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Religion, Government Coalitions, and Terrorism

2012; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 25; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09546553.2013.733250

1556-1836

Nil S. Satana, Molly Inman, Jóhanna Kristín Birnir,

Religion, Society, and Development

Abstract When ethnic minority parties are excluded from government coalitions, are group attributes such as religion related to the groups' use of political violence? We argue that extremist factions within minority groups make use of divergence in religion to mobilize support for violent action when the group is excluded from government. Thus, we posit that while religion per se is not a source of violence, extremist elements of ethnic minorities, whose religion differs from the majority, may use religious divergence to mobilize group members to perpetrate terrorism. Specifically we test the hypotheses that extremist factions of an excluded group will be more likely to carry out terrorist attacks when the group's members belong to a different religion as well as when they belong to a different denomination or sect of a religion than the majority. To test these propositions, we use data on ethnic minority party inclusion in government coalitions, ethnic minority group religion, and the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) by matching perpetrators with ethnic groups for all democracies, 1970–2004. Keywords: electoral politicsextremismminority groupspolitical accessreligionterrorism Notes Robust standard errors in parentheses. ***p < .01, **p < .05, *p < .1. "Iraq terror toll climbs to 100: Dozens also injured in worst day of violence of 2010," Associated Press, May 11, 2010,http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37057717/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/t/iraq-terror-toll-climbs/. Ibid. See Wimmer et al. for a discussion of how ethnopolitical configurations of power affect the probability of ethnic conflict. Andreas Wimmer, Lars-Erik Cederman, and Brian Min, "Ethnic Politics and Armed Conflict: A Configurational Analysis of a New Global Data Set," American Sociological Review 74, no. 2 (2009): 316–337. In late December 2010, the Iraqi parliament approved a new government including all major factions. See "Iraqi parliament approves new government," BBC News, December 21, 2010, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12047721. Jóhanna K. Birnir and Nil S. Satana, "Religion and Coalition Politics," Comparative Political Studies 46, no. 1 (2013). Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart, Sacred and Secular: Politics and Religion Worldwide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 201. Kenneth Wald and Clyde Wilcox, "Getting Religion: Has Political Science Rediscovered the Faith Factor?," American Political Science Review 100, no. 4 (2006): 523–529. Ted Robert Gurr, "Peoples against States: Ethnopolitical Conflict and the Changing World System: 1994 Presidential Address," International Studies Quarterly 38, no. 3 (1994): 347–377; Jonathan Fox, "Religious Causes of Discrimination Against Ethno-Religious Minorities," International Studies Quarterly 44, no. 3 (2000): 423–450; Jonathan Fox, Ethnoreligious Conflict in the Late 20th Century: A General Theory (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2002); Jonathan Fox, Religion, Civilization, and Civil War: 1945 through the Millennium (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004). William Riker, The Theory of Political Coalitions (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962); A. De Swaan, Coalition Theories and Cabinet Formation (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1973); Kaare Strom, "A Behavioral Theory of Competitive Political Parties," American Journal of Political Science 34, no. 2 (1990): 565–598; Anna Gryzmala-Busse, "Coalition Formation and the Regime Divide in East Central Europe," Comparative Politics 34, no. 1 (2001): 85–104. Arend Lijphart, "The Relative Salience of the Socio-Economic and Religious Issue Dimensions: Coalition Formations in Ten Western Democracies, 1919–1979," European Journal of Political Research 10, no. 3 (1982): 201–211; Birnir and Satana (see note 4 above). Indridi Indridason, "Does Terrorism Influence Domestic Politics? Coalition Formation and Terrorist Incidents," Journal of Peace Research 45, no. 2 (2008): 241–259; Leonard Weinberg, Ami Pedahzur, and Arie Perliger, Political Parties and Terrorist Groups (New York: Routledge, 2009); James A. Piazza, "Terrorism and Party Systems in the States of India," Security Studies 19, no. 1 (2010): 