This week's readings make tangible the concepts of ideology, political culture, and civil society that directed Professor King's lectures. Though each reading informs the discussion of the relationship (causal and correlative) between ideas and political behavior, I'm going to focus on two articles: "A Clash of Civilizations?" and "Ethnic Diversity: An Economic Analysis." The texts converse well with each other to exemplify various theories of political culture and civil society, and imagining their implications provokes some questions about contemporary US foreign policy. 

Huntington's postulation about the future of global conflict offers an argument that can be considered in opposition to Collier's findings on the effects of ethnic allegiance on conflict.  

Huntington and Collier disagree on the basic unit of allegiance receipt, but in articulating their arguments both dispute the concept of nation-states as primary actors. Huntington looks outside of the nation-state to a non-political, culturally-defined entity: a "civilization." Collier sets out to defend the same basic principle: that the nation-state's role as a point of cohesion is giving way to that of other ties. Collier identifies these ties as ethnic. These two redefinitions of the dominant group in inter- and intra-national affairs give concrete contexts in which to consider the role of political culture in that they refute the primacy of the state, subordinating it to identification based on ethnic, religious, or other factors. 

The importance of understanding how group identification manifests itself politically becomes clear when considering the hypothetical application of Huntington and Collier's theories to US foreign policy decisions. If "civilization" trumps nationality, as Huntington suggets, then the US is at odds with an Arab civilization. Its actions in Iraq will purportedly fail insofar as they involve democratization - the institution of an ideal ultimately unnatural to the Arab world. Instead of promoting its values, the West must work within the sphere of Arab values - but even this interaction is likely to provoke hostility. If it is rather ethnicity that has usurped the role of nation-state allegiance, as Collier suggests, perhaps the US should continue its project of instating democracy in Iraq. Assuming, as Collier subtly suggests, that religious identity behaves as does ethnic identity, the factionally ethnic and religious Iraq will benefit from a democracy. A predatory dictatorship (ie, Hussein's reign) would greatly disadvantage the Kurdish minority (a component of the Sunni minority) with (1) its allowance of effectively permanent domination or (2) the incidence of Collier's alternative  of great civil unrest with the staging of a coup.