96 percent of cultural conflicts in Southeast Asia are carried out within states and are thus domestic. In this regard, the sub-region is four percent above the overall Asian level and a marked 15 percent above the world-wide level. This means that conflicts concerning cultural issues are almost only a domestic phenomenon in Southeast Asia. By contrast, conflicts on cultural issues are rarely fought out between states: the proportion of non-cultural conflicts among interstate conflicts has reached 87 percent in Southeast Asia and is thus 10 percent higher than the overall Asian average. This aspect must be emphasized since from the overall view the region of Southeast Asia is highly heterogeneous in cultural terms. We can expect that interstate cultural conflicts will be more likely here than in other Asian sub-regions that are less diverse or in other regions of the world.
Evidently, regional governments have succeeded in developing mechanisms that prevent existing cultural tensions and conflicts within communities from "spilling over" and thus turning into interstate conflicts.