The purpose of this article is to shed light on such questions from an academic perspective by focusing especially on religious identity. It is especially crucial to understand identity as it is a widely used concept in social scientific academic disciplines in explaining the causes of many prominent social and cultural phenomena that take place in the world.

Identity is derived from group membership. In this respect, Hofstede, Hofstede, and Minkov (2010) equate identity to one’s belonging to a group. Further, Hofstede et al. (2010) state that identity is visible, it is commonly rooted in language (such as Latin American identity deriving from Spanish) or religious affiliation (such as Muslim identity deriving from Islam), and can be differentiated by shared symbols, heroes, and rituals that are part of observable practices but not necessarily the values of a nation. Identity is not a core part of national cultures; it is explicit, and it can change.

An individual can have multiple identities. For example, one can identify herself as a woman, Jewish, and American. Multiple identities are dependent on culture, especially on the individualist – collectivist cultural dimension. Individualistic environments allow multiple identities and permit identity shifts. On the other hand, in collectivistic cultures, one’s group identity is mainly based on one group, which may be ethnic, religious, community-based, or national (Hofstede et al. 2010).

People who share similar ethnic and cultural backgrounds may have different group identities and fight with each other, such as Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland (Hofstede et al. 2010). In this respect, Pruitt and Kim (2004) posit that groups with strong group identity are the ones whose members are highly identified with the group and they are more likely to be involved in conflict. Accordingly, members of such groups feel the suffering of the fellow group members deeply. Group identity is especially strong among people who have historical ethnic or religious ties and perceive that they are being illegitimately deprived of their basic needs (Pruitt and Kim 2004). For example, Muslims in different areas of the world, including places as distant as the United States and Indonesia, can protest at the same time when they perceive injustice against Egyptian Muslims.

From another perspective, in explaining the changes taking place in the world after the Cold War, Huntington (2007) states that social, cultural, and economic modernization processes have disrupted people’s identity sources in the second half of the twentieth century as people moved from countryside to the city. Religion has provided the meaning and purpose as the new source of identity that people seek, hence a new revival of religion and de-secularization began. For example, Orthodoxy in Slavic republics and Islam in Turkic republics of the former Soviet Union resurged, filling the gap of the communist ideology as people identified themselves more and more with their authentic religions that were suppressed by Communism (which was the main source of identity in the Soviet Union).

Similarly, in Turkey, in the 1990s, the ultra-secularist state-driven Kemalist identity was challenged with the revival of the Muslim identity. In this respect, Huntington (2007) argues that psychological, emotional and social needs of people caught in the traumas of modernization are best satisfied by a global religious revival. In the case of Muslim communities, Islam provided the answer to these needs, causing the Islamic Resurgence. According to Huntington (2007), the recent Islamic Resurgence is “the latest phase in the adjustment of Islamic civilization to the West, an effort to find the ‘solution’ not in Western ideologies but in Islam. It embodies acceptance of modernity, rejection of Western culture, and recommitment to Islam as the guide to life in the modern world.” Similarly, Hunt and Aslandogan (2007, 96) posit that by the early twentieth century, Muslims perceived themselves as “part of intellectual, political, and social movements that sought either a restoration and renewal of the Islamic civilization of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, a return to the purity of the period of Muhammad and his immediate successors, or even a thoroughgoing ‘modernization’ of Islam.”

The resurgence was not limited to the Islamic world. In South Korea, a traditionally Buddhist nation, where only one to three percent of the population was Christian in 1950, Christianity spread. Presbyterians and Catholics were at least 30 percent of South Korea’s population in the 1980s (Huntington 2007). In the case of Latin America, “The number of Protestants in Latin America increased from roughly 7 million in 1960 to about 50 million in 1990” (Huntington 2007, 1779) which according to Huntington (2007, 1783) is “a major net increase in religious commitment and participation” rather than a replacement of one religion with another. According to Huntington, such changes in South Korea and Latin America reflect the ability of Protestantism in meeting the psychological, emotional, and social needs of people caught in the traumas of modernization more than Catholicism and Buddhism. Hence, worldwide identities became more aligned with religion due to psychological and spiritual needs satisfaction in the midst of the complexities of modernization and change, which can create confusion.

