Bones of Contention

Paul R. Hensel, Sara McLaughlin Mitchell, Thomas E. Sowers and Clayton L. Thyne
Additional contact information
Paul R. Hensel: Department of Political Science Florida State University, Tallahassee
Sara McLaughlin Mitchell: Department of Political Science University of Iowa, Iowa City
Thomas E. Sowers: Department of Political Science Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas
Clayton L. Thyne: Department of Political Science University of Kentucky, Lexington

Journal of Conflict Resolution, 2008, vol. 52, issue 1, 117-143

Abstract: Contentious issues are important sources of militarized conflict. This article advances an issue-based approach to world politics, focusing on disagreements over territory, maritime zones, and cross-border rivers. We characterize militarized conflict and peaceful techniques as substitutable foreign policy tools that states can adopt to resolve disagreements over issues, and we present hypotheses to account for issue management based on issue salience and recent interaction over the same issue. Empirical analyses reveal that states are more likely to use both militarized conflict and peaceful methods when the issue at stake is more salient, both when the general issue type is considered more salient and when the specific issue under contention has greater within-issue salience. Recent issue management also plays an important role, as histories of both militarized conflict and failed peaceful settlements increase pressure to take further action to settle the issue.

Keywords: contentious issues; conflict management; militarized disputes; territory; maritime; river (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022002707310425 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jocore:v:52:y:2008:i:1:p:117-143

DOI: 10.1177/0022002707310425

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Conflict Resolution from Peace Science Society (International)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().