Contentious Issues in World Politics

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Bones of Contention: Measuring Contentious Issues in World Politics

Paul R. Hensel

and

Sara McLaughlin Mitchell

Department of Political Science

Florida State UniversityTallahassee, FL 32306-2230

Phone: (850) 644-7318

Fax: (850) [email protected]

[email protected]

Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, San

Francisco, 30 August 2001. The authors wish to thank Tom Sowers for his valuable commentsand assistance, while taking all the blame themselves for any conclusions, interpretations, and

errors herein.


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Bones of Contention: Measuring Contentious Issues in World Politics

Abstract: Recent research suggests the importance of contentious issues as sources of

militarized conflict. In this paper, we adopt an issues approach to world politics, focusing on

disagreements over territory, cross-border rivers, and maritime zones. Our theoretical model

identifies a variety of substitutable foreign policy tools that states can adopt to resolve

disagreements over these issues, ranging from cooperative endeavors (such as bilateral

negotiation) to militarized conflict. We develop several general issue hypotheses, emphasizing

the impact of issue salience on peaceful and militarized settlement attempts and on the duration

of issue claims.

To test these hypotheses, we introduce data for the Americas collected by the Issue

Correlates of War (ICOW) project. Empirical analyses of territorial and river claim data support

our hypotheses. We find strong evidence that the salience of contentious issues affects the

management of those issues, particularly with regard to variation in salience across issue types

rather than variation within the individual categories of territorial or river issues.


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Contentious issues have begun to attract serious attention in the study of militarized conflict.

Many explanations for militarized conflict and war implicitly or explicitly revolve around

specific issues as sources of conflict, ranging from leadership of the international system to

control over territory. Yet despite calls from scholars such as O'Leary (1976), Mansbach and

Vasquez (1981), and Diehl (1992), an explicit issue-based approach to world politics has been

slow to develop. O'Leary (1976: 321) laments that everybody knows that issues are

important... But what is equally obvious is that this obvious fact has made little, if any, impact

upon systematic research in the field. Writing sixteen years later, Diehl (1992: 337) notes that

despite initial positive reviews and more than a decade of time, the issue paradigm approach has

not germinated such that its use is seriously evident, much less widespread, in the discipline.

Even when issues have been considered theoretically, direct empirical analyses have been rare

because of the paucity of systematic issue data in existing data sets and the difficulty of

collecting original data related to issues.

This paper adopts an issues approach to world politics, focusing on disagreements over

territory, cross-border rivers, and maritime zones. Our theoretical model identifies a variety of

substitutable foreign policy tools that states adopt to resolve disagreements over these various

issues, ranging from cooperative endeavors (such as bilateral negotiation or submission of claims

to a third party) to militarized conflict. We develop several general issue hypotheses,

emphasizing the impact of issue salience on the management of issues. We discuss the

measurement of issues, focusing on the systematic identification of issues, the measurement of

issue salience, and the collection of data on attempts to settle each issue. We conclude with

some preliminary empirical analyses of issue management, using data on territorial and river

issues. We find strong evidence that the salience of contentious issues affects the management

of those issues, particularly with regard to variation in salience across issue types rather than

variation within the individual categories of territorial or river issues.

An Issues Approach to World Politics

The standard realist approach describes world politics as a struggle for power (Morgenthau

1967), or in its neorealist form (Waltz 1979), a struggle for security in an anarchic interstate

system. From such a perspective, states have a single, all-encompassing goal: they "think and

act in terms of interest defined as power." (Morgenthau 1967: 5) An issue-based approach


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differs from realism in that it views world politics as an arena in which states contend over many

different types of issues, with very different implications for foreign policy decisions and

interactions. We believe that an adequate understanding of interstate conflict and cooperation

requires a focus on issues (see also Keohane and Nye 1977; Mansbach and Vasquez 1981; Diehl

1992). The following discussion identifies the central tenets of a systematic approach to the

study of issues, as discussed in a recentInternational Studies Quarterlyarticle (Hensel 2001a).

Foreign Policy is Issue-Directed

The central tenet of an issue-based approach is that policy makers are concerned with issues.

That is, rather than acting randomly or reacting to structural imperatives, policy makers make

decisions in order to achieve their goals on certain issues. Such an approach closely resembles

Clausewitz' portrayal of war as a political instrument, rather than an end to itself.