99–123; David C. Rapoport, "Fear and Trembling: Terrorism in Three Religious Traditions," American Political Science Review 78, no. 3 (1984): 668–672. Birnir and Satana (see note 4 above). Following Birnir and Satana's conceptualization, we use the term majority to refer to the ethnic majority constituency whose representative majority/plurality party controls the executive. We use ethnic minority constituency represented by minority party access (through a non-minority party). Todd Sandler, "Collective Action and Transnational Terrorism," World Economy 26 (2003): 779–802, 780. Birnir and Satana (see note 4 above). Global Terrorism Database, START, http://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/. Ernest Gellner, Postmodernism, Reason and Religion (New York: Routledge, 1992), 5. Norris and Inglehart (see note 5 above), 211. Pippa Norris, Electoral Engineering: Voting Rules and Political Behavior (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). For a thorough discussion on how ethnic cleavages may stabilize votes, see Jóhanna K. Birnir, Ethnicity and Electoral Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Geoffrey C. Layman and John C. Green, "War and Rumours of Wars: The Contexts of Cultural Conflict in American Political Behaviour," British Journal of Political Science 36, no. 1 (2005): 61–89. John C. Green, "Religion and Politics in the 1990s: Confrontations and Coalitions," in Mark Silk, ed., Religion and American Politics: The 2000 Election in Context (Hartford, CT: The Pew Program on Religion and the News Media, Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life, 2000), 38, http://www.trincoll.edu/depts/csrpl/religame.pdf. Ibid., 38. Jason Wittenberg, Crucibles of Political Loyalty: Church Institutions and Electoral Continuity in Hungary (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Nancy L. Rosenblum, "Religious Parties, Religious Political Identity, and the Cold Shoulder of Liberal Democratic Thought," Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 6, no. 1 (2003): 23–53, 31. Birnir (see note 18 above); Birnir and Satana (see note 4 above). Arend Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977). Birnir (see note 18 above). Leonard Weinberg, Ami Pedahzur, and Sivan Hirsch-Hoefler, "The Challenges of Conceptualizing Terrorism," Terrorism and Political Violence 16, no. 4 (2004): 777–794. Ibid., 785. See also Matthew J. Morgan, "The Origins of the New Terrorism," Parameters 34, no. 1 (2004): 29–43. Importantly, there is substantial debate in the literature about the causal relationship between religion and conflict. For example, Varshney argues that seemingly religious conflicts in India can be explained by intercommunity civic engagement (or lack thereof) and are not related to ethnicity or religion per se. See Ashutosh Varshney, Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 286. Varshney posits that Hindu-Muslim violence in India is an urban phenomenon and that cities with more civic organizations are less likely to develop violent actions against the state. Following this strand of the literature, those who do not deem that the content of religion is the root cause of violence find little support for the "new terrorism" literature. Scholars who mostly work within the rational choice paradigm argue that terrorist groups are strategic actors that try to accomplish political goals through violence, regardless of their religion, ethnicity, age, or education. Martha Crenshaw, "The Psychology of Terrorism: An Agenda for the 21st century," Political Psychology 21, no. 2 (2000): 405–420; Martha Crenshaw, "The Debate over 'New' vs. 'Old' Terrorism," in Ibrahim A. Karawan, Wayne McCormack, and Stephen E. Reynolds, eds., Values and Violence: Intangible Aspects of Terrorism, Studies in Global Justice, Vol. 4 (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2009); Martha Crenshaw, Old and New Terrorism—Lessons Learned, presented at the Second IRRI Conference on International Terrorism, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT, February 13, 2006, http://www.egmontinstitute.be/speechnotes/06/060213-jihad.terr/crenshaw.htm; Isabella Duyvesteyn, "How New is the New Terrorism," Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 27, no. 5 (2004): 439–454; Jeffrey K. Hadden and Anson Shupe, eds, Secularization and Fundamentalism Reconsidered: Religion and the Political Order (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1998); Todd Sandler and Walter Enders, "Applying Analytical Methods to Study Terrorism," International Studies Perspectives 8, no. 3 (2007): 287–302. For example, Canetti et al.'s research