Review of Jonathan Fox’s Religion, Civilization, and Civil War

In the past ten years there has been increasing interest in rigorous, quantitative analysis of the determinants of civil war, ethnic violence, and other forms of domestic conflict. Scholars have analyzed the impact of ethno-linguistic fractionalization, terrain, economic growth, natural resources, and a variety of other factors. Little attention, however, has been paid to quantitatively estimating the role of religion as a cause of violence despite our intuition that religion is one of the central sources of political division in the modern world. It is this lacuna in the empirical literature to which Jonathan Fox addresses himself in Religion, Civilization, and Civil War. Fox’s book is, to my knowledge, the most comprehensive quantitative treatment of the relationship between religion and civil violence available and, as such, it merits the attention of scholars of the correlates of violence. Fox’s project is to use two existing data sets (Minorities at Risk and State Failures), supplemented by his own data on various religious variables, to explore religion’s impact on several forms of domestic level political violence. In so doing, Fox also provides an important comparison of the relative explanatory power of religion and Huntington’s concept of a civilization. Fox’s study makes a variety of contributions to the political violence literature. First, he reminds us of the important role that religion plays in explanations of civil conflict. Second, his data collection provides a valuable supplement to existing data sets that will facilitate future research on the religious determinants of violence. In particular, Fox has collected ∗Direct Correspondence to: Ethan Bueno de Mesquita, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, CB 1063, Washington University, One Brookings Dr., St. Louis, MO 63130. Email: [email protected]