Policy makers are seen as concerned with issues because of the "values" that the issues

represent, such as wealth, physical security, freedom/autonomy, peace, order, status, or justice

(Mansbach and Vasquez, 1981).1 Issues can involve competing views on concrete or tangible

objectives, such as control over a particular piece of territory or cross-border resources, the

protection of an ethnic or religious minority, or the removal of a particular leader, as well as

competing views on intangible objectives such as influence, prestige, or ideology (Keohane and

Nye 1977; Randle 1987; Holsti 1991; Diehl 1992).2

Issue Salience Varies

1 Mansbach and Vasquez (1981: 57-58) describe politics as the quest for value satisfaction, where "values" are

abstract and intangible ends such as wealth, physical security, freedom/autonomy, peace, order, status, or justice.

Because many such values can not be obtained directly, political actors often pursue desired values by contending

over "stakes," which are more concrete and tangible objects that are seen as possessing or representing the desired

values. One or more stakes and values are linked to form an "issue," or "a set of differing proposals for the

disposition of stakes among specific actors" (Vasquez 1993: 46). Issues can involve competing views on concrete

or tangible objectives, such as control over a particular piece of territory or cross-border resources, the protection ofan ethnic or religious minority, or the removal of a particular leader, as well as competing views on intangible

objectives such as influence, prestige, or ideology (see, e.g., Keohane and Nye 1977; Randle 1987; Holsti 1991;

Diehl 1992).2For example, the Golan Heights issue between Israel and Syria involves competing claims relating to values such

as physical security (represented by specific territorial stakes offering the ability to detect military threats, defend

oneself from attack, and control access to scarce fresh water), peace (the absence of actual and potential security

threats from their rival), and status (with both Israeli and Syrian prestige affected by control over territory that is

claimed by both countries). Any final resolution of the overall Golan issue will have to produce a mutually

acceptable division of the Heights that balances Israeli and Syrian concerns for peace, security, and status.


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By itself, the argument that states are concerned with multiple types of issues does not

necessarily imply that incorporating issues will make a difference in analyses of world politics.

Even if numerous issues exist on the policy agenda, the specific issue(s) under contention at any

point in time can only affect foreign policy decisions if issues vary in salience, defined as "the

extent to which (but principally, the intensity with which) peoples and their leaders value an

issue and its subject matter" (Randle 1987: 2; see also Coplin et al. 1973, Diehl 1992). Without

this assumption, behavior would remain constant across different issues, and the specific issue

under contention would only be of interest for descriptive purposes (indeed, of little more value

than the vague notion that states pursue "the national interest"). If issue salience is considered,

though, leaders can be seen as willing to expend greater effort (and to risk higher costs) to

achieve favorable settlements on highly salient issues than on issues that are attributed less

importance.3

Multiple Means Are Available for Issue-Related Ends

Numerous cooperative or conflictual options may be chosen to pursue goals over issues,

reflecting alternative mechanisms for allocating the disputed stakes; the common link is that

these different policy options are substitutable means toward the same end. Policy makers may

choose to take no action, allowing the issue to fester until it is forgotten or until one side chooses

a more active strategy. Toward the peaceful end of the spectrum, leaders may choose to

negotiate over their differences, either bilaterally or with the (non-binding) assistance of third

parties, or they may submit their disputes to binding third party judgments. Leaders may also

employ unilateral coercive action up to and including the use of military force to pursue their

interests, in order to achieve their goals by force or by convincing an adversary to back down.4

This perspective allows the analyst to think in terms of substitutable policy options that are

available to states (Most and Starr 1989; Morgan 1990), treating each option as one component

piece in a larger puzzle. In short, by recognizing that multiple options are available to states for

3Moravcsik (1997) similarly suggests that states require a "purpose" or perceived underlying stake before they will

act, and that the strength of their preferences for these stakes drives policy making. This argument is central to

Moravcsik's critique of the realist argument that capability or power considerations drive policy making: "Nations

are rarely prepared to expend their entire economic or defense capabilities, or to mortgage their entire domestic

sovereignty, in pursuit of any single foreign policy goal" (Moravcsik 1997: 520). Instead, the primary determination

of a state's willingness to expend resources in pursuit of any given foreign policy goal is the strength of that state's

preferences for achieving that particular goal.


