Does religion make a difference? Theoretical approaches to the impact of faith on political conflict

Millenium

Volumn 29, Issue 3, 2000, Pages 641-674

  Hasenclever, Andreas ^a   Rittberger, Volker ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 26444530010     PISSN: 03058298     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
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References (183)

1. See, for example, Mark Juergensmeyer, The New Cold War? Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993);
2. Giles Kepel, Die Rache Gottes: Radikale Moslems, Christen, und Juden auf dem Vormarsch (München: Piper, 1991);
3. Martin E. Marty and R. Scout Appleby, eds., Fundamentalism Comprehended (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995);
4. Jeffrey Seul, 'Ours is the Way of God: Religion, Identity, and Intergroup Conflict', Journal of Peace Research 36, no. 3 (1999): 553-69;
5. Bassam Tibi, Krieg der Zivilisationen (Hamburg: Hoffmann and Campe, 1999). It should be noted, however, that the debate on the renewed power of religious communities in politics rests on scholarly impressions rather than quantitative empirical research. For the purpose of this paper we simply assume that such a revival is currently taking place.
6. See especially Hans Küng, Projekt Weltethos, 5th ed. (München: Piper, 1992);
7. Hans Küng, Global Responsibility: In Search of a New World Ethic (New York: Crossroad, 1991);
8. Hans Küng, Weltethos für Weltpolitik und Weltwirtschaft (München: Piper, 1997);
9. Hans Küng, 'Politik aus Verantwortung: Plädoyer für Eine Ethisch Fundierte Außenpolitik', Internationale Politik 55, no. 2 (2000): 1-10;
10. Hans Küng and Karl Josef Kuschel, eds., Erklärung zum Weltethos: Die Deklaration des Parlaments der Weltreligionen (München: Piper, 1993).
11. UNESCO Charter, preamble [http://www.icomos.org/unesco/unesco_constitution.html] (10 December 2000).
12. See Samuel Huntington, 'The Clash of Civilizations?', Foreign Affairs 72, no. 3 (1993): 22-49;
13. Samuel Huntington, Der Kampf der Kulturen: Die Neugestaltung der Weltpolitik im 21. Jahrhundert (München: Europaverlag, 1996);
14. Kepel, Rache Gottes;
15. Seul, 'Ours is the Way of God';
16. Tibi, Krieg der Zivilisationen;
17. Basam Tibi, Die Neue Weltunordnung: Westliche Domínanz und Islamischer Fundamentalismus (Berlin: Propyläen Verlag, 1999).
18. See among others Graham Fuller, 'The Next Ideology', Foreign Policy, no. 98 (1995): 145-58;
19. Ted Robert Gurr, 'Minorities, Nationalists, and Ethnopolitical Conflict', in Managing Global Chaos: Sources of and Responses to International Conflict, eds. Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osier Hampson, and Pamela Aall (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1996);
20. Thomas Meyer, Identitätswahn: Die Politisierung des Kulturellen Unterschieds (Berlin: Aufbau, 1997);
21. Dieter Senghaas, Zivilisierung wider Willen: Der Konflikt der Kulturen mit sich Selbst (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1998).
22. See Harald Müller, Das Zusammenleben der Kulturen: Ein Gegenentwurf zu Huntington (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1998)
23. Joseph Nye, 'Conflicts after the Cold War', The Washington Quarterly 19, no. 1 (1995): 5-24.
24. See Mahmud A. Faksh,'The Prospects of Islamic Fundamentalism in the Post-Gulf War Period', International Journal 49, no. 2 (1994): 183-218;
25. Fuller, 'Next Ideology', 149-55;
26. Ibrahim A. Karawan, The Islamist Impasse, Adelphi Paper 314 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 14-17.
27. See Michael E. Brown and Chantal De Jonge Oudraat, 'International Conflict and International Action: An Overview', in Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict: An International Security Reader, eds. Michael Brown et al. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), 254-55;
28. Dieter Senghaas, 'Schluß mit der Fundamentalismus-Debatte! Plädoyer für eine Reorientierung des Interkulturellen Dialogs', Blätter für Deutsche und Internationale Politik 40, no. 2 (1995): 187;
29. Andreas Wimmer, 'Interelhnische Konflikte: Ein Beitrag zur Integration Aktueller Forschungsansätze', Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 47, no. 3 (1995): 469.
