Publication: Religious diversity, intolerance and civil conflict
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2013-05
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Abstract
We compute new measures of religious diversity and intolerance and study their effects on civil
conflict. Using a religion tree that describes the relationship between different religions, we
compute measures of religious diversity at three different levels of aggregation. We find that
religious diversity is a significant and robust correlate of civil conflict. While religious
fractionalization significantly reduces conflict, religious polarization increases it. This is most robust
at the second level of aggregation which implies that the cleavage between Hindus, Muslims, Jews,
and Christians etc. is more relevant than that between either subgroups of religions like Protestants
and Catholics, Shias and Sunnis, etc. or that between higher levels of aggregation like Abrahamic
and Indian religions. We find religious intolerance to be a significant and robust predictor of conflict.
Ethnic polarization ceases to be a robust predictor of civil conflict once we control for religious
diversity and intolerance. We find no evidence that some religions are more violent than others.