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resolving their conflicts of interest, the issues approach allows for a more complete

understanding of world politics than is possible in isolated studies of individual options.

Taken together, these elements of an issues approach suggest a very different way of

thinking about and studying world politics. Theoretically, the issues approach encourages

scholars to think about the specific goals that states wish to achieve, and to think about how

certain goals or issues are more salient than others. This approach also encourages scholars to

think about militarized conflict and other types of activities as substitutable means toward the

same issue-related end, which leads to a new focus on why one particular method is chosen

rather than its alternatives -- a somewhat different question than whether or not a state will

initiate militarized conflict in a given year.

The issues approach also has implications for data collection. Very little attention has

been paid to issues in existing data collections, which have focused more on such explanatory

factors as arms, alliances, international organizations, trade, or geographic contiguity. If a

scholar wishes to identify issues or to study issue management, new types of data are needed.

Specifically, issues must be identified systematically, preferably with some indicators of issue

salience and some identification of issue management or settlement efforts. As will be seen, the

ICOW project attempts to meet all of these data-related needs.

Theoretical Model: Contentious Issues and World Politics

The issue-based framework that has been presented suggests that world politics can be

conceptualized and studied as contention between states over issues using a variety of coercive

or cooperative techniques. We now present explicit hypotheses on states' choices between

settlement techniques in pursuit of issue-related goals. While there are a number of issue-related

factors that can affect these choices (Hensel, 2001a), we focus on the importance of issue

salience in this paper. The hypotheses on settlement techniques (and claim duration) are general

in nature (applying to any issue), but we also emphasize any differences we expect across issue

types (territory, river, and maritime issues).

4Policy makers may also choose to take no action over a given issue, allowing the issue to fester until it is forgotten

or until one side chooses a more active strategy.


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Attempts to Settle Issue Claims

As noted above, one of the central tenets of the issue approach is the idea that policy

makers have a variety of means for settling contentious issues. To settle a territorial claim, for

example, leaders can pursue cooperative or conflictual solutions, or they can choose to do

nothing at all. How leaders choose among these various substitutable foreign policy options is

an interesting question (Most and Starr 1989; Morgan 1990), and one that has been largely

ignored by scholars who focus solely on the militarized end of the spectrum (e.g., by studying

the issues involved in militarized disputes or wars).

We focus on three general types of issue settlement attempts: (1) bilateral negotiations,

(2) settlement involving third party activities, and (3) militarized conflict. The most direct

approach for resolving a contentious issue is to settle the dispute directly between the conflicting

parties, through bilateral negotiations. Bilateral negotiations involve direct discussions between

official representatives of the two claimant states; such negotiations may take any form and may

follow any procedure that the participants find acceptable (Hensel, 2001b). States may also turn

to third parties to help resolve a disagreement over some issue. Third party settlement attempts

include the provision of good offices, inquiry, conciliation, mediation, arbitration, adjudication,

and multilateral negotiations. Some of these third party settlement attempts, such as arbitration

and adjudication, are binding, meaning that the parties agree in advance to abide by the decision

of the third party. Finally, leaders may also employ unilateral coercive action up to and

including the use of military force to pursue their interests, in order to achieve their goals by

force, or by forcing an adversary to back down. The question that must be answered is which

factors make leaders more or less likely to select each of these foreign policy options.

The salience of the specific issue under contention is one such factor that appears likely

to influence the choice among policy options, with policy makers willing to pursue costlier or

riskier options to achieve their goals over issues that are considered highly salient than over less

important issues. In particular, unilateral military action is a relatively costly option, involving

the risk of high military and economic costs should the adversary reciprocate with military action

of its own, while not guaranteeing a successful resolution of the issues under contention. For

low-salience issues, these costs and risks are unlikely to be seen as worthwhile, relative to more


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peaceful means, in which the costs are limited to failing to achieve one's (relatively unimportant)

issue goals -- without the additional costs and risks inherent in military escalation.5

When highly salient issues are under contention, though, the costs of failing to achieve

one's desired issue position are much greater, especially in terms of failing to accomplish a

leader's goals. As a result, when highly salient issues are involved, leaders are likely to fear the

costs of losing on the issue more than the risks and costs of using force to achieve their goals.