30. Gurr, 'Minorities, Nationalists, and Ethnopolitical Conflict', 74.
31. As Gurr explains in Peoples versus States: Minorities at Risk in the New Century (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2000), 3-13, his approach is confined to analysing the behaviour of ethnopolitical groups. These are minority groups 'whose ethnic identity is the basis for either differential treatment or collective action, or both'. Ethnic identity, in turn, is socially constructed. The members of ethnic groups are ascribed by others (and in part by themselves) certain traits concerning customary behaviour and dress, religious beliefs, language, physical appearance, and etc. that set them apart from the majority and mark them as strangers in a given society. Most of the religious movements which are at the core of the present paper are to be distinguished from ethnopolitical groups. Normally, the leaders and members of these movements are not minorities at risk as understood by Gurr, but radical representatives of the religious and cultural mainstream in their societies. These differences notwithstanding, we share the analytic importance that Gurr attaches to enduring political and economic discrimination on the one hand and to group leaders and their strategic choices on the other, in explaining group behaviour once the group has come into existence as a socially constructed entity.
32. See Anthony D. Smith, 'The Ethnic Sources of Nationalism', Survival 35, no. 1 (1993): 53.
33. See Müller, Zusammenleben der Kulturen, 44-46.
34. See, for instance, Jochen Hippler, 'Konflikte und das Internationale System', in Globale Trends 2000: Fakten, Analysen, Prognosen, eds. Ingomar Hauchler, Dirk Messner, and Franz Nuscheler (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1999), 424-26;
35. Müller, Zusammenleben der Kulturen 74-75.
36. Nye, 'Conflicts after the Cold War', 17.
37. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Pandaemonium: Ethnicity in International Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 15.
38. See among others Emanuel Adler, 'Seizing the Middle Ground: Constructivism in World Politics' European Journal of International Relations 3, no. 3 (1997): 319-63;
39. Stefano Guzzini, 'A Reconstruction of Constructivism in International Relations', European Journal of International Relations 6, no. 2 (2000): 147-82;
40. Ted Hopf, 'The Promise of Constructivism in International Relations Theory', International Seurity 23, no. 1 (1998): 171-200;
41. Alexander Wendt, Social Theory and International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 20-21.
42. Alexander Wendt, 'Collective Identity Formation and the International State', American Political Science Review 88, no. 2 (1994): 389.
43. See, for instance, Adler, 'Seizing the Middle Ground', 333
44. Hopf, 'Promise of Constructivism', 177.
45. Wendt, Social Theory, 95.
46. See also Adler, 'Seizing the Middle Ground', 330, who writes: 'Constructivism seizes the middle ground because it is interested in understanding how the material, subjective and intersubjective worlds interact in the social construction of reality, and because, rather than focusing exclusively on how structures constitute agents' identities and interests, it also seeks to explain how individual agents socially construct these structures in the first place'.
47. See, for instance, Harvey Cox, 'World Religions and Conflict Resolution', in Religion, the Missing Dimension of Statecraft, eds. Douglas Johnston and Cynthia Sampson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 266;
48. Douglas Johnston, 'Review of the Findings', in Religion, the Missing Dimension, 263.
49. See R. Scott Appleby, The Ambivalence of The Sacred: Religion, Violence, and Reconciliation (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), 54-57;
50. Jack Snyder, 'Nationalism and the Crisis of the Post-Soviet State', Survival 35, no. 1 (1995): 17-18;
51. Valery Tishkov, Ethnicity, Nationalism and Conflicts in and after the Soviet Union: The Mind Aflame (London: Sage, 1998), 12-13.
52. Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, Preventing Deadly Conflict (New York: Carnegie Corporation of New York, 1997), 30.
53. Alexander Wendt, 'The Agent-Structure Problem in International Relations Theory', International Organization 41,no. 3 (1987): 359.
54. A corollary of this vulnerability is the never-ending attempt of political elites to control the access to the public sphere. Constructivists recognise the importance of material power in this regard As Adler, 'Seizing the Middle Ground', 333 notes: 'Statements are turned into facts not only by the power of discourse, but also by gaining control over the social support networks and the material resources of organizations and networks. Facts emerge when social and material resources make it too difficult and costly to deconstruct the statements supported by them'. In other words, epistemic authority also has a material basis.
