Abstract
In this research note I examine Huntington's ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis in the light of his arguments to his detractors to apply his thesis to post-Cold War armed conflicts within states. Drawing on more recent data on intrastate armed conflict to 1999, I demonstrate that Huntington's thesis is not substantiated. What we observe is that many of the interethnic and inter-religious conflicts that occur in the post-Cold War era are clashes within rather than between civilizations, just as Huntington's critics have noted previously. In fact, in the post-Cold War era, where there have been changes in the incidence of ‘clashes of civilizations’ we find that their number has actually declined, if only marginally.
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Henderson, E. Not Letting Evidence Get in the Way of Assumptions: Testing the Clash of Civilizations Thesis with More Recent Data. Int Polit 42, 458–469 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.ip.8800117
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.ip.8800117