Even legal scholars such as Levi (1991:271-272) note that reliance on one's own capabilities and

resources can be very attractive when the alternatives include the uncertain outcomes inherent in

diplomatic or legal settlements, particularly when a state fears that political considerations may

enter into the settlement or enforcement processes. In general, then, we should expect that

highly salient issues should lead most frequently to bilateral negotiations and militarized

settlement attempts.

Hypothesis 1: States should be more likely to employ bilateral negotiations or militarized action

to pursue their issues when the issue at stake is more salient.

With regard to third party involvement, we must consider the conditions under which the

claimants would be willing to request or accept third party involvement, as well as the conditions

under which potential third parties -- such as major powers, neighboring states, or internationalorganizations -- would be willing to offer their involvement or accept a request from the

claimants. It appears reasonable to expect that outside actors would be most involved with

highly salient issues, as well as that the claimants would be most likely to request or accept third

party involvement -- at least in a non-binding form -- over such issues. Third parties should be

more likely to offer assistance in settling highly salient issues -- which may be seen as

threatening regional or global stability -- than to make similar offers over less salient issues,

which may not attract the third party's attention and may not appear to justify the (economic,

political, reputational, or even military) risks and expenses that might be involved in such an

operation.

5 Even political realists like Morgenthau (1967: Chapter 25), who might be expected to advocate unilateral

solutions to disagreements because of the anarchic, self-help nature of politics, recognize that judicial settlement of

issues is possible when the issue involves minor questions such as the interpretation of an existing law. It is only


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Policy makers contending over highly salient issues such as territory should be especially

hesitant to turn to legally binding third party involvement (arbitration or adjudication), in which

the parties agree in advance to abide by the decision of the third party. Non-binding third party

techniques may be seen as less threatening, because they emphasize the facilitation of

communication between two adversaries, neutral fact-finding missions, or the suggestion of

possible solutions that need not be accepted by either party. Unilateral or bilateral action may be

generally preferable to the involvement of any third party, but if a third party is to become

involved, the ideal form of involvement would be one allowing policy makers to reject any

suggestions that they consider unfavorable. To the extent that antagonists either request third

party assistance or accept a third party's offer of such assistance, then, third party settlement

attempts should be more likely to involve non-binding third party activities than binding third

party decisions when the issue at stake is highly salient.6

Hypothesis 2: States should be more likely to attract non-binding third party assistance, and

less likely to use binding third party assistance, when the issue at stake is more salient.

Issue Claim Duration

The salience of an issue affects not only the means by which states attempt to resolve an

issue claim (bilateral, third party, or militarized), but also the potential for successfully resolving

it. More salient issues are expected to prove more difficult to resolve successfully. The final

resolution of any issue requires that both sides view a settlement as beneficial, or at least as

preferable to continued contention over the issue. Compromise over an issue -- essential to

producing a settlement that both sides consider worthwhile -- is not likely to be difficult for

leaders when the issue is relatively trivial, so once settlement attempts are set in motion on such

issues, there should be a reasonable prospect for success. Yet when one or both actors view an

issue as highly salient, they are likely to find compromise solutions unpalatable (and any

domestic political opposition is likely to take advantage of any compromise to launch charges of

when the question at hand is political, involving conflicts of power or challenges to the prevailing status quo, that

Morgenthau sees binding judicial settlement of disputes as impossible for self-interested states.


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treason or incompetence). We thus expect claims over highly salient issues to last longer than

ones involving less salient issues.

Hypothesis 3: Contentious claims over highly salient issues will last longer than claims over

less salient issues.

Comparing Salience Within and Across Issues

One of the appealing aspects of the issue approach to world politics is its recognition that

states contend over multiple issues and that these issues vary in salience. Issues are important to

states for a variety of reasons, which we categorize in terms of the tangible and intangible value

to the contending states. Perhaps most obvious are the tangible values associated with many

issues, such as their contribution to a states physical security, wealth, or even basic human needs

such as food, water, and living space. Less obvious, yet often important, are more intangible

values such as order, status or prestige, and justice.

