A Post-Cold War Clash of Civilizations? A New Approach to Testing Huntington’s Thesis

MA thesis. A central part of Samuel P. Huntington’s ‘Clash of Civilizations’ thesis is its aspiration to explain the cause and pattern of armed conflict after the Cold War. This thesis examines, through a large-N statistical survey, whether armed conflict is more frequent in areas where the cultural entities of civilizations meet, focusing on the Post-Cold War era. The thesis also focuses on some common features of cultural conflict. The data used are geographical data combined with the PRIO–Uppsala conflict dataset. The thesis was submitted to the University of Oslo in October 2002 and defended in November 2002.