Abstract

The Clash of Civilizations thesis posited by Huntington is perhaps one of the most well-known in all of political science. Huntington believed that the future of international conflict would be defined by a state’s civilizational identity, with said identity largely being defined by said state’s dominant religious tradition. It was posited that states would begin to fight other states who belong to distinct civilizations rather than those that belong to their same civilization. However, the majority of scholarship that has tested Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations thesis tends to cut against the theory’s core expectations. Rather than take the theory as it was originally formulated and test it, a practice that has been done many times before, this article seeks to reformulate the means by which the theory is operationalized by constructing a state’s civilizational identity in a manner that incorporates the depth of its aggregate religious commitment as well as its dominant religious tradition. In so doing, support for the Clash of Civilizations thesis is unearthed.