Despite the religious diversity in sub-Saharan Africa and the religious overtones in a number of African conflicts, social science research has inadequately addressed the question of how and to what extent religion matters for conflict in Africa. This paper presents an innovative data inventory...

Theoretically, the “mobilization hypothesis” establishes a link between religion and conflict by arguing that religious structures such as overlapping ethnic and religious identities are prone to mobilization; once politicized, escalation to violent conflict becomes likelier. Yet, despite...

In recent decades, there has been significant debate about the representation of the various world regions in international relations research. This paper contributes to the debate by providing the results of a survey of 290 research articles published over the last decade in three leading...

While mediation efforts in violent conflicts often fail, the academic literature on mediation has long ignored both this phenomenon and its consequences. This paper aims to fill this significant knowledge gap by examining the conditions under which the failure of mediation leads to an escalation...

Religious elites are active for peace in many violent conflicts. Normative explanations often do not suffice to explain their engagement. In this paper we draw on the findings of social-movement research to identify the factors that induce rationally acting religious elites to be active for...