55. See, among others, Jacob Bercovitch and Richard Jackson, International Conflict: A Chronological Encyclopedia of Conflicts and Their Management 1945-1995 (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly, 1997), 21-22;
56. Louis Kriesberg, Social Conflicts, 2d ed. (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1982), 87-90;
57. Erich Weede, Konfliktforschung: Einführung und Überblick (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1986), 47.
58. In the literature, the significance of elites in social conflicts is not in dispute. See especially Gurr, People versus States, 78-79;
59. Kriesberg, Social Conflicts, 87-90;
60. Jeffrey Z. Rubin, Dean G. Pruitt and Sung Hee Kim, Social Conflict: Escalation, Stalemate, and Settlement, 2d ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994), 20 and 24. Usually, in a conflict elites do not only define the goals of their groups but also decide which means to use in order to achieve them.
61. Michael Brown, 'The Causes of Internal Conflict: An Overview', in Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict: An International Security Reader, eds. Michael E. Brown et al. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), 17.
62. See among others Vilhelm Aubert, 'Interessenkonflikt und Wertkonilikt: Zwei Typen des Konflikts und der Konfliktlösung', in Konflikt und Konfliktstrategie: Ansätze zu einer Soziologischen Konflikttheorie, ed. Walter Bühl (München: Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung, 1972), 180-84;
63. C.R. Mitchell, The Structure of International Conflict (London: MacMillan, 1981), 35;
64. Volker Rittberger and Michael Zürn, 'Towards Regulated Anarchy in East-West Relations: Causes and Consequences of East-West Regimes', in International Regimes in East-West Politics, ed. Volker Rittberger (London: Pinter, 1990), 31.
65. See Kriesberg, Social Conflicts, 30-35;
66. Mitchell, Structure of International Conflict, 87 and 94;
67. Rittberger and Zürn, 'Towards Regulated Anarchy', 29-32;
68. Rubin, Pruitt, and Kim, Social Conflict, 15 and 85.
69. The willingness to make sacrifices, in turn, depends on a number of factors. Kriesberg, Social Conflicts, 134 observes, for example, that young people are comparatively easy to mobilise for the use of risky strategies. He puts this down to a feeling of invulnerability that young people frequently have. Moreover, they are relatively independent and often lack the personal commitments older people have.
70. See Kriesberg, Social Conflicts, 185-89
71. Rubin, Pruitt, and Kim, Social Conflict, 84-87.
72. Bercovitch and Jackson, International Conflict, 14.
73. See, for instance, Gurr, 'Minorities, Nationalists, and Ethnopolitical Conflict', 69;
74. Kriesberg, Social Conflicts, 147;
75. Mitchell, Structure of International Conflict, 134-35.
76. For reasons of complexity reduction, we will consider in this paper the national societal environment of the parties only. It should be noted, however, that there is research demonstrating that elites attach great significance to the support of international as well as transnational actors when contemplating strategies for conflict management. See among others David R. Davis and Will H. Moore, 'Ethnicity Matters: Transnational Ethnic Alliances and Foreign Policy Behaviour', International Studies Quarterly 41, no. 1 (1997): 171-84
77. Gurr, People versus States, 87-95. Thus it makes a difference whether or not parties have areas of retreat in 'friendly' states at their disposal, whether or not they are financially supported by other countries, and whether or not they have information on similar conflicts in other countries.
78. See Juergensmeyer, New Cold War, 22-23;
79. David Little, 'Religious Militancy', in Managing Global Chaos, 82-83.
80. Appleby, Ambivalence of the Sacred, 91.
81. See Little, 'Religious Militancy', 87;
82. Smith, 'The Ethnic Sources of Nationalism', 57.
83. See Renée de Nevers, 'Democratization and Ethnic Conflict', Survival 35, no. 2 (1993): 33.
84. See Barry Rubin, 'Religion and International Affairs', in Religion, the Missing Dimension, 24.
85. Jonathan Fox, 'Do Religious Institutions Support Violence or the Status Quo?', Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 22, no. 2 (1999): 131.
86. See for instance Austin M. Ahanotu, 'Religion and the Problem of Power: South Africa', in The Terrible Meek: Essays on Religion and Revolution, ed. Lonnie D. Kliever (New York: Paragon House, 1987), 230-34
87. Appleby, Ambivalance of the Sacred, 34-40.
88. See especially Clive Henry Afflick, The History and Politics of Liberation Theology in Latin America and the Caribbean (Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms International, 1989), 119-25;
89. Gustavo Gutiérrez, Theologie der Befreiung, 8th ed. (Mainz: Kaiser, 1985), 103-4;
90. William R. Jones, 'The Legitimation of Counterviolence: Insights from Latin American Liberation Theology', in The Terrible Meek, 189-216.
