Correlates of Peace: Religious Determinants of Interreligious Peace

Abstract

While the study of interreligious conflict is a growing field of research, interreligious peace lacks conceptualisation and empirical investigation. We propose a concept of interreligious peace that distinguishes between positive and negative elements as well as attitudinal and behavioural aspects. The resulting four-dimensional concept is operationalised with a dataset covering 170 countries between 1990 and 2014, showing considerable global variation. We then apply our concept by testing how religious ideas and norms, religious demography and state-religion institutions determine interreligious peace. Our analysis finds that the determinants of individual elements of interreligious peace differ considerably, emphasising the need for nuanced analyses.