From the theories of conflict perspective, identity can be used to explain many of the conflicts in the world. According to Deutsch, Coleman and Marcus (2006), basic needs such as security, identity, recognition of identity, freedom, distributive justice, and participation are seen as the essential elements for human development. Social identity theory asserts that the group that one belongs to is part of his identity, and one tends to view the group favorably to reinforce his self-respect. Thus, one perceives an attack on his in-group as an assault on his self-worth (Pruitt and Kim 2004). Since identity groups serve as the primary vehicle through which these needs are expressed and satisfied, intergroup conflict takes place when one group’s basic needs are frustrated or denied (Deutsch et al. 2006). Accordingly, intergroup conflict increases cohesiveness within the competing groups, primarily through the effects of threat. A perception of threat plays a key role by heightening in-group solidarity in addition to increasing hostility toward the threatening out-group, especially if there is a history of antagonism between the groups (Deutsch et al. 2006).

Furthermore, identity groups exist in organizations and communities. Wherever groups gather around a common social identity, if needs for recognition of that identity or for dignity, safety, or control are obstructed, conflict is highly likely. In this respect, professional groups, scientific disciplines, political parties, government departments, lobby groups, businesses, sports teams, street gangs – all carry a sense of group identity that shapes their dealings with other groups (Deutsch et al. 2006).

Based on social identity theory, since an individual’s self-esteem is linked to group membership, a positive self-concept requires favorable evaluations of one’s group and discriminatory comparisons with other groups (Deutsch et al. 2006). For example, ethnic groups exhibit ethnocentrism and national groups exhibit nationalism-pride and loyalty to their own nation, while defaming other nations.

According to Huntington (2007), in fault line wars, casual and multiple identities often transform and become more focused and hardened. With increased violence, communal conflicts become identity wars and the initial issues at stake tend to get redefined more exclusively as “us” against “them” as group cohesion and commitment are enhanced. With political leaders’ narratives emphasizing and capitalizing on ethnic and religious loyalties, civilization consciousness strengthens with respect to other identities. An example is the war in Bosnia where the common Slavic or Yugoslav ethnic identity diminished, and Muslim, Catholic, and Orthodox identities came to the front among the three fighting groups as nationalist political leaders built their agendas on ethnocentrism and religious differences.

Nevertheless, religious identity can take a constructive form and play an important role in peace building (Deutsch et al. 2006). Accordingly, when faithfulness is a source of extending compassion, justice, tolerance, and respect to other people regardless of their faith, it can prevent violence and help build peace. In places where religious diversity is celebrated, religious identity can become the mediating factor for understanding and cooperation. Faith based diplomacy is an example where religious identity is the opening point for building trust and starting dialogue (Deutsch et al. 2006). Parties involved in interfaith – intercultural dialogue can attain a better understanding of their own religious or cultural identity and how it acts to form their perspective of the world and others. Therefore, interfaith dialogue is not only about learning about others’ faith traditions, but it is also exploration of one’s own identity. It also helps develop respect and understanding of various traditions as parties break down barriers of misunderstanding and build trusting relationships (Deutsch et al. 2006).

Another area where religious identities can foster bonds with others is humanitarian relief work. One can capitalize on her religious beliefs in protecting or enhancing human life regardless of ethnic or religious identity of the needy. The Kimse Yok Mu foundation in Turkey is based on such concepts that transcend identity based boundaries. Furthermore, Hunt and Aslandogan (2007) point out that education can become the vehicle through which a higher sense of identity can be developed to end divisions and frictions over artificial differences. Hence, the role of education for promoting a universal view of humanity and for the development of understanding and tolerance to secure respect for the rights of others is tremendous. One such educational endeavor is brought to life through the implementation of the annual Turkish Olympiads in Turkey, where identity based differences are minimized and universal values are emphasized around speaking a common language among students from more than 140 countries.

In conclusion, understanding the concept of identity can be especially important for international development, disaster relief, interfaith – intercultural dialogue, and education work in differentiating why and how various groups of people around the world identify themselves with various factors such as religion, ethnicity, language, and race. In the international development domain, it is vital to work with identity-based sensitivities in mind, as identity underlies many conflicts around the world. In the interfaith – intercultural dialogue domain, on the other hand, different identities provide the basis for much needed cooperation for a brighter future for all.

