Books
Religious Minorities at Risk
Matthias Basedau, Jonathan Fox, and Ariel Zellman (2023) Oxford University Press, New York.
To what extent do minority grievances contribute to intrastate conflict? Against the backdrop of rising discrimination against religious minorities worldwide, Religious Minorities at Risk offers new insights into classic debates on the influences of discrimination, deprivation, and inequality (DDI) on minority grievances and conflict behavior.
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Academic Articles
Better to Trust in the Lord? Regime Religiosity, Religious Salience, and Interstate Dispute Resolution
Ariel Zellman, Florian Justwan, and Jonathan Fox (2024) Journal of Global Security Studies, 9:1, doi:10.1093/jogss/ogae003
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How do religiously-salient issues influence the peaceful resolution of interstate territorial disputes? Conflict scholars tend to represent “religious” disputes as uniquely resistant to compromise owing to their supposed symbolic indivisibility and the ideological inflexibility of the actors who pursue them. Rather, we argue that religious regimes’ preferred forums to advance peaceful resolution depend upon interactions between the breadth of a dispute’s religious salience and a claimant regime’s domestic religious legitimacy. Secular regimes lack both religious legitimacy and political motivation to engage. Thus, their dispute resolution forum preferences are unrelated to religious salience. Highly religious regimes command significant religious legitimacy and are therefore empowered to directly negotiate over broadly-salient religious issues. Yet their political dependence upon religious constituencies causes them to strictly avoid legally binding conflict management over narrowly-salient religious issues. By contrast, moderately religious regimes lack sufficient religious legitimacy to directly negotiate over both broadly- and narrowly-salient issues, rendering them particularly dispute-resolution avoidant. We test and generally confirm these propositions, utilizing new data measuring the religious salience of interstate territorial disputes in the post-Cold War era.
Diversionary Desecration? Regime Instability and Societal Violence against Minority Sacred Spaces
Ariel Zellman and Andrea Malji (2023) Politics, Religion & Ideology, 24:3, p. 426-449, doi:10.1080/21567689.2023.2279168.
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From the October 2018 mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to the April 2022 bombing of the Sufi Khalifa Sahib mosque in Kabul, Afghanistan, religious minority sacred spaces are a conspicuous target of societal violence. While the potency of these attacks as instruments of symbolic and physical intimidation against vulnerable communities is well-recognized, comparatively little research has examined the larger societal and political forces that motivate them, particularly outside conflict zones. Employing data on individual religious minorities in 162 states from 1991–2014, we conduct quantitative analyses demonstrating that severe violence against religious minority sacred spaces is significantly correlated with increasing regime instability, particularly in more democratic states that strongly support religious institutions. Our findings suggest that the most violent outcomes tend to be diversionary, redirecting public anger toward internal ‘enemy’ others, rather than reactionary or retaliatory behavior toward already persecuted or genuinely threatening out-groups.
Mobilizing for Jihad: How Political Exclusion and Organized Protest Contribute to Foreign Fighter Outflows
Jonathan Fox, Meirav Mishali-Ram, Ariel Zellman, and Matthias Basedau (2023), Terrorism and Political Violence, doi:10.1080/09546553.2023.2217930.
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This article adds to a growing literature explaining driving forces behind Muslim foreign fighters in Jihadist conflicts. Employing quantitative analyses, we examine counts of Muslim foreign fighters from non-Muslim majority countries in Iraq and Syria from 2011 to 2015. We find that greater numbers of foreign fighters come from countries where Muslim minorities are politically organized, excluded from policymaking processes, and engaged in peaceful mobilization than countries where these conditions are otherwise absent. These results contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the mechanisms by which aggrieved individuals tend to be recruited in larger numbers to participate in foreign wars.
Under God, Indivisible? Religious Salience and Interstate Territorial Conflict
Ariel Zellman and Jonathan Fox (2023) Journal of Peace Research, doi:10.1177/00223433231164435.
