interest of members of transnational religious groups due to the possible involvement of holy sites (Fox and Sandler 2004 :63–82). Even without direct participation in violence, religious transnational movements and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) participate in global conflict by lobbying or protesting in order to encourage a state to intervene in a distant war between ethno-religious minorities (Fox, James and Li 2009 ).

Religion may also have an indirect effect on war since it can be used as a tool to mobilize people and to enhance legitimacy (Fox 2001 :65–7; Haynes 2004 :456; Snyder 2011 :11). This does not necessarily mean that political leaders actually hold religious beliefs but that such beliefs serve them in accomplishing their political interests. This view holds that the recent global resurgence of religion in various societies occurs as a result of instrumental use of religion by political elites (Fox 1997 :4; Hasenclever and Rittberger 2000 :643–6).

The question of whether religion is the cause of a conflict, or just a tool or a dimension of it was addressed in several quantitative studies. Gurr ( 1993 ) uses the Minorities at Risk data to examine mobilization and collective action in “communal conflicts.” His findings indicate that an essential basis for mobilization is a sense of group identity. Gurr measures group identity by using six indicators including religion, ethnicity, and social customs. Fox ( 1997 , 2002 ) tries to isolate conflicts between groups from different religions. Using the same data as Gurr, Fox concludes that in such cases “religious issues play, at most, a marginal role” (Fox 1997 :16). Henderson, however, using Correlates of War data, concludes that “cultural difference, especially in the case of religion, is positively associated with war” (Henderson 1997 :666). Durward and Marsden ( 2009 ) offer a more nuanced and developed understanding of how religious beliefs, discourses, and practices are politicized and used to trigger conflicts, justify military interventions, and facilitate resolutions.

Religion and the Intensity of War

Another trend in the study of religion and war asks whether religious conflicts are more violent than other conflicts and if some religions are more prone to use more violence than others. Fox and Sandler ( 2004 ), using Minorities at Risk data, conclude that “religious conflicts … are consistently more violent than nonreligious conflicts.” A study by Pearce ( 2005 ) using a different data set supports this conclusion.

As for the relationship between a specific religion and violence, Pearce's ( 2005 :349) results show that Judaism and Hinduism are more violence prone, but this may be due to a small number of cases. Fox and Sandler's ( 2004 :132) results demonstrate “conflicts involving Islamic groups are more violent than conflicts not involving Islamic groups,” and conflicts within the Islamic civilization “are slightly more violent” than conflicts between civilizations. Due to the fact that there are many Muslim states, but only one Jewish state and one Hindu state that are each experiencing protracted conflict, it is still unclear whether specific religions are more violent than others, or whether it is a false image created by the uneven numbers of religious groups. The finding that Islamists were involved in 81 percent of the religious civil wars between 1940 and 2000 led Toft ( 2007 ) to eventually conclude that “overlapping historical, geographical, and, in particular, structural factors account for Islam's higher representation in religious civil wars.” More importantly, her theory suggests that religious aspects are an instrument by political elites for gaining more legitimacy in order to survive, or to achieve another objective (Toft 2007 :97–8, 128).

The degree of religious violence does not have to be related to a specific religion, but rather to the type of regime or degree of state power. Thomas ( 2000 :14–15) suggests that the appeal for religious ideas grows larger especially in weak states. Fox ( 1997 ) shows an increase in religious discrimination and grievance in autocratic states compared with democratic regimes. When a transition to democracy happens, the chances of such communal violence rise due to the diminishing power of the regime and an ease of autocratic repression (Gurr 1994 ).

Culture, Religion, and Diplomacy

Scholars have also been interested in the practical use of religion and culture to promote peace. Discussing culture specifically, Kevin Avruch ( 1998 ) suggests that culture is a significant variable in conflict resolution as each negotiator comes with his or her own subculture (class, region, ethnicity, and more). In contrast, Zartman ( 1993 :17) gives culture little substantive significance and argues that it is as relevant as the breakfast the negotiators ate. Fisher ( 1980 ) and Cohen ( 1997 ) occupy the middle ground suggesting that culture matters together with other variables. For a good introductory review regarding these approaches, see Ramsbotham, Miall, and Woodhouse ( 2011 ).