91. Jones, 'Legitimation of Counterviolence', 192.
92. Therefore, our account is unambigiously biased in favour of peaceful means of political change.
93. See Appleby, Ambivalance of the Sacred, 104;
94. Juergensmeyer, New Cold War, 153;
95. David C. Rapoport, 'Comparing Militant Fundamentalist Movements and Groups', in Fundamentalisms and the State: Remaking Politics, Economies, and Militance, eds. Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby (Chicago: University Press of Chicago, 1993), 446.
96. As Appleby, Ambivalance of the Sacred, 119 reminds us, this finding makes perfect sense in a constructivist framework as well: 'Whether the movement is "fundamentalist", "liberationist", or "religious nationalist" ...there are certain recurrent external conditions - ineffective or inaccessible political institutions, a deteriorating or structurally unfair economy, discrimination on the basis of religion - that trigger or magnify the tendency of intolerant religious actors to employ extremist violence. It is easier to describe the violence as "defensive", and therefore morally legitimate, when such unjust conditions persist. A violated social compact may also provide extremist movements with greater access to, and plausibility within, the larger society'.
97. We are grateful to one anonymous reviewer for challenging us to clarify our argumentation at this point.
98. Gutiérrez, Theologie der Befreiung, 61-62;
99. Jones, 'Religious Legitimation of Counterviolence', 201-05.
100. Gutiérrez, Theologie der Befreiung, 74-77.
101. The term 'institutionalized violence' as well as the corresponding notions of 'collective sin' and 'preferential option for the poor' found their way into official church documents. See especially Afflick, History and Politics of Liberation Theology, 120-25
102. Christiano German, Politik und Kirche in Lateinamerika: Zur Rolle der Bischofskonferenzen im Demokratisierungsprozeß Brasiliens und Chiles (Frankfurt: Vervuert, 1999), 96-100. What remained contested among Catholics in Latin America, however, was the appropriate method of social and political change. Would there be no other way than a peaceful revolution, as the vast majority of bishops held, or was it necessary to attack the forces of the status quo with violent means, as a number of priests and liberationist theologians argued?
103. See Jack Donnelly, 'Twentieth-Century Realism', in Traditions of International Ethics, eds. Terry Nardin and David R. Mapel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 85-93;
104. Mitchell, Structure of International Conflict, 263-65;
105. Kenneth Waltz, Theory of Internaional Politics (New York: Random House, 1979), 117.
106. See among others Gabriel A. Almond, Emmanuel Sivan, and R. Scott Appleby, 'Politics, Ethnicity, and Fundamentalism', in Fundamentalism Comprehended, 499-500;
107. Gurr, People versus States, 127;
108. Juergensmeyer, New Cold War, 24.
109. See Chaim Kaufmann, 'Possible and Impossible Solutions to Ethnic Ware', International Security 20, no. 4 (1996): 136-75.
110. Similar arguments concerning the violence-promoting effect of intermingled populations with divergent ethnic ties or religious convictions have been advanced by Barry R. Posen, 'The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict', Survival 35, no. 1 (1993): 27-47;
111. Stephen Van Evera, 'Hypotheses on Nationalism and War', in Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict, 38-41.
112. Kaufmann, 'Possible and Impossible Solutions', 149
113. Kaufmann, Possible and Impossible Solutions Ibid., 170-71.
114. Huntington, Kampf der Kulturen, 513-14.
115. Almond, Sivan and Appleby, 'Politics, Ethnicity, and Fundamentalism', 502.
116. Ted Robert Gurr and Barbara Harff, Ethnic Conflict in World Politics (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994), 105;
117. Kaufmann, 'Possible and Impossible Solutions', 151.
118. See Werner Ruf, 'Gewalt und Gegengewalt in Algerien', in Politische Religion: Ursachen und Erscheinungsformen des Modernen Islamismus, eds. Heiner Bielefeld und Wilhelm Heitmeyer (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1998), 320-36
