Posted by Jay Livingston
Henry at The Monkey Cage linked to this article (his ironic subject line: "this will change a lot of people’s minds"). It’s behind a paywall, but if anyone wants to ante up and then report on the method and sample, we impecunious (or just cheapskate) bloggers would be mucho grateful.
Here’s the abstract. I wonder if Rodney Stark was one of the peer reviewers. Probably not.
Islam and Large-Scale Political Violence: Is There a Connection?
M. Steven Fish sfish@berkeley.edu
Francesca R. Jensenius
Katherine E. Michel
Abstract
Are Muslims especially prone to large-scale political violence? From Montesquieu to Samuel Huntington, prominent modern analysts of politics have regarded Muslims as unusually inclined to strife. Many other observers have portrayed Islam as a peace-loving faith and Muslims as largely pacific. Yet scholars still lack much hard evidence on whether a relationship between Islam and political violence really exists. Precious few studies adduce empirical evidence on whether Islamic societies are actually more or less violent. This article assesses whether Muslims are more prone to large-scale political violence than non-Muslims. The authors focus neither on terrorism nor on interstate war. Instead, they investigate large-scale intrastate violence. The article makes three contributions. First, it offers useful data on Islam and political strife. Second,it investigates whether Muslims are especially violence prone. Relying on cross-national analysis, the authors find no evidence of a correlation between the proportion of a country’s population that is made up of Muslims and deaths in episodes of large-scale political violence in the postwar period. Third, the authors investigate whether Islamism (the ideology), as opposed to Muslims (the people), is responsible for an inordinate share of the world’s large-scale political violence. They find that Islamism is implicated in an appreciable but not disproportionate amount of political violence.
6 comments:
Interesting... it's great when people apply data to popular assumptions.
"There are several sources of data on large-scale political violence in the world. The compilation authored and regularly updated by Marshall (2008) stands out for its comprehensiveness and quality. Marshall’s “Major Episodes of Political Violence” data set provides a complete list of events in the post-war period that produced 500 or more deaths. A recently updated version covers the period 1946-2007, and we rely on this version here. According to Marshall, during the period under consideration there were 326 episodes of large-scale political violence. Some of these events were international (meaning interstate) in character; others were domestic. We are concerned with domestic (meaning intrastate) conflict. We exclude international conflicts, which include independence struggles against foreign (often colonial) domination. Marshall helpfully includes his own coding of types of conflict, which facilitates distinguishing between interstate and intrastate violence.
Most episodes—235 to be exact—were domestic (intrastate) in nature. This is the universe of cases we examine here. A complete list of these episodes, including the relevant data about them used in this article, is found in Appendix A."
I'll email you the .pdf.
Surprise! The findings from Berkeley political scientists are undoubtedly a valuable model of totally objective social science in action.
And I agree with you, Jay. I doubt these totally objective scientifically derived findings will change any minds among the reigning intellects in American social science. The reigning academy of social scientists doubtless agreed with the conclusions before this highly objective study was ever undertaken.
So carry on with your objective science while the rest of the world toils away under unfounded ideologically-driven illusions!
@brandsinger:
As the abstract (second and third sentences) says, “Prominent modern analysts of politics have regarded Muslims as unusually inclined to strife. Many other observers have portrayed Islam as a peace-loving faith and Muslims as largely pacific.” In other words, the rest of the world toils away in conflicting illusions. When there are conflicting views like that, it seems reasonable (to me at least) to try to get systematic evidence to help figure out what’s going on.
(I can’t believe I have to defend rationality, science, objectivity, and fact to an adult with a Ph.D.)
You suggest that the results are invalid because the authors are at Berkeley – an ad hominem (or ad universitum) argument which you may find persuasive but I don’t. However, their data set, as the excerpt quoted by Sam R. shows, comes from Monty Marshall, who is at George Mason University, not exactly a hotbed of leftist radicalism from what I understand. I’ll be glad to forward you the pdf and you can check the data for yourself.
Thanks, Jay. I won't enter your self-contained academic world and look at the data. Results from a study like this are pre-ordained from the outset (whatever comes out reflects whatever went in -- surely you know that). The only light it sheds on today's political realities is the light shined on its authors' cultural biases. Such a study only serves to bolster the ideological pre-conceptions of the authors and their colleagues.
All this is so obvious. I can't believe that the supposed objectivity of social science is actually accepted by sophisticated people like you in the 21st century.
My view (unsolicited) is that peace-loving Muslims and peace-loving people of all faiths and cultures are best served facing and by dealing with reality today -- not papering it over with feel-good "scientific" findings.
I now leave your blog and insular universe not to return. I'm a fish out of water! Best luck, and soldier on!
brandsinger
Claude, Like Carnac the Magnificent, you, in your mystical and borderline divine way, have the power to know what is written on paper and give the answer to any question it raises without ever having read it or even looked at it. Oh well, like Carnac, it's always good for a laugh.
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