3
This paper challenges the assumption that the relationship between contiguity and
conflict is deterministic. First, we build on Hensel’s work on territorial salience and
make use of several concepts developed by Starr and Thomas in their work on the role of
border salience in the conflict process. We argue that focusing on territorial salience
allows international relations scholars to move away from the assumption that
territoriality necessarily leads to conflict. We further argue that such a move necessitates
an identification of factors that contribute to states’ willingness and opportunity to issue a
territorial challenge. By focusing on both these dimensions, we seek to illustrate how
salience may act as both an enabling mechanism and a constraining mechanism in states’
decisions to issue a territorial challenge.
We call for a reconceptualization of territorial salience in a way that captures the
relative aspects of territorial value. This avenue of research seeks to address two
conceptual problems that have plagued research on territorial disputes. First, previous
research has focused on the relationship between salience and dyadic conflict without
distinguishing between challenger and target. We argue that this distinction is
particularly important given that underlying the literature linking territorial salience to
dispute occurrence is the contention that the salience state A ascribes to state B’s territory
induces state A to issue a territorial claim upon state B’s territory. Although this
contention implies a directional argument, previous research has ignored the directional
aspect of the argument and has instead relied on non-directional empirical tests. A
second shortcoming in the territorial conflict literature stems from the assumption that
territorial salience is constant across time. We propose a design that focuses on shifts in
salience scores across time. We argue that a design that taps into both cross-sectional and
Convention