reveals, "in Israel, Muslims were found to support political violence more than Jews, yet the strong role of socio-economic deprivations underscored that religion does not, in itself, engender violence." See Daphna Canetti, Steven E. Hobfoll, Ami Pedahzur, and Eran Zaidise, "Much Ado About Religion: Religiosity, Resource Loss, and Support for Political Science," Journal of Peace Research 47, no. 5 (2010): 576. As quoted in Mark Sedgwick, "Al-Qaeda and the Nature of Religious Terrorism," Terrorism and Political Violence 16, no. 4 (2004): 795–814, 798. See also Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (London: Colombia University Press, 1998). David C. Rapoport, "Fear and Trembling: Terrorism in Three Religious Traditions," American Political Science Review 78 (1984): 668–672. For a more concise discussion of the literature, see Andreas Hasenclever and Volker Rittberger, "Does Religion Make a Difference? Theoretical Approaches to the Impact of Faith on Political Conflict," Millennium: Journal of International Studies 29 (2000): 641–674. Mark Juergensmeyer, "Religion as a Root Cause of Terrorism," in Louise Richardson, ed., The Roots of Terrorism (London: Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, 2006), 133–143. Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003). Jonathan Fox codes a variable for civilizational differences and tests the clash of civilizations argument. His findings do not support Huntington's argument; however, he finds that religion affects civil conflict as an intervening variable: some religions have fought more often than others and religious conflict is on the rise since around 1980. Jeffrey R. Seul, "'Ours is the Way of God': Religion, Identity, and Intergroup Conflict," Journal of Peace Research 36, no. 5 (1999): 553–569; Fox (see note 7 above). Rodney Stark, One True God: Historical Consequences of Monotheism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 367, 376. Andreas Hasenclever and Volker Rittberger (see note 32 above). Sedgwick (see note 30 above). Ibid., 805. William Lee Eubank and Leonard Weinberg, "Does Democracy Encourage Terrorism," Terrorism and Political Violence 6, no. 4 (1994): 417–433. Claude Berrebi and Esteban F. Klor, "On Terrorism and Electoral Outcomes: Theory and Evidence from the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict," Journal of Conflict Resolution 50, no. 6 (2006): 899–925; Weinberg et al. (see note 10 above); Piazza (see note 10 above). Lars-Erik Cederman, Simon Hug, and Lutz F. Krebs, "Democratization and Civil War: Empirical Evidence," Journal of Peace Research 47, no. 4 (2010): 377–394. Indridason (see note 10 above), 243. Others disagree about the role of terrorism in the outcome of the Spanish election. For example, see I.C. van Biezen, "Terrorism and Democratic Legitimacy: Conflicting Interpretations of the Spanish Elections," Mediterranean Politics 10, no. 1 (2005): 99–108. Birnir (see note 18 above). Birnir and Satana (see note 4 above). Indridason (see note 10 above), 243. Juergensmeyer (see note 33 above); Sedgwick (see note 30 above). Gabriel Ben-Dor and Ami Pedahzur, "The Uniqueness of Islamic Fundamentalism and the Fourth Wave of International Terrorism," in Leonard Weinberg and Ami Pedahzur, eds., Religious Fundamentalism and Political Extremism (London: Frank Cass, 2004), 71–91. Ibid., 86. Sedgwick (see note 30 above). Ted G. Jelen and Clyde Wilcox, eds., Religion and Politics in Comparative Perspective: The One, the Few, and the Many (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996); Seul (see note 36 above); Stark (see note 37 above). Fox (see note 7 above); Giacomo Chiozza, "Is There a Clash of Civilizations? Evidence from Patterns of International Conflict Involvement, 1946–97," Journal of Peace Research 39, no. 6 (2002): 711–734; Tanja Ellingsen, "Colorful Community or Ethnic Witches' Brew? Multiethnicity and Domestic Conflict during and after the Cold War," The Journal of Conflict Resolution 44, no. 2 (2000): 228–249; Erik Gartzke and Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, "Identity and Conflict: Ties that Bind and Differences that Divide," European Journal of International Relations 12, no. 1 (2006): 53–87; Errol A. Henderson, "Culture or Contiguity? Ethnic Conflict, the Similarity of States, and the Onset of Interstate War, 1820–1989," Journal of Conflict Resolution 41, no. 5 (1997): 649–668; Errol A. Henderson, "Mistaken Identity: Testing the Clash of Civilizations Thesis in Light of the Democratic Peace Claims," British Journal of Political Science 34, no. 3 (2004): 539–563; Errol A. Henderson, "Not Letting the Evidence Get in the Way of