RUNNING ON FAITH?

The document details the methodology for operationalizing religious variables in the study of internal conflicts. It justifies the use of an identity-based definition of religious cleavages over an issue-based one, citing higher reliability and lower data collection costs. The author describes the use of the Religion and State (RAS) dataset to measure religious discrimination and demography (fractionalization and polarization), and the use of official state religion as a proxy for religious legitimacy. The methodology also includes the treatment of non-religious groups, specifically coding Communist regimes and rebels as non-religious, and the application of control variables such as regime type based on the Polity IV project.

• The author adopts an identity-based definition of religious cleavages, which identifies a cleavage when parties belong to separate religions, different denominations of one religion, or when one side is religious and the other is not. This approach is preferred over an issue-based definition because it is more reliable, less costly, and the religious composition of parties is more readily available and consistently coded.
• An identity-based approach may fail to capture conflicts where the parties share the same religion but disagree on the role of religion in public life, such as the conflict in Algeria between radical Sunni insurgents and moderate, secular Sunni incumbents.
• Communist governments and rebel groups are coded as non-religious because scientific communism is viewed as being in irreconcilable conflict with religious imaginings.
• Religious discrimination is measured using a composite additive index from Jonathan Fox’s Religion and State (RAS) dataset, combining indicators of discrimination against minority religions (scale 0-48) and discrimination against the majority or all religions (scale 0-33), resulting in a total range of 0 to 81.
• The presence of an official state religion is used as a dichotomous proxy for religious legitimacy, as it captures the legitimacy of religion in the polity and the atheist nature of Communist states.
• Religious demography is captured through indices of religious fractionalization and polarization calculated using RAS dataset proportions for 16 different religious traditions.
• Regime type is included as a control variable using the Polity IV project's 21-point scale (ranging from +10 to -10) to account for the theory that democracies are better able to resolve conflicts non-violently than autocracies.

APA

Lindberg, J.-E. (n.d.). RUNNING ON FAITH? Peace Research Institute Oslo. https://cdn.cloud.prio.org/files/3134e6ac-5080-423b-a4d4-3d9f8a41eea1/Religious Cleavages Coding Procedures.pdf?inline=true

Chicago

Lindberg, Jo-Eystein. RUNNING ON FAITH? Peace Research Institute Oslo, n.d. https://cdn.cloud.prio.org/files/3134e6ac-5080-423b-a4d4-3d9f8a41eea1/Religious Cleavages Coding Procedures.pdf?inline=true.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Lindberg |first1=Jo-Eystein |title=RUNNING ON FAITH? |publisher=Peace Research Institute Oslo |url=https://cdn.cloud.prio.org/files/3134e6ac-5080-423b-a4d4-3d9f8a41eea1/Religious Cleavages Coding Procedures.pdf?inline=true |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{lindbergndrunning, author = {Lindberg, Jo-Eystein}, title = {{RUNNING ON FAITH?}}, institution = {Peace Research Institute Oslo}, url = {https://cdn.cloud.prio.org/files/3134e6ac-5080-423b-a4d4-3d9f8a41eea1/Religious Cleavages Coding Procedures.pdf?inline=true}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }