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NAZLI AVDAN & JOSH RUBENSTEIN
THE ROLE OF TERRITORIAL SALIENCE ACROSS TIME AND
SPACE: DIFFERENTIATING BETWEEN CHALLENGER AND TARGET IN
TERRITORIAL DISPUTES
Introduction
International relations scholarship finds that territorial issues are conflict prone.
Several recent studies
1
demonstrate the significant and positive relationship between
interstate disputes and the existence of territorial stakes. Recently, scholarly focus has
shifted to the mechanisms through which territoriality increases interstate dispute
propensity. This literature seeks to answer the following question: do identifiable
attributes of particular territories render them more dispute-prone? One way to answer
this question is by focusing on territorial salience. The focus on territorial salience in
international conflict presents an additional puzzle for the international relations
literature: what are the conditions under which territorial salience increases the likelihood
of interstate dispute? Failure to uncover the causal mechanism that links salience to
greater dispute propensity results in the implicit assumption that the relationship between
salience and the occurrence of dispute is automatic. Such an assumption neglects the
possibility that states may not issue a territorial claim on a highly salient piece of
territory. Furthermore, it is plausible to suggest that the linear relationship assumed to
exist between salience and dispute might not hold under some conditions.
1
Goertz and Diehl 1992; Huth 1996, Hensel 2000, 2001; Senese 1996 on salience in geographic proximity;
also see Starr and Thomas 2001, 2002 on role of salience in border conflicts; Vasquez 1993, 1996; Hensel
1996; Holsti 1991 on salience of territorial issues visa vi other issue types.
Convention