Claimability in International Relations: Oil Discoveries, Territorial Claims, and Interstate Conflicts

Kyosuke Kikuta

American Political Science Review, 2026, vol. 120, issue 3, _15

Abstract: Interstate conflict is rare not primarily because states settle disputes peacefully but largely because they have no serious dispute. To address this simple but oft-neglected reality, I provide a comprehensive measurement of states’ claimable areas. Focusing on three international norms that emerged after the world wars (territorial integrity, minority protection, and maritime sovereignty), I code geographical extents of states’ claimable areas for 1946–2024. I illustrate the usefulness of this dataset by applying it to oil and conflict. By leveraging the records of over 600,000 wildcat drills, natural experiments, and difference-in-differences, I demonstrate that fuel resources increased interstate conflicts only when discovered in areas claimable to multiple states. The extensive analyses of validity, heterogeneity, and mechanisms, as well as the “most-similar” case study, provide further evidence. These findings expand the emerging literature on territorial norms by providing comprehensive, rigorous, and contemporary evidence for claimability in international relations.

Date: 2026
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