119. Milton Viorst, 'Algeria's Long Night', Foreign Affairs 76, no 6 (1997): 86-99.
120. Brown and De Jonge Oudraart, 'International Conflict and International Action', 252.
121. See among others Gurr, 'Minorities, Nationalists, and Ethnopolitical Conflict', 55;
122. Juergensmeyer, New Cold War,
123. Müller, Zusammenleben der Kulturen, 58-62.
124. Brown, 'The Causes of Internal Conflict', 22.
125. Almond, Sivan and Appleby, 'Politics, Ethnicity, and Fundamentalism', 500.
126. Senghaas, Zivilisierung wider Willen, 185-86.
127. See for instance Robert Bartley, 'The Case for Optimism: The West Should Believe in Itself', Foreign Affairs 72, no. 4 (1993): 15-18;
128. Senghaas, 'Schluß mit der Fundamentalismus-Debatte!', 187-90.
129. See especially Jose Campos and Hilton L. Root, The Key to the Asian Miracle: Making Shared Growth Credible (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1996)
130. Lewis W. Snider, Growth, Debt, and Politics: Economic Adjustment and the Political Performance of Developing Countries (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996).
131. Senghaas, 'Zivilisierung wider Willen', 186.
132. See especially, Robert Jackson, Quasi-States: Sovereignty, International Relations, and the Third World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990)
133. Jack Snyder, 'Nationalism and the Crisis of the Post-Soviet State', Survival 35, no. 1 (1993): 7;
134. David Welsh, 'Domestic Politics and Ethnic Conflict', Survival 35, no. 1 (1993): 64.
135. Rubin, 'Religion and International Affairs', 24.
136. Appleby, Ambivalence of the Sacred, 69.
137. We use the qualifier 'established' religious authorities to designate those individuals who occupy high-level institutional roles in one of the great world religions.
138. See among others Appleby, Ambivalence of the Sacred, 30-34;
139. Cox, 'World Religions and Conflict Resolution', 267;
140. William Vendley and David Little, 'Implications for Religious Communities: Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, Christianity', in Religion, the Missing, 309-12.
141. Appleby, Ambivalence of the Sacred, 32.
142. This is also and especially true for Islam who is often suspected in the western public to promote a ruthless urge for violent confrontations between Muslims and Non-Muslims. Huntington, Kampf der Kulturen, 421, for instance, holds that the Muslim world has bloody frontiers to other civilisations. Islam, however, is internally as multifacetted as are all other world religions.
143. See for instance John L. Esposito, 'Islamische Bedrohung: Mythos oder Realität', Concilium 30, no. 3 (1994): 217-23;
144. Alber Hourani, Die Geschichte der Arabischen Völker (Frankfurt: S. Fischer, 1992), 531-49;
145. Appleby, Ambivalence of the Sacred, 104-7;
146. Little, 'Religious Militancy', 80-87.
147. We find influential groups such as the Pakistan political party 'Jamaat-i-Islami' or the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt that prefer 'ballots to bullets' and that engage in methods of peaceful change to achieve their political goals. On the other hand, in the same societies extremist groups propagate the use of force in political conflicts, and even the indiscrimiate killings of civilians. However, the existence of extremist movements is not peculiar to the Muslim world. As Rapoport, 'Comparing Militant Fundamentalist Movements', 446 reminds us, 'all major religions have enormous potentialities for creating and directing violence'.
148. Appleby, Ambivalence of the Sacred, 31.
149. See Appleby, Ambivalence of the Sacred, 72-80
150. Küng, Projekt Weltethos, 86.
151. See Küng and Kuschel, Erklärung zum Weltethos, 9-11.
152. This common set of moral values and norms was articulated at the first meeting of the 'World Conference of Religions for Peace' in Kyoto/Japan in 1970. The conference was attended by 250 senior leaders representing 10 major world religions and coming from 40 different countries. The common ground in fundamental moral values and norms was reaffirmed in a slightly different form by the 'Parliament of the World's Religions' which met in Chicago from 28 August until 4 September 1993. On 27 August 2000, finally, a 'Millennium World Peace Summit' opened at the United Nations in New York. The four day meeting brought together an unprecedented number of about 1000 spiritual leaders from 100 countries and dozens of faith groups. The religious leaders prayed together and discussed the role of religion in war, peace, forgiveness, reconciliation, poverty and the environment. See Jane Lapeman, 'World Religious Leaders Hold First Summit', Christian Science Monitor, 28 August 2000, A1;
