Postcards from Eurabia? Global dynamics and the culturalization

of conflict in Southeast Asia

G R A H A M K . B R O W N U N I V E R S I T Y O F B A T H

Motivation for the Research

�  The curious tale of the Muslim militant and the Chinese gynaecologist

�  The intersection of three inter-linked debates: ¡  The structural ‘causes’ of violent conflict (‘greed’ vs.

‘grievance’) ¡  What’s so ‘ethnic’ about ‘ethnic conflict’? ¡  Why is religious conflict on the rise? ( )

Clearing the ground: Is religious conflict on the rise?

�  The Clash of Civilizations thesis predicted that after the end of the Cold War, conflict within and between countries would be dominated by cultural differences along ‘civilizational lines’

�  (Slightly) more subtle alternatives still see religion and/or ethnic difference as increasingly driving violent conflict: Mary Kaldor’s ‘New Wars’; Mark Juergensmeyer’s ‘New Cold War’

�  Are they right?

Western ideas of individualism, liberalism, constitutionalism, human rights, equality, liberty, the rule of law, democracy, free markets, the separation of church and state, often have little resonance in Islam, Confucian, Hindu, Buddhist or Orthodox culture. (Huntington 1993) Haven’t we heard something like this before? On the one hand there are Westerners, and on the other there are the Arab-Orientals; the former are (in no particular order) rational, peaceful, liberal, logical, capable of holding real values, without natural suspicion; the latter are none of these things. (Said 1978)

Global conflict incidence and ethnoreligious demography

�  Indicators of demographic diversity typically show weak and inconsistent relationship with conflict incidence

�  The demographic indicators are problematic ¡  Static: Do not take into account

demographic changes over time ¡  Selection Bias: Particularly for ethnic

identities, argued to include only those identities already politicized

¡  Poor Data: Often based on Atlas Naradov Mira; population shares not always accurate

�  The econometric models are problematic ¡  Static: ‘Country-year’ observations pooled

inappropriately. Is ‘Ghana 1972’ really an entirely separate observation from ‘Ghana 1973’?

¡  Event Bias: History doesn’t matter ¡  Poor Data: Problematic proxies, dodgy

definitions, obvious omissions �  Can be useful for tracking change over

time

� 

Rolling window First, we run the regression on a ‘rolling window’ of 20 years: first for 1960-1979; then for 1961-1980, etc.

We do this four times: once for each of our demographic measures

We track the z-stat for the demographic variable

Ethnic diversity shows up as significant only in time periods from 1960s to 1990s: A Cold War phenomenon Religious diversity

shows up in the post-Cold War era, but is consistently negative

Structural Break Analysis Rolling window has problems with ongoing conflicts. Alternative strategy is to use the whole dataset but to test for ‘structural breaks’ in the coefficients on diversity

Test for structural break by including a time dummy for a particular year and an interaction term on the diversity measure

Run separately for each year from 1970 to 2000

Religious polarization dummy is consistently significantly negative irrespective of break year

For breaks in years after 1997, all three variables in the interaction are significant. Religious polarization is still negative, as is the year dummy, but the interaction term is positive

Break Year 2000 Predicted annual ‘risk’ of conflict for a country at 25th income percentile (all other variables held at mean value)

The usual suspect: Globalization

�  A number of scholars have sought to link the ‘rise’ of religious and ethnic conflict to the perverse effects of globalization

�  Globalization is postulated to have created a ‘crisis of identity’ in which violence is a reaction against the discontents of modernity and cultural homogenization ¡  Mark Duffield: The ‘declining nation-state competences under the impact of

globalisation’ has led to a ‘reworking of political authority’ that has seen the proliferation of exclusionary practices along ethnic and cultural lines (Duffield, 2001: p.170).

¡  Mary Kaldor: ‘The processes known as globalization are breaking up the cultural and socio-economic divisions that defined the pattern of politics which characterized the modern period. The new type of warfare has to be understood in terms of this global dislocation’ (Kaldor 2006: p.73)

�  Does it? Has it? Globalization as a global phenomenon seems an implausible candidate, precisely because global conflict incidence and intensity is declining as globalization accelerates. Maybe it’s influence is felt precisely in those ethnoreligiously divided societies that are resolutely refusing the show up in the statistics.