Cultural gaps may involve language barriers, create problems of interpretation, and disrupt the transfer of information (Gulliver 1979 ; Fisher 1980 ; Faure and Rubin 1993 ; Cohen 1997 ; Berton et al. 1999 ). The dichotomy, made by Hall ( 1976 ) between high-context cultures and low-context cultures, is useful in explaining these cultural obstacles in international negotiation. High-context cultures are generally associated with collective societies in which communication is less verbal and more indirect, emphasizing the context in which things are said and done. High-context cultures require communicators to pay attention to nuances and body language. Consequently, those from such cultures are more sensitive socially, they try to please their audience, and they see great importance in small talk and group consensus. Low-context cultures, on the other hand, are individualistic in character, and communication is direct and with a clear message. Accuracy in the written or spoken word is very important in low-context culture, and less attention is paid to context, body language, and facial expressions (Cohen 1997 ; Rubinstein 2003 ). When two societies from the two different types of culture meet around the negotiation table, potential pitfalls are evident. This line of research has specific practical implications. The US Institute of Peace published a series of works analyzing different negotiating styles and behaviors to equip negotiators with a better understanding of cultural differences. Examples include Wittes ( 2005 ), Solomon and Quinney ( 2010 ), and Schaffer and Schaffer ( 2011 ).

As for structure and the process of negotiation, culture can play an important role in the degree of trust between the sides, which can define negotiation strategy and whether there is a need for mediation. These factors can also influence the size of the delegations, the different roles within the delegation, the degree of unity within the delegation, negotiating procedures, seating arrangements, and public announcements (Berton et al. 1999 :3–5).

This vast literature regarding culture and diplomacy has little to say about religion. As former United States Secretary of State and international relations scholar Madeleine Albright confesses, diplomacy, conflict resolution, negotiation, and peace were all conceptualized in secular terms with no room for religion and faith prior to the terror attacks of September 11th (Albright 2006 :8–9). Indeed, most of the IR studies on culture and diplomatic practices to promote peace were written during the 1980s and 1990s. Only after September 11th did religion and faith become a primary topic.

Many scholars agree that the same power that religion has in inciting conflicts can also be used to promote peace (Gopin 1997 ; Appleby 2000 ; Broadhead and Keown 2007 ). Some works continue the trajectory of previous studies on cross-cultural negotiation and focus on a specific religion. In the case of Islam, Alon ( 2000 ), Alon and Brett ( 2007 ), and Pely ( 2010 ) focus on Muslim perceptions of conflict resolution, values of honor, and the institutional mechanism of sulha (reconciliation). Other studies consider how peace can be achieved with an emphasis on shared religious values, such as empathy, forgiveness, mercy, compassion and the Golden Rule to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Gopin 1997 ; Gopin 2001 ; Cilliers 2002 ; Carter and Smith 2004 ). Similarly, Albright ( 2006 :73) mentions the religious notion that “we are all created in the image of God” as a common ground. Shore ( 2009 :2) shows how “Christianity played a central role in South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” and how values of forgiveness and justice were important in South Africa's peaceful transition to democracy. Similarly, Gopin ( 2002 ) argues that in the Israeli-Palestinian case, the marginalization of religious aspects was crucial in the failure of the Oslo agreement. He adds that by putting religion in the middle of the reconciliation process, and with dialogues between key religious figures from both sides, peace in the Middle East can be achieved.

While traditional realpolitik diplomacy has had difficulties coping with religion-inspired conflicts, non-state actors, such as religious leaders and members of religious NGOs, had more success in promoting peace in different forms – whether peacemaking, peacebuilding, peace enforcing, or peace keeping (Little 2006 :102). Cynthia Sampson ( 1997 ) overviews the various roles and methodologies used by religious-motivated institutional actors in the process of peacebuilding. She provides manifold examples of conflict intervention by religious institutional actors that advocate (such as during the Rhodesian war of independence), intermediate (such as in the 1972 Sudanese peace process), observe (such as during the 1991 Zambian elections), and educate (such as in Northern Ireland). Appleby ( 2000 ) offers a similar approach focusing on religious actors and their roles.

The vast examples of religious involvement in peacebuilding have led Johnston and Sampson ( 1997 ) and Johnston ( 2003 ) to conceptualize this type of diplomacy as “faith-based diplomacy,” which takes place through track II channels (the informal and unofficial negotiations). In general, the Catholic Church receives more scholarly attention than other religious institutions in mediating disputes. Examples include the 1968–89 internal dispute in Bolivia (Klaiber 1993 ) and the Beagle Channel dispute between Argentina and Chile (Garrett 1985 ; Lindsley 1987 ; Laudy 2000 ). Bartoli's analyses of the reconciliation process in Mozambique specify how religion plays a role in conflict resolution. He demonstrates that religion does not replace or transform the political process of negotiation, but rather provides motivation, organizational capacities, legitimacy, and flexibility (Bartoli 2001 , 2005 ; see also Toft, Philpott, and Shah 2011 ).