153. Colum Lynch, 'U.N. Summit Hears Plea For Religious Tolerance', Washington Post, 30 August 2000, A 16.
154. Küng, Weltethos für Weltpolitik und Weltwirtschaft, 154.
155. Vendley and Little, 'Implications for Religious', in Religion, the Missing, 314.
156. Rubin, Pruitt and Kim, Social Conflict, 127-28.
157. For the Congress movement see among others Cox, 'World Religions and Conflict Resolution', 270
158. Kriesberg, Social Conflicts, 119.
159. For the Cambodia Pilgrims of Truth see Applebey, Ambivalence of the Sacred, 123.
160. For the Pashtun Reform movement see Robert C. Johansen, 'Radical Islam and Nonviolence: A Case Study of Religious Empowerment and Constraint Among Pashtuns', Journal of Peace Research 34, no. 1 (1997): 53-71.
161. For the Tibetan liberation movement see Ashil Kolas, 'Tibetan Nationalism: The Politics of Religion', Journal of Peace Research 33, no. 1 (1996): 51-66.
162. See Douglas Johnston, 'The Churches and Apartheid in South Africa', in Religion, the Missing Dimension, 177-207.
163. See Appleby, Ambivalence of the Sacred, 220-21
164. German, Politik und Kirche in Lateinamerka, 412-20.
165. See for instance the case studies in Religion, the Missing Dimension, esp. fn. 71.
166. Another example are the services provided by religious NGOs such as the the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, Mennonite Central Committee, the Muslim Peace Fellowship, Oz veShalom-Netivot Shalom, the Roman Catholic Community of Sant'Egidio, Thich Nhat Hanh's Tiep Hien, World Conference on Religion and Peace to name but a few. See Appleby, Ambivalence of the Sacred, 121-65.
167. Religions would thus function as 'opiate for the people'. It is noteworthy that this side of religious traditions, which for instance deeply disturbed Karl Marx and Friederich Engels, is ignored by most instrumentalist scholars. They focus almost entirely on the violence-escalating impact of religious faith on conflict behaviour. Proponents of Liberation Theology, by contrast, take the role of religion as 'opiate for the people' seriously. See German, Politik und Kirche in Lateinamerika, 71-75, 84-87;
168. Gutiérrez, Theologie der Befreiung, 61-62;
169. Jones, 'Religious Legitimation of Counterviolence', 201-05.
170. In a similar vein, Senghaas, Zivilisierung wider Willen, 175-84, denounces the instrumentalisation of so-called 'Asian values' by ruling autocracies in East and Southeast Asia. These elites fall back upon religious and cultural traditions in order to protect the economic and social status quo und to deny their peoples participation in political decision making.
171. See Brown and De Jonge Oudraat, 'International Conflict and International Action', 253;
172. Rubin, Pruitt and Kim, Social Conflict, 133;
173. Van Evera, 'Hypotheses on Nationalism and War', 53-54.
174. See for instance Kaufmann, 'Possible and Impossible Solutions', 147
175. Posen, 'Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict', 27-34.
176. Furthermore, it would make sense to institutionalise some form of communication between the world's great religious communities. One might think of the establishment of interreligious organisations, for example. They could offer a forum for discussing the interpretation and application of the global ethic. Besides, they could begin by reappraising the history of mutual discrimination and persecution. In so doing, they would try to deal constructively with traditional prejudices and anxieties. See also Posen, 'Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict', 44. In the run-up to the foundation of such inter-religious organisations, the difficult question about its membership needs to be solved, however. That is, the different religious communities have to agree on which religious groups should possess the right to send representatives to these organisations, a task that in itself will be difficult to accomplish.
177. Appleby, Ambivalence of the Sacred, 140-43;
178. Juergensmeyer, End of the Cold War, 195;
179. Little, 'Religious Militancy', 83-86.
180. The correlation between societal support for militant movements on the one hand and economic and political success or failure, on the other hand, has been confirmed by studies looking at recent developments in the Arab countries. See especially, Faksh, 'The Prospects of Islamic Fundamentalism', 215
181. Karawan, The Islamist Impasse, 31. The fundamentalist motto 'Islam is the solution' has lost much of its power by virtue of the disappointing performances of the Iranian and Sudanese governments, respectively. The radical-islamist movements have lost much of its popular support. This development does not imply that Islam has lost its social-revolutionary power entirely. We observe, however, a shift of loyalty to groups who pursue their radical aims with peaceful means, as for example the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
182. See Johnston, 'Review of the Findings', 263
183. Cox, 'World Religions and Conflict Resolution', 266.