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23 RELIGION, LEGISLATIVE COALITIONS and TERRORISM Nil S. Satana Assistant Professor Department of International Relations Bilken

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23 RELIGION, LEGISLATIVE COALITIONS and TERRORISM Nil S. Satana Assistant Professor Department of International Relations Bilken RELIGION, LEGISLATIVE COALITIONS AND TERRORISM Nil S. Satana Assistant Professor Department of International Relations Bilkent University A316 Bilkent 06800 Ankara - Turkey Phone: 90 312 290 10 68 Molly Inman Ph.D. Student Department of Government and Politics University of Maryland 0145 Tydings Hall College Park MD, 20742. Jóhanna Kristín Birnir Associate Professor Department of Government and Politics Research Director CIDCM University of Maryland 0145 Tydings Hall College Park MD, 20742. Phone: 301 405 7206 Fax: 301 314 9256 Recent research has shown that majority political parties often appeal strategically to ethnic minority parties representing distinct religious constituencies. However, one question that remains is whether, when excluded, group attributes such as religion are related to minority groups‘ alternate political expression, including violence. We argue that extremist factions within minority groups make use of cultural divergence, including religion, to mobilize support for violent action when the group is excluded from government. Thus we posit that while religion per se is not a source of violence, extremist elements of ethnic minorities whose religion differs from the majority are more likely to mobilize members successfully to perpetrate terrorism than are excluded members of minority groups who share a religion with the majority. Specifically we test the hypotheses that extremist factions of an excluded group will be more likely to carry out terrorist attacks when the group‘s members belong to a different family of religion as well as when they belong to a different denomination or sect than the majority. To test these propositions, we use legislative and religion data and merge them with the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) by matching perpetrators with ethnic groups for all democracies, 1970-2004. 23 INTRODUCTION On May 11, 2010 ―a man with explosives strapped to his body blew himself up in a crowd, bombers struck a southern city and gunmen sprayed fire on security checkpoints in attacks that killed at least 100 people — most of them in Shiite areas — in Iraq's deadliest day of the year.‖1 Iraq‘s Shi‘i Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi called for ―quickly forming a government that does not exclude any major political group‖ to prevent perpetrators of terrorism from ―exploiting Iraq's fragile security.‖ The March 7th elections in a democratizing Iraq had led to futile efforts to form a coalition government that includes included religious minority representation in this divided country. Prime Minister Maliki‘s Shi‘i bloc chose to exclude from the coalition another Shi‘i leader, Allawi, who is a secular politician supported mainly by Sunnis in the country. In return, in the months following the election, Sunni terrorist attacks increased both in intensity and casualties.2 This story is not very different than that of India or other democracies where elections, the first and foremost element of liberal democracy, do not guarantee the representation of religious minority groups in legislative coalitions and disgruntled minority groups sometimes resort to violence to voice their political demands.3 This paper addresses the question of how group attributes are related to the group‘s propensity for alternative political expression, including violence. We examine the role of one such attribute – religion − in influencing group use of violence, specifically terrorism, in democracies worldwide. Although secularization has been a major trend especially in industrial and post- industrial states, ―religion remains more strongly and more consistently related to voting 1 choice today than any of the various indicators of socioeconomic status.‖4 Nevertheless, there is a dearth of cross-national empirical studies tackling the effect of religion in party politics5 and political violence.6 Similarly, while the literature on coalition formation is very rich,7 few scholars deal with the effect of religion on coalition-formation8 and on the incidence of terrorism.9 Previous work examines the effect of religion on coalition formation, and questions ―what effect ethnic minority constituency religion has on the probability that the minority gets invited to join in an executive coalition‖10 by the majority political party.11 Clearly, ethnic majority politicians strategically consider collaboration with ethnic minorities of various religious backgrounds. Majority politicians aim to signal their commitment to religious diversity. Thus, the majority is more likely to invite minorities who belong to different religious families than the majority into executive coalitions compared to ethnic minorities at large. This paper builds on the argument that religious minorities are treated differently than others by the majority parties in coalition- building, but turns the question on its head and examines what happens when ethnic groups of a different religion than the majority are excluded from government. Sandler defines terrorism as ―the premeditated use, or threat of use, of extra- normal violence or brutality to gain a political objective through intimidation or fear of a targeted audience.‖12 Indridason supports the notion that terrorism influences domestic politics.13 Following Sandler‘s definition, we assume that terrorism is one tool that extremist members of ethnic groups can use to influence domestic political incentives to their advantage. Consequently, we argue that when excluded from coalitions, extremist elements of ethnic minorities may consider terrorism as an option to press for their policy 2 preferences that are not addressed by inclusion in the governing coalition. Terrorism is, however, an extreme tool to use in politics. Thus, to mobilize even a segment of the minority in support of such an extreme action, extremist factions make use of every argument available to suggest that exclusion by the majority is not simply routine politics but a more nefarious attempt at cultural marginalization. Religion is an important cultural attribute. Therefore, we would expect extremist factions of excluded ethnic groups to use religious divergence between majorities and minorities to mobilize minority support for the use of extreme tactics such as terrorism. Building on this theoretical notion, we propose some testable hypotheses about the effect of exclusion of ethnic groups that are also a religious minority from governing coalitions on the probability of terrorist attacks by their extremist elements. We test our theory on ethnic minority access to legislative coalitions and terrorism across democracies worldwide between 1970 and 2004, using legislative and religion data14 merged with the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) by matching perpetrators with ethnic groups for all democracies.15 In sum, our empirical results show that the less access to the government an ethnic group that subscribes to a religion, which is different from the majority population‘s religion, the more likely its extremist elements are to engage in terrorism. Importantly, we also find that it is not absolute religious difference that motivates extreme political action. When excluded from government, ethnic minorities belonging to a different religious denomination or sect than the majority are also more likely to engage in terrorism as compared to ethnic groups that belong to the same religion (family and denomination) as the majority. 3 LITERATURE AND THEORY This section first examines the role of religion in electoral politics. We then move on to discuss the strand of the electoral literature that deals with minorities and electoral outcomes including violence. In sum, this literature acknowledges the continued importance of religion on every aspect of electoral politics from voting to cabinet formation but gives little guidance as to how minority religion might play a role in electorally motivated violence. We next specifically address the insights from the conflict literature, with an emphasis on terrorism, of the role of religion in conflict onset. We then turn to our theory about what impact access to coalition governments by ethnic groups of different religions than the majority has on the likelihood of terrorism in democratic countries. Religion, Party Politics and Coalition Formation Ernest Gellner posits that apart from societies that are predominantly Muslim, the ―secularization thesis does hold.‖16 On the other hand, according to Norris and Inglehart, secularization is a myth both earlier in history as ―differences between Protestants and Catholics in Western Europe functioned as a cognitive shortcut, like the role of social class, which linked voters to parties,‖17 and in contemporary world politics. In fact, the electoral literature indicates that religion is a factor in building public policy agendas by political parties. Moreover, religion helps to stabilize votes in maturing democracies.18 In contrast to Gellner‘s argument, religion remains an important determinant of voters‘ political views in highly developed countries such as the United States.19 Green examines the relationship between religion and the U.S. party system in the 1990s and finds that ―religious groups were important elements of the stable political coalitions that undergird 4 routine politics. In the 1990s, each of the major parties had strong religious constituencies.‖20 According to Green, the Republican Party was mostly supported by traditionalists such as evangelicals, while the Democrats drew support from ethnic and religious minorities. As a result, ―each party was
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