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How and under what conditions do religious factors explain the militarization of interstate territorial disputes? We argue that inconclusive findings in previous studies stem from inadequate consideration of the interaction between challenger state religiosity and the domestic constituencies actually invested in religiously salient territorial claims. To address this gap, this article differentiates between secular regimes, which provide minimal support to their state’s dominant religion and religious regimes, which strongly support their dominant religion. It also considers narrowly salient coreligionist populations, which appeal almost exclusively to religious audiences, versus broadly salient contested sacred sites, which appeal to much broader constituencies. We argue that the interaction between these two factors produces very different patterns of interstate conflict behavior. Secular regimes avoid escalation over narrowly salient religious claims because they do not depend upon religious constituents for support. However, they lack the necessary religious legitimacy to manage outbidding challenges that frequently arise over more broadly salient claims. Religious regimes, by contrast, enjoy high domestic religious legitimacy, enabling more peaceful engagement with broadly salient religious claims. Yet their political dependence upon religious constituencies incentivizes conflict when disputes involve narrowly salient religious claims. We test these propositions utilizing original data on the religious salience of interstate territorial disputes in the post-Cold War era, from 1990 to 2010. Analyses, using both dichotomous and continuous measures of regime religiosity, confirm these inferences and contribute to highly nuanced understandings of how state-religion policy and religious salience interact to influence patterns of interstate violence.
Rebels with a Cause: Does Ideology Make Armed Conflicts Longer and Bloodier?
Matthias Basedau, Mora Deitch, and Ariel Zellman (2022) Journal of Conflict Resolution, 66:10, 1826-1853, doi:10.1177/00220027221108222.
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Ideology may directly provide motive and indirectly capacity for collective violence, thus making armed conflicts longer and bloodier. We investigate these propositions by drawing on an innovative global dataset which codes ideological claims by rebel groups and governments in intrastate armed conflicts since 1946. Results demonstrate that although ideology increases conflict duration, these effects vary by type and timing. Whereas secular ideological conflicts tended to be more protracted during the Cold War, religious ideology has become increasingly important since. We, however, find little evidence that ideology increases conflict intensity. Rather, rebel criminality best accounts for intensity. So, while immaterial resources like ideology sustain willingness to fight, ideology’s influence upon conflict intensity is limited, especially after the Cold War. Future studies need to take ideology seriously and need to investigate its characteristics more in-depth and in conjunction with material, identity related and international variables.
With Friends Like These: Does American Soft Power Advance International Religious Freedom?
Ariel Zellman and Jonathan Fox (2022) Religions, 13:6. doi:10.3390/rel13060502.
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The International Religious Freedom Act, passed by Congress in 1998, set international religious freedom promotion (IRF) as a core objective of American foreign policy. Although formally empowering the president to enact punitive sanctions in instances of extreme religious repression, IRF is primarily a soft power instrument, with the expressed intent to persuade rather than coerce states into greater respect for religious freedom. Nearly a quarter century since its enactment, however, religious discrimination has markedly increased worldwide. This paper therefore seeks to quantitatively evaluate the extent to which American soft power, measured via levels of popular approval for the United States in countries surveyed by various polling agencies from 2002 to 2014, has correlated with shifts in governmental religious discrimination (GRD) since 1998. We find that not only do higher levels of approval of the United States correlate with greater increases in GRD, but this effect is particularly robust in more democratic states, in which American soft power should presumably have a greater influence. These findings should be deeply troubling for IRF advocates, empirically validating prevalent concerns regarding the efficacy, priority, and viability of IRF as a foreign policy instrument.
Mobilizing the White: White Nationalism and Congressional Politics in the American South
Amanda Weiner and Ariel Zellman (2022) American Politics Research, 50:5, 707-722, doi:10.1177/1532673X221088844.
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To what extent do white nationalists influence Congressional representative conservatism? Although ethnocentrism, out-group prejudice, and racial threats strongly predict American political attitudes and voter behavior, how social movements predicated on these beliefs shape political outcomes is rarely considered. We argue that white nationalist activities significantly contribute to the radicalization of Congressional representatives’ policy agendas in a manner non-reducible to demographic or socioeconomic conditions. By mobilizing white voters against racial status threats, they indirectly compel politicians to adopt more radically conservative agendas. We quantitatively test these propositions by examining distributions of white nationalist groups in the American South against Congressional representative conservatism from 2010–2017. Analyses reveal that white nationalists indeed appear to significantly impact representative radical conservatism, even controlling for numerous factors commonly theorized to explain their rise. In doing so, we contribute to emerging insights on the political influence of the radical right on the contemporary American conservative “mainstream.”
Uneasy Lies the Crown: External Threats to Religious Leadership and Interstate Dispute Militarization
Ariel Zellman and Davis Brown (2022) Security Studies, 31:1, 152-182, doi:10.1080/09636412.2022.2038664.
