Measuring the Ambivalence of Religion: Introducing the Religion and Conflict in Developing Countries (RCDC) Dataset

Measurement and Conceptual Approaches to Religious Violence: The Use of Natural Language Processing to Generate Religious Violence Event-Data

“…From this perspective, religious violence is identified when there is a reported religious incompatibility between the perpetrator who initiates a violent act and victim who experiences it. This definition of “religious” is consistent with previous attempts to measure religious violence in a systematic fashion (Toft 2007; Svensson 2007; 2013; Vüllers, Pfeiffer, and Basedau 2015). Nevertheless, it is important to note that the term “religious” itself may have inherent biases and the labeling of something as “religious”, violence or otherwise, may be susceptible to political and social manipulation (Hurd 2015, 117).…”

“…Alternatively, other scholars have taken a broader approach to the measurement of religious violence with a particular emphasis on the coding of violent events that are more communal in nature that does not involve armed actors that are party to civil war or armed conflict. Studies conducted by Grim and Finke (2007); Vüllers, Pfeiffer, and Basedau (2015); Fox (2017); Basedau et al (2017); Grim, Skirbekk, and Cuaresma (2013) provide a good example of this approach through their utilization of coded U.S. State Department Religious Freedom reports, examination of governmental policies, and other sources to measure incidents of religious violence and persecution.…”

“…Their data mostly focuses on aspects of religious freedom, but they also provide opportunities for testing explanations for religious violence and persecution dealing with a religious marketplace/economies and clash civilization perspective (Grim and Finke 2007). Vüllers et al utilize a similar approach with an expansion of the temporal scope of the analysis to include reports spanning from 1990 to 2010 as well as other sources while focusing on 130 countries in the developing world with an emphasis on dynamics associated with inter-religious networks (Vüllers, Pfeiffer, and Basedau 2015). Other benefits to a broader approach that can capture religious violence that has communal characteristics can be seen in Fox (2017), which illustrates the ability to both capture elements of societal violence and the potential state policies associated with religion that may be the root cause for religiously motivated violence to occur.…”

“…This study is particularly focused on the generation of new data to attempt the measurement of religious violence using new methodological approaches and data sources not previously utilized. Previous attempts to measure religious violence in a systematic context have concentrated on coding U.S. State Department International Religious Freedom reports, examination of governmental policies, and other sources to measure incidents of religious violence and persecution or utilizing existing datasets on armed conflict or civil war/terrorism (Fox 2004; Grim and Finke 2007; Svensson 2007; Toft 2007; Henne 2012; Grim, Skirbekk, and Cuaresma 2013; Vüllers, Pfeiffer, and Basedau 2015; 2013; Fox 2017; Basedau et al 2017; 2016; Svensson and Nilsson 2018) These previous attempts provided state-level data of the levels of religiously motivated violence in states examined by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom or where civil conflict was occurring, but due to data limitations have some difficulty in providing more fine-grained measures of specific acts of violence that may have a religious motivation. In particular, some key details were missing regarding the determination of what actors are involved from a victim or perpetrator perspective and accounting for varying levels of intensity/acts of religiously motivated violence.…”

Religious discrimination and religious armed conflict in sub-Saharan Africa: an obvious relationship?

“…3 In order to account for important confounding factors that can equally influence the occurrence of violent conflict (Hegre and Sambanis 2006) or religious armed conflict (Basedau, Pfeiffer, and Johannes 2016), we add a number of pertinent control variables to the models. All data were taken from the RCDC dataset (Vüllers, Pfeiffer, and Basedau 2015). First, we add two variables that may increase the likelihood of religious conflict.…”