The volume edited by David Little ( 2007 ) offers a different perspective that focuses on individual religious figures, rather than institutions, as peacemakers. Examples from El Salvador, Israel/Palestine, Kosovo, Northern Ireland, and Sudan highlight the grassroots efforts by religious individuals to promote peace. Using religious texts, rituals, and networks these individuals increase global attention, help find common ground, provide moral justification, and facilitate face-to-face communication between the warring sides (see also Smock 2008 ; for more on the topic of diplomacy and religion see “Diplomacy and Religion”).

Recently, there is a growing interest in challenging the secularist assumptions of United States foreign policy. Hurd ( 2008 ), for example, demonstrates that the perceived separation between religious and secular political authorities is a result of a political process and is socially constructed. By identifying two trajectories of secularism – a laicist one and a Judeo-Christian one – she shows how religion and secularism were never apart. Thus, instead of characterizing religion as a threat, diplomats and decision makers should realize that there are various political representations and interpretations of religion and should make more room for non-Western forms of politics (Hurd 2007 ). From a different perspective, Farr ( 2008 ) calls for rejecting the American narrow version of religious freedom that focuses on humanitarian violations in favor of a more tolerant and broader version that builds and encourages different versions of religious freedom in different regimes. Philpott ( 2013 :31) supports Farr's conclusions by highlighting how religious freedom is a “critical enabler of peace.”

Culture, Religion, and the Democratic Peace

Another research theme in IR tries to engage religion and culture in existing peace theories. The main example is democratic peace theory, by which liberal democracies tend not to fight each other. One of the explanations for democratic peace argues that shared cultures, values, and norms favoring compromise and peaceful solutions lead liberal democracies to solve disputes peacefully (Maoz and Russett 1993 ). But the traditional cultural explanation for democratic peace focuses on political culture and not on other elements such as ethnicity, language, and religion. Henderson ( 1998 ) tests the theory with those elements included and concludes that religious similarities within democratic dyads decrease the likelihood of war, while ethnic and lingual similarities increase this likelihood.

The connection between peaceful behavior and regime type led scholars to examine the connection between specific religions and democracy as a way to better understand the conditions for democracy and presumably for peace. After Huntington's theory and the events of September 11th, Western scholars tested Bernard Lewis’ hypothesis that Islamic religion conflicts with democracy (Midlarsky 1998 :486). This topic was researched from different angles. Some argue that Muslim resistance to modernity is an obstacle to democracy (Sivan 1990 ); some argue that lack of sufficient economic development holds back democracy; others claim that the possession of oil and the concept of the ‘rentier state’ hinder democracy (Ross 2001 ; Fish 2002 ); and some claim that the ideas grounded in Islamic thought and religion are incompatible with democracy (Huntington 1984 ; Lewis 1996 ). On the other hand, Esposito and Piscatori ( 1991 ) and Esposito and Voll ( 1996 ) argue that Islam is not necessarily hostile to democracy, and urge us to remember that Islam, like democracy, has a variety of interpretations, meanings, and political practices. Midlarsky ( 1998 ) tries to test the relationship between Islam and democracy using a political rights index (measuring procedural democracy) and an index of liberal democracy (measuring liberal freedoms). He finds that Islam, measured by the percentage of population that is Muslim, has a negative correlation with liberal freedoms but does not necessarily rule out democratic procedure. Recently, Hunter and Malik ( 2005 ) offer an antithesis to this view and demonstrate how military, colonial, international economic, and domestic economic factors prevented the creation of a civil society that is crucial for democracy. Sonn and McDaniel's chapter in the same book demonstrates how modern Islamic thought is quite similar to Western values, including rationality and tolerance.

Future Research

In the study of war and peace, religion long played a marginal role. Both sacred texts and Western canonical philosophical works contain religious references to war and peace, but none of the main theoretical works in IR address religion. Since the end of the Cold War and the growing attention to ethnic conflicts, new interests in culture and religion emerged. Scholars first explored the interplay of culture, war, and peace focusing on decision making, negotiation, national character, and the cultural construction of friends and foes. Then, as a result of the growing attention to ethnic conflict and terrorism, there was a resurgence of interest in religion in IR scholarship. Treated both as a central component of social identity and as an overarching ideology, religious international violence is understood by some scholars as a reaction to global population flows, modernization processes, and secularization.