References

• Deutsch Morton, Peter T. Coleman, and Eric C. Marcus. 2006. The Handbook of Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice. Kindle Edition.
• Hofstede, Geert, Gert J. Hofstede and Michael Minkov. 2010. Cultures And Organizations: Software of The Mind. 3rd ed. New York: McGraw Hill.
• Hunt, Robert, and Yuksel Aslandogan. 2007. Muslim Citizens of the Globalized World. Kindle Edition.
• Huntington, Samuel P. 2007. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.
• Pruitt, Dean G. and Sung Hee Kim. 2004. Social Conflict: Escalation, Stalemate, and Settlement. 3rd ed. New York: McGraw Hill.

While these conflicts are represented and justified in terms of religion, historical linkages and occurrence, resources, election or ethnicity, a critical look at these “points of division” increasingly clarifies certain underlying currents: group affiliation, attachment and solidarity. It is this affiliation, attachment and solidarity that have informed the increasingly common dichotomy of people, locally and sometimes internationally, between the “we” and the “them,” “the in-groups” and “the out-groups” or, as is used among the Yorubas in western Nigeria, between the “Omo-ilus” and the “Ara-ilus.”

In the Yoruba language the Omo-ilus denotes a group of people who belong to a particular area in terms of religion and culture, and not only reside in such areas, but are attached to the land. Conversely, the Ara-ilus are people who find themselves in the same area as the Omo-ilus, but who are considered aliens by the latter because of history, religion, tribe, etc. Therefore, there is a clear division to the extent that an Omo-ilu tends not to see an Ara-ilu as his tribal brother even when the latter has stayed in the Ilu (village or locality) for more than 20 years, or even where he was born in the Ilu and haz imbibed some of the culture of the land, including its religion. Though elsewhere, this division is termed the native-settler syndrome, the underlying logic is similar.

The “group thesis” as an explanatory paradigm postulated by Arthur Bentley is not new in the social sciences, but its essence and relevance has been a subject of academic standoffs, while the respective groups continue to move towards violent settlement of issues. Even the global system has not been left out in this segmentation of the humanities. While Huntington spoke about a “clash of civilizations,” President George W. Bush partitioned the world into “Our Allies” and the “Axis of Evil,” even as some Arab scholars and leaders publicized an “Arab Renaissance”-sometimes termed “Arabism”-which splits the Northern African countries from other parts of Africa, and in other, more Machiavellian usage justifies conflicts in places like Darfur, Sudan. All these assertions and points of view tend to perceive of the global system as a mixture of groups with mutually exclusive interest and existences. These patterns of thinking, though gaining grounds, qualify as perhaps the greatest form of communal self-deceit. Men will always remain interrelated and interdependent on one another.

It is within this milieu that I propose Justobification, a simple interpersonal disposition to be adopted or adapted by these various groups. Justobification is a personal experiment that has helped me understand, to a large extent, someone from “another group.” Today that someone is my wife. It is simple and replicable in a wider context. Most importantly, it is adaptable in attempting to address some of these socially constructed divisions with a sense of love and respect, emphasizing centripetal rather than centrifugal forces. Justobification is a story, spanning nine years of my life and culminating in my marriage to my friend, classmate and, now, wife, Justina Olatuga. We had different backgrounds in terms of religion, state of origin (a key means of division and appropriation in Nigeria), family background and differing opinions on a number of issues. Though we belonged to the same Yoruba ethnic group in Nigeria, the aforementioned differences created a dialectical summation which made us Omo-ilu and Ara-ilu simultaneously, depending on whether we are in my native Lagos State or in her Ondo State in Nigeria. To complicate issues, our parents are religious leaders: a Pastor and an Alhaji. Justobification is in itself, and originally, an attempt to merge my native name and hers to form a word: Justina and Tobi. It was coined by a colleague of ours who had, unknown to us, watched us since we stated our friendship in 1999. But beyond his coinage, I proceed to justify Justobification.

I have always had the belief that one’s position and stage in life is determined by a number of factors. These factors have been broadly identified as nature or nurture. By nature, it presupposes the fact that a human being’s way of seeing things is shaped by the way he or she was born. Thus, often it is said in some cultures that a fat person is usually friendly and lively, or a baby with a gap in its tooth means that it will be a socialite when it grows up. More clearly, race and ethnicity are key nature-factors; for instance, people who are born by European parents see themselves as Europeans just as an African, in the strictest form, gives birth to an African, though nurture also has a role to play in the formation of racial or ethnic identities.

