Why the “Sacred” Is a Better Resource Than “Religion” for Understanding Terrorism

The popular media and many in academia often overstate the role that religion, and its supposedly unique qualities, has played in recent acts of terror. In this article, I argue that the notion of religious violence is unhelpful and that there is a more useful concept that we can utilize to draw out the values and ideas that play a role in the move to violence in both religious and secular groups. From a series of case studies on religious and non-religious groups, I have drawn out an alternative framework for investigating and learning from the role that beliefs play in motivations and justifications for terrorism. This framework uses the concept of non-negotiable (or “sacred”) beliefs. It is as applicable to secular as it is to religious groups, and can show us much more about how such beliefs can contribute to violence.     

Do Religious Factors Impact Armed Conflict? Empirical Evidence From Sub-Saharan Africa

Theoretically, the “mobilization hypothesis” establishes a link between religion and conflict by arguing that particular religious structures are prone to mobilization; once politicized, escalation to violent conflict becomes more likely. Yet, despite the religious diversity in sub-Saharan Africa and the religious overtones in a number of African conflicts, this assumption has not yet been backed by systematic empirical research on the religion–conflict nexus in the region. The following questions thus remain: Do religious factors significantly impact the onset of (religious) armed conflict? If so, do they follow the logic of the mobilization hypothesis and, if so, in which way? To answer these questions, this article draws on a unique data inventory of all sub-Saharan countries for the period 1990–2008, particularly including data on mobilization-prone religious structures (e.g., demographic changes, parallel ethno-religious identities) as well as religious factors indicating actual politicization of religion (e.g., inter-religious tensions, religious discrimination, incitement by religious leaders). Logit regressions suggest that religion indeed plays a significant role in African armed conflicts. These findings are compatible with the mobilization hypothesis, and stress the impact of conflict-prone religious structures, and particularly, the fact that overlaps of religious and ethnic identities are conflict-prone. Future research should investigate the religion-ethnicity-nexus in more detail.     

Old (Molotov) cocktails in new bottles? “Price-tag” and settler violence in Israel and the West Bank

In the early morning of July 31, 2015, masked attackers threw firebombs into two Palestinian homes in the West Bank village of Duma, south of Nablus, killing three Palestinian civilians. Contrary to claims by Israeli and Palestinian politicians, this attack was neither an isolated anomaly nor just another incident of settler violence. Instead, it was the latest attack in an important but largely unknown phenomenon called “price-tag,” in which a loosely connected group of young Israelis called “hilltop youth” burn Palestinian mosques and destroy property in hundreds of attacks accompanied by threatening graffiti that references Israeli settlers, outposts, and anti-Arab slogans. Using an original dataset of price-tag incidents and interviews with key actors, we demonstrate that the perpetrators, targets, and strategies of price-tag are different than previous patterns of settler violence. Whereas previous settlers saw the Israeli state as legitimate and largely decided to cooperate with it, the hilltop youth have decided to confront it by using price-tag attacks to deter settlement withdrawals and chain-gang the state into a conflict with the Palestinians. This analysis of the strategic logic of price-tag reveals its potential to shift the political landscape within and between Israelis and Palestinians.     

Strategies,capabilities, and demands: Explaining outcomes in violent intrastate nationalist conflicts

The study of nationalist and ethnic conflict has undergone considerable growth since the end of the Cold War. Much of the effort has been focused on ascertaining the nature and origins of such conflicts, and less on their process and termination. Those studies that do focus on conflict termination have generally done so using case‐study or idiosyncratic methods. Hence, we do not yet have much large‐N or statistical evidence that might suggest broad trends in how such conflicts end, or even much experience in measuring the relevant concepts in a manner conducive to such methods. This paper will address these questions by introducing a theoretical framework that seeks to explain the outcomes of violent intrastate nationalist conflicts. It will discuss measurement issues for relevant independent variables, and present data for a group of 75 violent, intrastate nationalist conflicts from 1945–1996. This data will then be used to test propositions derived from the model. The aim is to provide a useful building block for the study of the process and outcome of conflicts which political scientists now recognize to be some of the most important for the coming century.     