Religion, as a social phenomenon, is also able to help us understand the growing power of actors outside the traditional boundaries of the state. Transnational actors that share religious beliefs with each other can pursue different, and sometimes contradictory, goals from those of the nation-state. Such actors can ignite conflicts, but can also help in mediating negotiations and promoting peace. Diplomats have learned to use key religious figures in their reconciliation attempts and they try to emphasize common values and diminish differences between religions.

The rediscovery of religion in IR scholarship has produced many studies that try to theorize the role of religion in conflict and peace. Thus far, these studies treat religion either as a political tool used by agents for their own interests or as an essentialist ideological scheme that informs actors’ behavior. Future research may focus on the relational and constantly changing aspects of religion and show what, when, and how various religious interpretations receive political prominence in promoting conflict or peace. Moreover, IR scholarship could use more theorization of how religion can be used as an independent variable across cases. How can one compare the religious passions animating the Crusades, with the religious passions during the Thirty Years War, or with modern fundamentalist terrorism? The definitional problems, mentioned earlier, provide difficulties in that regard.

A new way to look in more depth at religious and cultural elements of international politics is to use them as interpretive tools. Culture can be conceptualized as the “practices of meaning-making,” and thus open an opportunity to investigate the ways in which meanings are created within a society (Wedeen 2002 ). For example, examining political rhetoric can help us understand how meanings become inscribed within a society and how changes in rhetoric can lead to changes in foreign policy (Krebs and Jackson 2007 ; Krebs and Lobasz 2007 ). Another beneficial way to engage the elusive concepts of culture and religion is to trace the hidden set of assumptions that are embedded in the cultural and religion labels. What does “democracy” or “freedom” mean to different cultural or religious groups? What types of behavior are expected from a negotiator who is labeled Muslim or Buddhist and how does it affect the negotiation process? Moreover, how does popular representation of different religions shape these hidden assumptions?

IR literature will probably continue to engage culture and religion in its research, but in order to develop the field and avoid academic stagnation, it is important to enable scientific pluralism that will force us to reconsider how we treat religion and culture. A deeper understanding of different religions and cultures will open our understanding of the different “worlds” within “our world” and will identify the values that drive these worlds.

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank Renée Marlin-Bennett for her valuable guidance and comments, and Andrew Mark Bennett for his meticulous assistance.

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Links to Digital Materials

Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs. At http://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/ , accessed August 21, 2013 . The Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs, based at Georgetown University, is an educational and a research center for the study of religion in relation to various international phenomena, such as globalization, human rights, ethnics of war, negotiation, and more. The website also includes data regarding international religious freedom.

The Institute for Cultural Diplomacy (ICD). At http://www.culturaldiplomacy.org/index.php?en , accessed August 21, 2013 . The ICD is an international NGO whose main goal is to enhance the intercultural relations between peoples and areas in the world. The ICD offers reports and publications researching various aspects of cultural diplomacy – definitions, efforts, implementation, and future directions. The institute combines academic development of the field with practical programs and educational resources.

Minorities at Risk (MAR). At http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/mar/ , accessed August 21, 2013 . The MAR project, located at University of Maryland, collects data regarding active conflict between communal groups. Among other variables, the MAR data measures religious characteristics of the conflicting groups.

Religions and Ethics in the Making of War and Peace Project. At http://relwar.org/ , accessed August 21, 2013 . The project on Religion and Ethnics in the Making of War and Peace, based at the University of Edinburgh, is an academic and practical forum to discuss the relationship between military and religious ethics. The publication section includes several articles on that topic.

Religions for Peace. At http://religionsforpeace.org/ , accessed August 21, 2013 . Religion for Peace was founded in 1970 as a coalition of representatives from the world's major religions dedicated to promote peace. The website offers guides and resources aimed to help religious leaders decrease violence and encourage development and peace.

United States Institute of Peace. At http://www.usip.org/ , accessed August 21, 2013 . Beside various books dealing with negotiation styles of different cultures, the United States Institute of Peace offers panels, initiatives, reports, and other publications dealing both with culture and religion in diplomacy and in war.

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date: 27 April 2024

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