The nurture angle argues that human beings are influenced by those events that they experience and the circumstances in which they find themselves. This means that the opportunity for and location of their education, their friendship, the books they read, their family orientation and so on all being a function of what occurred after birth. In other words, experiences have an enduring impact on the way we see things. As a factor, religion-without any attempt at interpreting the embodiment of the Books-falls under nurture. Thus, a large number of people are Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Sango worshipper, etc., most often because their parents belong to such religions.

However, while nature-nurture makes human beings different in terms of their culture, race, tribe, region, religion, etc, this nature-nurture engendered classification has been at the core of local and international crises. These crises are reinforced by the fact that some of the emergent groups tend to view themselves as superior or more civilized or more indigenous than the other, as can be seen in the native-settler violence in Middle Belt of Nigeria, the Hutu-Tutsi violence in Rwanda, violence in Darfur in Sudan, Kenya with regards to the recent electoral violence, the crisis in Ireland some years ago, pre-1990 apartheid in South Africa among others.

My marriage to Justina exposed me to certain points. First, all religions teach love and respect. Similarly, all ethnic groups, which are likened to race, teach morality in which love and respect are central. There is hardly any religion, race, tribe, etc, that advocates violence and mutual hatred for the followers of other religions or members of other tribes or groups for no just reason. As friends, not only did we love ourselves as creatures of the Almighty, but we also respected our various points of view on nature-nurture factors such as ethnicity, religion, tribe, class, etc. We understood that these views are personal but we also, most importantly, understood that we must not assume that these individual views must be accepted by the other party. The global system can learn from this in the sense that civilizations, to use the words of Huntington, should not claim to be on a mission to civilize another civilization. Instead, efforts should be made to understand and respect the others’ views through love. Love, if present, allows individuals and groups to overlook the mistakes of others. This certainly does not mean that we should ignore human rights violations, injustices, and corruption; more appropriate and influential means of interaction should be used if we truly want to eliminate such violations.

Second, listening to ourselves helped us make sense of some of our beliefs. This helped us scale the hurdle of assumptions and the breaks in communications which are some of the reasons for group related intra/inter-state conflicts. These can be illustrated by such events as the myth of the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, the emergent Sunni-Shiite enmity around portions of the middle east, a failure to communicate between the top leaders of Palestine and Israel, the continuous religious vacuum created in the neglect of some Islamic leaders in Somalia (Oshodi, 2009) and the ethno-religious violence in 1994, 2001, 2002 and 2008 in Jos, Nigeria to mention just a few. Listening to people helps one to understand their respective points of view. The importance of listening allows the Ara-ilus and Omo-ilus to understand one another better. For instance, our interactions have helped me understand some aspects of Christianity that I never knew existed. Also, I was able to relate a number of the verses of the Qur’an to her, even before we decided to marry.

Thirdly, Justobification helped me understand that some of the points of difference among groups could be transformed to points of understanding. We achieved this by learning to see our similarities rather than overplay our differences. Even as there were areas where we did not agree, we laid more emphasis on the centripetal forces such as common humanity and love, while understanding the centrifugal forces by listening to each other with respect and understanding. Unfortunately, some group leaders tend to over-blow these differences to a massive level, leading to the emergence of hybrid interpretations which find expression in the various violence and counter-violence among a large number of the nature-nurture groupings of the world.

Fourthly, Justobification showed me the importance of prayer for peace and friendship. Though it is unquestionable that prayers are a communication between human beings and the Creator, these prayers often have a psychological effect on us. By praying for a person, you tend to wish such a person well, thereby overcoming any hitherto existing antagonisms or hatreds. I recommend that groups pray for other groups. By this I look, hopefully, for a day when Sunnis pray for Shiites in Iraq, and vice versa in their mosques on frequent occasions, or the day when Christians pray for Muslims, Arabs pray for Americans, Yorubas pray for Hausa-Fulanis, or leaders of larger groups/states pray for others. For instance, the Israeli President pray for Palestinian leaders, or ex-President Bush praying for President Ahmadinajad of Iran, and vice versa. Though this may be considered laughable and debateable, there is no doubt that saying a prayer for peace and friendship will soften the hearts of these groups and their leaders.