Assumptions: Testing the Clash of Civilizations with More Data," International Politics 42, no. 4 (2005): 458–469; Errol A. Henderson and David Singer, "Civil War in the Post-Colonial World, 1946–92," Journal of Peace Research 37, no. 3 (2000): 275–299; Andrej Tusicisny, "Civilizational Conflicts: More Frequent, Longer and Bloodier?," Journal of Peace Research 41, no. 4 (2004): 485–498. To be clear, authors testing both at the inter-state and intra-state levels do find some association between religion and conflict but their theoretical expectations differ from Huntington's. For example, Fox suggests that religion becomes a salient political issue when the group harbors desires for autonomy or independence and concludes that religion affects domestic conflict as an intervening variable. Fox (2002, see note 7 above). Cited in Alex Schmid and Albert Jongman, Political Terrorism: A New Guide to Actors, Authors, Concepts, Databases, Theories and Literature (Oxford: North Holland, 1988), 179. Birnir (see note 18 above). MAR. 2004, http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/inscr/mar/. Birnir's universe of cases is based on the Minorities at Risk (MAR) data and includes coalition information for 70 groups in 39 democracies, from 1945 to 2004. To isolate the effect of ethno-nationalism Birnir excludes Muslims in India and Hindus in Bangladesh from her sample because MAR classifies these groups as religious groups. Both are electorally active and Birnir and Satana have added them to their sample. Furthermore, Birnir surveys all electorally active ethnic minorities that she argues should be included in MAR because they meet all the criteria of large (over 1% of population or 100,000) "Minorities at Risk." Birnir and Satana have added the groups that are reportedly electorally active. They also take ethnic representation in the cabinet through a non-ethnic party as sufficient evidence of minority group mobilization. This is in contrast to Birnir who also requires that an ethnic party run candidates in elections. To keep with the definition of democracy, Fiji is eliminated. Birnir (see note 18 above). Although Birnir (see note 18 above) and Birnir and Satana (see note 4 above) use the years since the minority ethnic group has had any representation in the cabinet whether through a member of an ethnic party or a member of the ethnic minority who is a member of a non-ethnic party, we chose to focus exclusively on the exclusion of the ethnic party as we think it sends a clearer signal. However, we ran our analysis using the more inclusive independent variable, representation in the cabinet through ethnic party or ethnic minority member not from an ethnic party, and the results were substantively the same. Birnir (see note 18 above), 174. Fox (see note 7 above). Birnir and Satana (see note 4 above). Minority Rights Group International, World Directory of Minorities (London: Author, 1997). Following Birnir and Satana, we have included Bosnia and Herzegovina where the plurality (48%) is Bosniak (Sunni Muslim) but Croats (Catholic) and Serbs (Orthodox) are minorities. In contrast, Fox classifies Bosnia and Herzegovina's majority as "Islam, Other or Mixed." For further classification, see for example: http://www.adherents.com/. Birnir and Satana find that "in a few cases Fox classifies the minority group as belonging to various denominations." In those cases they coded the variable as 0. Birnir and Satana state that "in only two categories do electorally active minorities share a religious family but differ in denomination from the majority. These categories are Christian/Christian and Islam/Islam. In many more cases, where there are differences, the majority and the minority belong to different creeds. In three cases (Bangladesh, Bolivia, and Venezuela) minorities subscribe to both different and the same creeds as the majority. In Bolivia and Venezuela some of the indigenous are Shamanist but most are Catholic and were coded as belonging to the same creed and denomination as the majority. In Bangladesh, however, the Chittagong Hill tribes include both Muslim and Hindu populations. Furthermore, Muslim Chittagongs are Shi'i while the ethnic majority in Bangladesh is Sunni. Consequently, the Chittagong Hill tribes are coded as both belonging to a different creed and a different denomination than the majority." C. Ai and E. C. Norton, "Interaction Terms in Logit and Probit models," Economics Letters 80, no. 1 (2003): 123–129; E. C. Norton, H. Wang, and C. Ai, "Computing Interaction Effects and Standard Errors in Logit and Probit Models," Stata Journal 4 (2004): 154–167. Varshney (see note 29 