Not Letting Evidence Get in the Way of Assumptions: Testing the Clash of Civilizations Thesis with More Recent Data

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.