"Is there an ‘Islamic world'? A network analysis approach" with Dr Peter S. Henne

An IASH Work-in-Progress seminar, delivered by Dr Peter S. Henne (IASH-Alwaleed Research Fellow 2023; University of Vermont)

Is there an ‘Islamic world'? A network analysis approach

Debate over this topic vacillates between essentialist over-generalizations about Muslims and materialist rejections of religion’s importance. Yet, a recent set of post-positivist arguments claim Islamic politics constitutes an alternative to Western-centric international relations. These arguments, however, remain theoretical and hypothetical while conventional quantitative studies on this topic have been insufficient.

Henne moves this debate forward by drawing on recent applications of network analysis in international relations. He first processes an event dataset for use as a network, which contains information on country attributes and types of state-society interactions. He then uses network methods to explore the existence of an “Islamic world.” Henne finds that, while there is no unified set of international relations based on Muslim identity, there are clusters of intersocietal Muslim relations. This suggests that Islamic beliefs and identity do influence international relations, although their salience varies.

This talk ties into two broader aspects of Henne’s work. One is an effort to engage with and test post-positivist arguments on religion and international relations using neo-positivist social scientific methods. The other is an ongoing project demonstrating the superiority of network analysis over conventional quantitative methods when studying religion and international relations.