above). James A. Piazza, "Rooted in Poverty?: Terrorism, Poor Economic Development and Social Cleavages," Terrorism and Political Violence 18, no. 1 (2006): 159–177. Donald Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley, CA: California University Press, 1985); Donald Horowitz, "Making Moderation Pay," in Joseph Montville, ed., Conflict and Peacekeeping in Multiethnic Societies, (New York: Lexington Books, 1990), 451–475; Stephen M. Saideman, David Lanoue, Michael Campenni, and Samuel Stanton, "Democratization, Political Institutions, and Ethnic Conflict: A Pooled, Cross-Sectional Time Series Analysis from 1985–1998," Comparative Political Studies 35, no. 1 (2002): 103–129; Birnir (see note 18 above); Piazza (see note 70 above); Piazza (see note 9 above). We used IDEA's data on electoral systems. See International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) at http://www.idea.int/vt/index.cfm. Piazza (see note 70 above). Alan Heston, Robert Summers, and Bettina Aten. Penn World Table Version 6.3. Center for International Comparisons of Production, Income and Prices at the University of Pennsylvania (CICUP), 2009. The standard errors are clustered on group, but the results were nearly identical when the regression was run with the standard errors clustered on country. D.B. Carter and C. S. Signorino. "Back to the Future: Modeling Time Dependence in Binary Data." Political Analysis 18, no. 3 (2010): 271–292. Michael J. Hanmer and K. Ozan Kalkan, Behind the Curve: Clarifying the Best Approach to Calculating Predicted Probabilities and Marginal Effects from Limited Dependent Variable Models (University of Maryland Working Paper, 2009). We checked to see if this relationship could be driven by a single case and this was not the case. Alan B. Krueger and David D. Laitin, "Kto Kogo?: A Cross Country Study of the Origins and Targets of Terrorism," in Philip Keefer and Norman Loayza, eds., Terrorism, Economic Development and Political Openness (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 148–173. Bruce Hoffman, "Holy Terror": The Implications of Terrorism Motivated by a Religious Imperative, 1993, http://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/2007/P7834.pdf; Hoffman (see note 30 above); David G. Kibble, "The Attacks of 9/11: Evidence of a Clash of Religions?" Parameters (Autumn 2002): 34–45; http://www.carlisle.army.mil/usawc/parameters/Articles/02autumn/kibble.pdf; Laurence A. Dobrot, The Global War on Terrorism: A Religious War? (Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, November 2007), http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil /pdffiles/pub822.pdf; David C. Rapoport, "The Four Waves of Rebel Terror and September 11," Anthropoetics 8, no. 1 (2002), http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/ap0801/terror.htm; Morgan (see note 28 above). Birnir (see note 18 above). The data account for self-exclusion of groups from the parliamentary elections. We first assess electoral activity of groups by year, and political parties (those having both violent and non-violent wings). Then we code for the access of the minority political parties that have run in the elections. Thus, the analysis is based on those groups who chose to participate in elections and have the opportunity of inclusion in the cabinet. Finally, we do not have the ability to account for groups who may have been invited but refused to join a governing coalition after they were elected to parliament. Given well-accepted assumptions about the benefits of joining governments, we do not believe this is a substantial problem with the data. Suzie Navot, "Fighting Terrorism in the Political Arena: The Banning of Political Parties," Party Politics 14, no. 6 (2008): 745–762. Also see John Finn, "Electoral Regimes and the Proscription of Anti-Democratic Parties," Terrorism and Political Violence 12, no. 3 (2000): 51–77, for a discussion of under which circumstances parties are banned in democracies for regime stability. Additional informationNotes on contributorsNil S. Satana Nil S. Satana is an assistant professor in the Department of International Relations at Bilkent University. She received her PhD from the Department of Political Science at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Molly Inman Molly Inman is a PhD candidate in the Department of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland. Jóhanna Kristín Birnir Jóhanna Kristín Birnir is an associate professor in the Department of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland and the research director of the Center for International Development and Conflict Management (CIDCM).