on in cases of discrimination or abuses against religious groups; limits on preaching; and preferential treatment of one or more religious groups. 
 This analysis has some important limitations. First, the coding does not distinguish between proximate causes and deeper root causes of specific incidents. The Danish cartoons, for example, set off violent demonstrations by Muslims in numerous countries, but one could argue that the cartoons were merely a spark that ignited pre-existing tensions and resentments. Either way, the publication of the cartoons would be counted in this analysis as an external influence on social hostilities involving religion. In addition, there may be cases in which external influences are more psychological than physical, or more imagined than real— an erroneous story in the media, for example, or a speech by an official making an unsubstantiated claim about the activities of a foreign government. Whether grounded in reality or not, such events are counted as external influences if they are described by the sources used in this study as having had an international impact. Finally, and most importantly, the Pew Forum’s coding is meant to be values-neutral. The statement that government restrictions or social hostilities involving religion in one country reportedly were influenced by events in another country is not intended to justify or fault any of the countries involved. The coding does not assign credit or blame. Rather, the goals of this supplementary analysis are more modest. It seeks to obtain baseline measures of the frequency with which government restrictions and social hostilities involving religion are said to be influenced by events in other countries. It also attempts to categorize the external influences into six broad varieties - as outlined above - in order to see what kinds of cross-national effects are most common, regionally and worldwide. If repeated in future years, the coding may allow for more comparative analysis, enabling researchers to see whether external influences are increasing or decreasing over time and how their prevalence is changing, globally and regionally.
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