The Culture of Interest: A Proposed Addition and Revision of the Three‐Culture Model

Negotiation and conflict resolution theorists have classified world cultures according to three types for the purpose of describing and predicting some of the ways in which individuals and groups within broad, geographically based cultural groups behave in conflict and negotiation‐related situations. These three broad categories, called “cultural syndromes,” have described these cultures according to the relative value they place on these three concerns: honor, face, and dignity. Based on our examination of the literature on the cultural dimensions of negotiation and conflict management, our own practice, and an analysis of literature and practice pertaining to the place and utility of the honor, face, interest, and dignity attributes within and between cultural groups , we propose a reformulation of this typology. Our reformulation would replace the broad “dignity” category with a new category that we call “interest,” which we believe better characterizes Northern European and North American cultures. We also argue that a cultural orientation toward dignity is universal and not geographically unique and is thus shared by all three cultures. This new formulation, we believe, more accurately characterizes the global range of orientations toward negotiation and conflict resolution and would, if adopted, help scholars and practitioners better understand culturally divergent conflict orientations and behaviors as well as the ramifications of such differences for negotiation and conflict resolution practice.     

Radio and Television Audiences in South Africa: 1994–2002

Abstract

In this article the author tracks various media and their usage in South Africa from 1994 to 2002 to see how they reacted o the extended choices in radio and television. Wider exposure to the media, that is, private radio and television stations other than the South African Broadcasting corporation (SABC), was supposed to deepen democracy in the sense that it would give people the opportunity to hear and see differing opinions on air. In addition, for the first time disadvantaged communities had a voice in the media in the form of community radio. In the context of the massive and positive political, social and administrative changes in a wide range of sectors in South Africa, it was surprising to see the relative stability of choices made by mass media users, in terms of both content and type. Some theoretical and pragmatic comments on this phenomenon are given in the article.     

民族精神道德文化课——俄罗斯德育新探索

近年来,道德教育在俄罗斯教育中的地位日益彰显。目前正在进行试验教学的俄罗斯民族精神道德文化课令人瞩目。该课程主要由俄罗斯传统宗教文化组成,是俄罗斯学校德育教育的重要尝试,充分体现了现代俄罗斯教育要依托本民族精神文化、弘扬民族传统价值的重要思想,对于培养和发展中学生的精神道德具有积极、重要的意义。该课程在实践教学中也面临着一些现实问题的考验。     

Turning down the heat: Influences on conflict management in enduring rivalries

Enduring rivalries represent the most difficult challenges for policy makers seeking to promote international peace and security. Once in place, enduring rivalries account for a disproportionate number of crises, militarized disputes, as well as wars, and include conflicts that are more likely to escalate than those falling in other conflict contexts. Unfortunately, we know very little about conflict management in enduring rivalries from either a theoretical or policy perspective. This study seeks to account for why some rivalries are successfully managed while others persist at high and unabated levels of conflict In addressing these concerns, we explore 35 enduring rivalries over the period 1945–1992. We find that although enduring rivalries are quite resistant to influences that produce changes in their dynamics, both endogenous and contextual influences can exercise a significant impact upon the prospects for conflict management between enduring rivals.     

中俄宗教兼容性与排他性的历史解读

中国民间宗教信仰具有兼容性,官方宗教政策也呈现出以兼容为主排他为辅的特征,这造就了中国民众宗教思想的实用功利性;而俄国民间宗教信仰则具有排他性,官方宗教政策也呈现出以排他为主兼容为辅的特征,这培养了俄国民众宗教信仰的纯粹性。中俄宗教的兼容性和排他性,以及由此产生的实用功利性和信仰纯粹性,成为两国文化根深蒂固的特质,深刻地影响着中俄两国的重大事件和历史进程。     

Arab national security in the 1980's. Threats and strategies

Scholars increasingly are accepting the empirical generalization that democracies almost never go to war with each other, and infrequently even engage in militarized disputes with each other. It has not been clear, however, whether the rarity of conflict between democracies is caused by some aspect of being democratic, or whether it is caused by some other variable or variables that may be correlated with democracy. Using data on all independent states for the period 1946–1986, we examine the effects of political system type, distance, wealth, economic growth, alliances, and political stability. The results suggest that, although most of the other variables do have an effect, as hypothesized, there still seems to be an independent effect of political system type: democracies engage in militarized disputes with each other less than would be expected by chance. The effect may be enhanced by political stability; that is, states which can be perceived as stable democracies are less likely to be involved in disputes with other democracies.