Territorial Dispute Initiation by Weaker States

While territorial disputes have long been considered essential in the study of inter-state conflict, the existing literature has largely overlooked the actual initiation of territorial disputes in the first place. The conventional wisdom holds that, given that the anticipated consequences of dispute escalation are likely to be worse for weaker states than for stronger states, the former should be less likely than the latter to initiate a dispute. However, a large proportion of territorial disputes have in fact been initiated by weaker states. Why does a weaker state initiate a territorial claim over its relatively stronger counterpart? Drawing insights from the work on reputation building in the recent inter- and intra-state conflict literature, this article provides an explanation that focuses on the role of information and uncertainty in the initiation of territorial disputes. A potential weaker challenging state’s decision to initiate a territorial dispute against a relatively stronger state depends upon information about whether or not the potential stronger target has made concessions in past disputes, and whether or not the potential stronger target may be expected to do so again in the future. Using Bayesian logistic regression, my analysis of the territorial dispute claims from 1816 to 2001 confirms that weaker states are more likely to initiate territorial disputes if potential stronger target states have yielded in previous disputes, and if potential stronger target states are unlikely to encounter additional challengers in the future.