achieved using mechanisms such as lottery, auction, and compensation. Although this is an
important puzzle, it leaves unanswered why disputes that in theory have room for
compromise—and in practice often do—become all-or-nothing games.
Explanations of indivisibility are also underdeveloped in international relations theory.
Many models of conflict treat contested issues as comparable to currency—perfectly divisible,
allowing for a broad range of settlements.
4
When indivisibility is discussed, it is often attributed
to mechanisms unrelated to the contested issue, for instance, as problems of commitment or
reputation.
5
Others assume indivisibility is limited to specific types of conflict, such as ethnic or
religious warfare, missing how indivisibility affects other kinds of disputes.
6
I argue indivisibility is a constructed phenomenon. Unlike theorists who see
indivisibility as a psychological attachment to territory or as an objective characteristic of an
issue, indivisibility here is treated as a social fact, a product of actors’ representations of the
territory. Specifically, whether or not territory appears to be indivisible depends upon how
actors legitimate their claims to territory during the bargaining process. Although actors choose
their legitimations strategically, in order to gain an advantage at the bargaining table, these
legitimation strategies can have unintended consequences. By resonating with some actors and
not others, legitimation strategies have what sociologists call “switching effects”, either building
ties between coalitions, and allowing each side to recognize the legitimacy of each other’s
claims, or else locking actors into bargaining positions that leave them unable to recognize any
other demand to an issue as legitimate. When the latter happens, actors come to negotiations with
mutually incompatible claims, eliminating all possible mechanisms of division, and defining the
territory as indivisible.
4
See Fearon 1995; Sebenius 1983; and Putnam 1988.
5
See Fearon 1998; Toft 2003; and Walter 2000.
6
See Hall 1999; Toft 2003; and Diehl 1999, xi.
Convention