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Although often argued that religion should significantly influence international conflict, the empirical record is mixed. For every recurrent interreligious conflict, there are numerous examples of sustained interreligious cooperation. Conflict also frequently mars the oft-assumed peaceful relations between shared-religion states. We argue that religion is an important intervening factor in interstate dispute militarization, especially between internally threatened rivals. In mixed-religion dyads, conflict often follows oppression of cross-border coreligionists, whereas in shared-religion dyads, conflict occurs as one side disproportionately increases its official support for that religion. In both instances, dispute militarization is primarily an effort to undercut domestic competitors, whose challenge is augmented by external threats to leaders’ religious legitimacy. We test these propositions using new, long-term data on religious demography and state-religion policy, identifying rivalries via antecedent interstate territorial disputes. The findings largely confirm our hypotheses, substantially clarifying the conditions under which religion contributes to international militarized conflict.
Defending the Faith? Assessing the Impact of State Religious Exclusivity on Territorial MID Initiation
Ariel Zellman and Jonathan Fox (2020) Politics & Religion, 13:3, 465-491, doi:10.1017/S1755048319000488.
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Interstate conflicts involving religion are commonly argued to be more severe and more protracted than other forms of conflict. Although various arguments have sought to explain religion’s apparent contributions to global violence, few consider the foreign policy goals over which religious actors actually fight. This article does so by examining whether religiously-exclusive states tend to militarize interstate territorial disputes (MIDs) over issues of strategic-material or identity salience. Insofar as religiously-exclusive states seek to “defend the faith” against internal and external challengers, identity-salient disputes should be a particularly attractive target for militarization. We however find the opposite. Although religiously-exclusive states do initiate territorial MIDs more frequently than their secular counterparts, they are significantly more likely to do so owing to disputed territories’ strategic rather than symbolic value. These results challenge accepted wisdom regarding religion’s influence on international conflict and suggest critical new avenues for research.
Cheap Talk or Policy Lock? Nationalist frames and sympathetic audience costs in international territorial disputes
Ariel Zellman (2020) Territory, Politics, Governance, 8:3, 336-355. doi:10.1080/21622671.2018.1561325.
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Failure by democratic states to resolve protracted international territorial disputes has often been traced to domestic politics. In seeking advantages at the bargaining table and to limit vulnerability versus domestic challengers, democratic leaders may assert hardline territorial demands to mobilize support from sympathetic publics. By staking their political credibility on such claims, they may become locked into extreme policy positions which render compromise untenable. To what extent, however, does expressed support by sympathetic publics actually imply audience costs for reneging? This paper argues that sympathetic publics’ demands for policy follow-through on revisionist territorial claims depend upon how they are framed. Building on the existing audience cost literature, it demonstrates that tangibly salient frames highlighting national security threats are more likely to consistently move sympathetic publics to demand policy redress than intangibly salient frames asserting national rights to defend heritage or cross-border kin. It does so using comparative survey experiments in Israel and Serbia – two democratic states with disputed international boundaries and strong domestic nationalist sentiment, but whose geopolitical contexts are dissimilarly conducive to territorial revisionism. Results contribute to a refined understanding of how domestic attitudes toward nationalist claims impact international conflict processes.
‘Hawking’ territorial conflict: Ethnopopulism and nationalist framing strategies
Ariel Zellman (2019) East European Politics, 35:4, 474-495, doi:10.1080/21599165.2019.1653855.
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Does ethnopopulism increase domestic support for revisionist foreign policies? This question is especially relevant for former socialist bloc countries, where claims regarding cross-border kin and lost homelands imbue ethnopopulist discourse. Distinguishing between hawkish and irredentist publics, this article argues that irredentists’ ideological commitments actually limit their receptivity to ethnopopulists’ non-ideological claims. This proposition is tested via survey experiments in Serbia and Israel: two formal democracies with assertively nationalist publics and disputed international boundaries in dissimilar geopolitical contexts. Common findings suggest generalisable limits on ethnopopulists’ ability to mobilise popular support even among core constituencies, with critical implications for Eastern Europe and beyond.
Uneven Ground: Nationalist frames and the variable salience of homeland
Ariel Zellman (2018) Security Studies, 27:3, 485-510, doi:10.1080/09636412.2017.1416830.