�  Let’s interact…

Conflict incidence

KOF Globalization indices – social, economic, political, and combined – all either significantly negative or insignificant as predictors of conflict

Interaction with demographic variables likewise

Pooled Random Fixed Pooled Random Fixed VARIABLES Logit Effects Effects Logit Effects Effects

Population 0.255*** 0.405*** 1.492* 0.516*** 1.003*** 1.472*** (0.0870) (0.116) (0.840) (0.137) (0.194) (0.488)

GDP per capita -0.203 -0.277 0.347 0.000801 -0.527** -0.360 (0.177) (0.204) (0.560) (0.236) (0.241) (0.352)

Polity 0.0226 0.0370 0.0527* 0.0363 0.00140 0.000110 (0.0196) (0.0233) (0.0302) (0.0226) (0.0162) (0.0170)

Polity-squared -0.0148*** -0.0137*** -0.00683 -0.0124* -0.0186*** -0.0158*** (0.00530) (0.00522) (0.00653) (0.00682) (0.00323) (0.00343)

Polity duration -0.0104 -0.0150 -0.0388* -0.00663 -0.000486 0.00484 (0.0138) (0.0134) (0.0226) (0.0130) (0.00806) (0.00889)

New polity 0.0697 0.00168 -0.194 0.00944 0.308* 0.366** (0.258) (0.274) (0.312) (0.195) (0.165) (0.170)

Religious Polarization -0.961** -1.050* -0.730 -0.102 (0.434) (0.606) (1.361) (1.419)

Globalization -0.0321** -0.0380** -0.0751** -0.0411* -0.0187 -0.0202 (0.0127) (0.0156) (0.0302) (0.0216) (0.0151) (0.0184)

RP X Glob. -0.00230 -0.0371 -0.0554** (0.0332) (0.0228) (0.0246)

Constant -3.507** -5.451** -7.170*** -13.52*** (1.586) (2.173) (2.108) (3.559)

Observations 3,417 3,417 1,408 3,417 3,417 1,408 Log likelihood -397.3 -386.2 -244.0 -1540.04 -953.92 -706.9

Conflict and the transformation of identity politics

�  The main hypothesis is that the transformation of identity politics in conflict is a product of the interaction of ‘greed’ and ‘grievance’ during conflict with strategic decision-making by ‘identity entrepreneurs’

�  Processes: ¡  Strategic decisions over ‘localization’

vs. ‘internationalization’ ¡  Internal contestation for control ¡  ‘Existentialization’ of grievances ¡  State policy

Supply side

Demand side

Pattani

•  Malay/Muslim minority concentrated in 3 provinces

•  Relatively poor area

•  Historic links with the Malay peninsula

•  Muslim minority concentrated in four regions

•  Relatively poor area

•  Historic links with Borneo and Brunei

Mindanao

•  Ethnic Acehnese minority concentrated in province

•  Oil/gas reserves

•  Historic links with Malay peninsular & Ottoman Empire

Aceh Sabah

•  Non-Malay, mostly Christian minorities

•  Relatively poor area

•  Historic links with Mindanao and the Brunei Sultanate

The Cases

Localization vs. Internationalization

�  ‘Identity entrepreneurs’ seeking to mobilize support are faced with a range of over-lapping and intersecting identities to frame their struggle

�  Few ethnic identities, and even fewer religious identities are nationally bounded. Entrepreneurship hence has an international dimension ¡  Statically, the presence of ‘ethnic kin’ in neighboring states has

been shown to be a significant predictor of violent conflict (Gleditsch, Cederman et al.).

�  The strategic calculus for a rational entrepreneur is hence as much international as national; for ‘double minorities’, arguably more so

Internal Contestation

�  Notable distinction between the ‘causes of conflict’ literature and the ‘peacemaking’ literature on the extent to which they look at fragmentation within ‘rebel’ groups

�  Splinter movements in the peacemaking literature are often seen as ‘spoilers’; war profiteers who can easily destabilize a peace process (‘greed’)

�  Whatever their motivation, an alternative narrative is required to legitimate division ¡  Abu Sayyaf: Juergensmeyer and the Jihadologists vs. the AFP