In conclusion, even as I write there is the threat of nature-nurture related violence in different parts of the world. Societies are dividing along ethnic, religious, tribal or civilizational line. Sadly, this may continue unless we, as humans, begin to see the need to love, respect, expand points of unity and pray for peace and friendship. Simply put… we could all use a little Justobification.

Abdul-Gafar ‘Tobi’ Oshodi is a lecturer in the Department of Political Science, Lagos State University (LASU), Lagos, Nigeria. Also a trained journalist, Tobi Oshodi specialises in Advanced Specialised Reporting and International Political Economy with bias for the “African Condition.”

References

• Huntington, S. “The Clash of Civilizations,” in Foreign Affairs, Summer 1993.
• Oshodi, T. “Religious Vacuum and the Making of a Failed State: Somalia in the Eyes of the World” a paper presented at the Conference on Religion and International Relations in the Post Cold War Era held at the Uthman Dan Fodio University (UDU) Sokoto, Nigeria, January 16th – 17th, 2009.

In his studies, (1993, 1996) Huntington suggests alternative explanations to understanding conflicts and disputes in the post-Cold War period. To him, “culture and cultural identities, which at the broadest level are civilizational identities, are shaping patterns of cohesion, disintegration, and conflict in the post-Cold War” (Huntington 1996, 20).

The purpose of this paper is to test Huntington’s argument (1996) by addressing the following question: “Does a civilizational difference cause militarized interstate dispute?” The significance of the answer to this question is obvious: if Huntington’s claim is empirically supported, then dominant theories of international politics, which do not base conflicts on civilizational differences, have to be revised. And, therefore, Huntington’s theory will be useful in understanding the emerging world-order and explaining militarized disputes and conflicts that have occurred in the post-Cold War era.

Literature review

There were many responses and objections to Huntington’s argument that resulted in an extensive debate. Many of them claimed that the civilization theory is unable to explain the causes of conflicts and international order. In spite of the great number of responses and studies, few of these have been supported by quantitative research.

One of the important studies that evaluated Huntington’s argument and which deserves close attention was conducted by Russett, Oneal, and Cox in 2000 (in Triangulating Peace 2001, 239-305). The main question to be answered was “Does a difference in civilization increase the likelihood that a pair of states will become involved in a militarized interstate dispute?” (Russett et al 2001, 248). To perform their study, they used the University of Michigan’s Correlates of War (COW) database that provided Militarized Interstate Disputes (MID). In their view, limiting their analysis to MID that occurred during the 1950-92 period was appropriate, because “Huntington addressed events in these years when he first presented his argument in 1993” (249). Variables of liberal and realist theories were also added to their analysis in order to observe which theory had had higher explanatory and predictive power. Results of logistic regression indicated that variables of liberal and realist theories had much more influence on the probability of conflict than on civilization theory. Belonging to different civilizations increases the risk of dispute between two states only by 12 percent with .30 level of statistical significance. (255).

Huntington (2000, 609) replied to Russett et al, suggesting that they retest their argument as it was dealing with the post-Cold War period. Russett et al (2000, 611), in turn, argued that Huntington (1993) had used many disputes and conflicts that had not occurred in the post-Cold War era to justify and support his argument. That was the reason why they used MID of the 1950-92 period.

Another study to test Huntington’s argument was conducted by Jonathan Fox in 2001. He tried to examine whether conflicts between civilizations, particularly Western and Islamic conflicts, had increased with the end of the Cold War (Fox 2001, 459). He used the Minorities at Risk (MAR) dataset for his quantitative research and came up with interesting results. From a global perspective, the ratio of non-civilizational conflicts to civilizational conflicts had not changed significantly after the end of the Cold War. From an Islamic civilization perspective, there had been little change in the amount of conflicts among Islamic and other civilizations. However, from the perspective of Western civilizations, the proportion of conflicts between Western and Islamic civilizations had significantly increased since the end of the Cold War. Fox concludes that the findings illustrate that it is important which perspective one looks at conflicts from. If one looks from the Western perspective, they will find an increased amount of conflicts between Western and Islamic civilizations, which supports Huntington’s argument. But from the global and Islamic civilization perspective, little evidence can be found for a “clash of civilizations” in the post-Cold War period (459).