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When are domestic publics most sympathetic to nationalist territorial ambitions? Conflict scholars commonly assume support should be greatest when territory is framed as being of intangible value to national identity over tangible importance to national security and economic prosperity. This should be especially true regarding lost homelands, territories wherein a state has previously exercised sovereignty and to which it has enduring ethnic ties. This article presents experimental evidence that directly challenges these assumptions, demonstrating the variability of Serbian popular attachments to three lost territories: Kosovo, Bosnia, and Montenegro. It finds that intangible framings do not necessarily engender stronger assertions that such territories belong to the homeland than tangible framings do. Nor do they necessarily motivate greater support for nationalist territorial agendas. These findings cast doubt on conventional wisdom regarding domestic publics’ contributions to territorial conflict and offer refined insights regarding in which instances intangible claims are most conflict-prone.
Framing consensus: Evaluating the narrative specificity of territorial indivisibility
Ariel Zellman (2015) Journal of Peace Research, 52:4, 492-507, doi:10.1177/0022343314564713.
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International territorial conflicts are frequently characterized by political recourse to narratives of nationalist entitlement, stifling conflict resolution by raising domestic audience costs and discursively limiting bargaining flexibility. Conflict incentivizes elite employment of such claims precisely because security threats and fear of violence heighten popular resonance of adversarial collective identity frames. This article argues, however, that consensus mobilization behind nationalist territorial claims is highly dependent upon the particular narratives elites select to justify them. Employing controlled individual-level experiments administered to diverse populations in Israel, it demonstrates how exposure to competing narratives of homeland, security, economic prosperity, and settlement impacts support for control of East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, and the West Bank. Although indivisible claims to ‘United Jerusalem’, the Golan, and West Bank settlement blocs and strategic highlands are generally considered popular consensus issues in Israel, only particular narratives trigger consensus mobilization behind each. Some narratives even encourage conciliatory policy attitudes against such appeals. As a democracy embroiled in multiple enduring territorial disputes, analysis of the Israeli case contributes to understanding of the limits and political consequences of elite rhetoric. Demonstrating the affinity between narrative frames and popular policy preferences, this article also lends insight into the intersubjective beliefs that drive mass support for nationalist territorial claims.
Doctoral Dissertation
Security or Identity? Narratives of State and Nation in International Territorial Conflict Protraction
Ariel Zellman (2012) Department of Political Science, Northwestern University, Committee Members: Will Reno (Chair), Hendrik Spruyt, Jason Seawright
My dissertation explores how popular domestic beliefs regarding the meaning and value of disputed lands contribute to the protraction and resolution of international territorial conflict. Using comparative historical analysis and artefactual field experiments, I find in Israel and Serbia that persistent popular unwillingness to relinquish claims to a “United Jerusalem” and “Kosovo and Metohija” have resulted from the extraordinary position of these territories in their respective national homeland narratives. These outcomes stand in stark contrast to Israel’s largely popular withdrawals from the Sinai Peninsula, Southern Lebanon, and Gaza Strip, dominantly valued as strategic rather than cultural assets. They also contrast with Serbia’s acquiescence to the political independence of both Bosnia and Montenegro, spaces of high concern for Serb political self-determination but relatively low territorial-cultural priority. The Golan Heights and the West Bank are also analyzed as disputed spaces wherein strategic and cultural narratives continue to contribute to conflict protraction. In doing so, I demonstrate how particular strategic and cultural narratives come to dominate public discourse over disputed spaces and, in turn, how these narratives constrain the policies states can legitimately pursue in these spaces. Ultimately, I find that popular perceptions of national identity can be as powerful a force in determining government policy as state security prerogatives.
Book Chapters and Reviews
Ariel Zellman (2024) Review of “Understanding Territorial Withdrawal: Israeli Occupations and Exits by Rob Geist Pinfold”, Global Policy Journal. link
Ariel Zellman (2021) Coming Home, Researchers Remember: Research as an Arena of Memory for Offspring of Holocaust Survivors: A Collected Volume of Academic Autobiographies. Judith Tydor Baumel-Schwartz and Shmuel Refael-Vivante, eds. Peter Lang, Bern, 391-401. link
Ariel Zellman (2014) Review of “Proxy Warfare”, Political Science Quarterly 129:2. link
Ariel Zellman (2011) Review of “Evolving Nationalism: Homeland, Identity, and Religion in Israel, 1925-2005”, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 27:2. link
Ariel Zellman (2006) Nuclear cooperation with India & its consequences for the NPT regime, in Nuclear Cooperation with India: New Challenges, New Opportunities, eds. Wade L. Huntley and Karthika Sasikumar, Simons Centre for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Research, Vancouver, BC, 84-89. link
Dr. Ariel Zellman 