Although Fox’s study deserves attention, it does not examine conflicts among the other seven civilizations, but only focuses on the Western versus Islamic civilizations. Furthermore, his units of analysis are conflicts within states, not interstate. Interstate disputes are important in analyzing Huntington’s argument, because a nation as a whole has specific civilizational characteristics. According to Huntington’s map (1996, 26-27) of civilizations, each nation belongs to one of the nine civilizations and conflicts mostly arise among these. Conflicts that occur within states are only one minor part of Huntington’s argument.

Many other scholars have qualitatively criticized Huntington’s clash of civilizations theory. Ali Mazrui (1997) finds three major problems in Huntington’s argument. First, there is a “factual fallacy.” “It may not be factually true that the main lines of conflict of the future, following the Cold War, will be lines of clash of civilizations. It could be states or economic blocs” (Mazrui in Rashid 97, 27). Second, there could also be a “conceptual fallacy” in Huntington’s argument. Mazrui suggests a “clash of races” as an alternative to the clash of civilizations (27). Thirdly, there is a “temporal fallacy,” which means that inter-civilizational conflicts are not phenomena of the emerging world, but rather that they have been the most important issue of the world for at least the past four to five hundred years; within these conflicts we can include the Crusades, the “trans-Atlantic slave-trade, and European colonization of much of the world” (29).

In response to his critics (Foreign Affairs 1996, 67), Huntington stated that none of these scholars had come up with a better alternative to explain the conflicts of the new era. To him, the clash of civilizations remains the most powerful theory to understand disputes in the post-Cold War period.

In this context, this paper is of a crucial importance because 1) it will focus on militarized disputes of the post-Cold War period; 2) the disputes are among the states and civilizations they belong to; 3) and the study will conduct a quantitative method to analyze the clash of civilizations. Thus, this paper takes into account the weaknesses of previous studies and establishes a strong critique to Huntington’s argument.

Research design

This analysis uses the Correlates of War (COW) project’s Militarized Interstate Disputes (MID). The COW provides MID starting from 1816 to 2001. As Huntington (2000, 609) claims, the clash of civilizations theory is helpful in understanding conflicts that occurred after the end of the Cold War, specifically after 1989 (Huntington 1996, 21; Huntington 2000, 609). The COW project had MID reaching up to 2001, so I chose those MID which occurred from 1989 to 2001. Although the number of disputes in this period seems to be small to test any theory, it should be quite enough to evaluate Huntington’s argument, as post-Cold War disputes were the basis of his theory. I had 620 militarized interstate disputes in total. Each dispute occurred between at least two states; one state in side A, and another on side B. The sides are coded as 0 and 1. I had information on which pair of states had disputes. Some disputes had more than two sides. I rearranged these coalitions as if they had disputes separately as dyads. For instance, if there were two states on side A and two states on side B in a dispute, than there would be four dyads involved in the same dispute.

States in these disputes belong to one of the nine civilizations, which are Western, coded as 1, Latin American (2), African (3), Islamic (4), Sinic (5), Hindu (6), Orthodox (7), Buddhist (8), and Japanese (9). Huntington (1993, 1996) does not explicitly specify the number of civilizations. In his article (1993) he mentions about “seven or eight major civilizations.” To him, Buddhism “has not been the basis of a major civilization.” (Huntington 1996, 48). Also Japan has not founded any civilization as there are no nations that share the same religion, language, or cultural values with Japanese culture. However, map 1.3 (The World of Civilizations: Post-1990) in his book (1996, 26-27) shows that there are nine civilizations in the world, including Buddhist and Japanese. I used nine civilizations as shown in the map. Russett et al (2001, 251) used eight, excluding Japanese. I wonder how they dealt with disputes that had Japan on one of the sides.

Having nine coded civilizations and many more states in the dataset, I coded all states as any of the nine civilizations they belonged to, according to map 1.3. (Huntington 1996, 26-27). I had difficulties, as did Russett et al (2001, 251), in classifying some states, because the map was not clear and Huntington did not explicitly mention them in the text. For example Nigeria, according to the map is separated into two civilizations, Islamic and African. Since religion is the most important factor that distinguishes each civilization, I have used the CIA’s World Factbook to find out the proportion of religion in Nigeria, and classified it as Islamic. India is shown as a state of both Islamic and Hindu civilizations, but I have classified it as Hindu. Sri Lanka was classified as Buddhist in relevance with Russett et al (2001). The Philippines, in my classification, go into Sinic civilization, but Russett et al (2001) classify it as Western. The most interesting problem that occurred in classification was to which civilization Israel belongs. The question is significant, as Israel has had many disputes with its neighboring states. Huntington thinks Israel is an Islamic civilization according to the map. It is ironic that Israel is considered as an Islamic civilization, first because it has nothing to do with the religion of Islam, and second because such an approach decreases empirical support for Huntington’s argument. Although it does not make sense, I classified Israel as Islamic, strictly adhering to the map.

To answer my research question I had to use civilization dyads and observe if these dyads are prone to clash or not and how frequently they have disputes. Thus, I arranged these nine civilizations in dyadic form and came up with 45 civilization dyads, extracting each one of the same dyads as 1,2 v. 2,1. A dyad is labeled 0 if the civilizations in it are the same and 1 if the civilizations are different. After arranging civilization dyads, I plugged each dispute into one of the dyads and totaled it in regard to the 45 civilization dyads. Then I arranged the number of disputes in each dyad according to the proportion to the total number of disputes.

Huntington’s main hypothesis is that civilizations have mattered and have had positive impact on disputes in the post-Cold War period. I have my doubts about his argument and hypothesize that civilizations do not matter in interstate.

Data analysis

After running my Probit model, I have found that difference in civilizations had negative impact on interstate disputes with relatively small statistical significance (10). The findings of this paper contradict what Huntington (1993, 1996) suggests as his explanation for the causes of interstate disputes in the post-Cold War era. In other words, civilization differences do not cause interstate conflicts.

There have been a total of 620 militarized interstate disputes during the 1989-2001 period, according to the COW dataset (see Table 1). Some of civilization dyads did not have any disputes, whereas other dyads conflicted several times. Huntington’s argument that different civilizations clash does not find support with the results of this study. We can see from Table 1 that 19 dyads that consist of different civilizations have not had any militarized dispute since the end the Cold War. How can Huntington explain this phenomenon on the basis of his clash of civilizations argument? Can interstate disputes be explained by civilizational differences? The answers to these questions are obviously negative. Different variables of realist and liberal theories may explain the findings, but that is not within the scope of this study.

Limitations

One of the important limitations is the absence of a clear list of civilizations and states in these civilizations. If Huntington had provided these data then there would be no dissimilarities among the scholars who tried to test his argument. Some studies used eight civilizations while others used nine. Some states, like Israel and the Philippines were placed in different civilizations in different studies. This may influence the results of these studies, as these states have had many militarized disputes.

Conclusion

This study shows that Huntington’s argument is insufficient to explain conflicts in the new world order. As he argues, “culture and cultural identities, which at the broadest level are civilizational identities, are shaping patterns of cohesion, disintegration, and conflict in the post-Cold War” (Huntington 1996, 20). However, he did not carry out a quantitative analysis of the argument. He provided only case studies and offered qualitative analysis as support. Many studies, including this one, have been conducted in response to his clash of civilizations argument, with the conflicts of the post-Cold War period being analyzed quantitatively. None of these studies has found evidence to support Huntington’s argument. The finding of this study illustrates that a difference in civilization is not sufficient on its own to understand what causes conflicts these days nor does it have a positive impact on militarized disputes.

References

• Foreign Affairs. 1996. Samuel P. Huntington’s the Clash of Civilizations? The Debate. New York: W.W. Norton & Company,
• Fox, Jonathan. 2001. Two Civilizations and Ethnic Conflict: Islam and the West. Journal of Peace Research 38(4): 459-472.
• Huntington, Samuel P. 1993. The Clash of Civilizations? Foreign Affairs 72(3): 22-49
• If Not Civilizations, What? Foreign Affairs 72(4): 186-94, 1993.
• The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Simon and Schuster. 1996.
• Try Again: A Reply to Russett, Oneal & Cox. Journal of Peace Research 37(5): 609-610, 2000.
• Rashid, Salim. 1997. The Clash of Civilizations? Asian Responses. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Russett, Bruce M. and John R. Oneal. 2000. A Response to Huntington. Journal of Peace Research 37(5): 611-612.
• Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Inter dependence, and International Organizations. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001.