Different types of issues can be seen as varying along these two dimensions of tangible

and intangible salience to states, ranging from issues with high tangible and high intangible

salience to those with low salience on both dimensions. Territory, for example, is typically

described as quite important to states for both tangible and intangible reasons (e.g., Vasquez

1993; Hensel 1996, 2001a). Territorial claims often involve land that contains economic and/or

strategic value, thus relating to the tangible values of wealth and physical security. Beyond this

tangible importance, many territories also take on enormous intangible significance, coming to

be viewed as part of a states national identity; the deep ties of Jews to Palestine/Israel and of

Serbs to Kosovo offer two dramatic examples. Although individual territorial claims may

involve specific pieces of land with little tangible value or with little intangible significance for

either participant, in general territorial issues are seen as taking on high values on both

dimensions.7

6Hensels (2001) empirical analysis of data on territorial claims in the Americas supports these hypotheses. In this

paper, we broaden the analysis to three issues, which allows for a better test of the issue approach more generally

(especially the hypotheses regarding salience, which are argued to hold across multiple issues).7We believe that this classification scheme is superior to alternative schemes that have been presented in past

research. For example, Rosenau (1971) classifies issues by the tangibility or intangibility of the values to be

allocated, as well as the tangibility or intangibility of the means employed to effect allocation. Yet many issues,

particularly territorial issues, are seen as extremely important for both tangible and intangible reasons, complicating

the classification of the values as one or the other. Additionally, a variety of means can be used to effect allocation


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At the opposite end of the spectrum, issues with little tangible or intangible value include

international athletics or economic issues associated with individuals or small groups. Hosting

or winning athletic events such as the Olympic Games or the World Cup may contribute

somewhat to a states prestige, and obtaining the release of a states national imprisoned abroad

or protecting foreign investments by the states corporations may be quite important for the

individual or corporation involved, but there is little tangible or intangible value in such issues

for the vast majority of the states leaders or populace.

Between these extremes, a variety of issues take on relatively high values along the

tangible or intangible dimension, while lacking in the other dimension. We focus on two

additional issues that fall in this intermediate range, contention over cross-border rivers and

contention over maritime areas, both of which involve relatively high tangible value but

relatively low intangible value. While all three of these issues are fairly high along the tangible

dimension (and less so along the intangible dimension), we expect territorial issues to be the

most salient overall, followed by maritime and river issues.

Of course, the salience of a given issue within a single issue category varies considerably.

For example, some maritime areas may be highly salient to one or more states, such as the

territorial sea around Iceland (which almost produced a war between Iceland and the United

Kingdom in the 1970s); this is a case where the resources in the claimed area are extremely

important to the claimants economies. Other maritime areas are less salient to leaders; the

United States contests Canadas claim of sovereignty over the Northwest Passage (arguing that it

is an international waterway), but neither side views the issue as salient enough to call for drastic

measures. Our general point is that we expect the hypotheses regarding salience to hold for each

separate issue (e.g., militarized force is more likely to be used when a claim is highly salient),

but we do recognize that some issues are more salient in general (such as territory) than others.

Thus while we might expect militarized force to be used to resolve a highly salient territorial,

river, or maritime issue, because territorial issues are more salient on average than the other

issues, we would expect to observe a greater number of militarized incidents over these

of any type of issue, ranging from military force to negotiations to third-party adjudication; it would be both difficult

and misleading to categorize any particular issue as involving primarily tangible or intangible means. The

International Crisis Behavior (ICB) project has attempted to categorize issues by the specific substantive area of

contention, using four categories: military-security, political-diplomatic, economic development, and cultural status

(Brecher and Wilkenfeld 1997). Yet these categories are not mutually exclusive; territorial issues, for one, can be

important for reasons related to all four categories.


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(territorial) issues in comparison to the others. In the following section, we describe the data we

have collected on these three issues to test our theoretical hypotheses.

Measuring Issues

The Issue Correlates of War, or ICOW, project attempts to address the shortcomings of past

research on issues. The project began in the late 1990s at Florida State University with data

collection on territorial issues and is currently expanding to cross-border river and maritime

issues. Each of these issue types is approached similarly, with the goal of meeting the specific

data needs of the issues approach as discussed above.

Explicit Issue Contention

The most important requirement for systematic data on issues is explicit evidence of

contention involving official representatives of two or more nation-states over the issue type in

question; without explicit contention there is no reasonable way to identify issues. With the

ICOW territorial claims data, for example, this means evidence that official representatives of at

least one state make explicit statements claiming sovereignty over a specific piece of territory

that is claimed or administered by another state. In the absence of such explicit evidence, we

cannot simply assume that every border, every river, or every maritime zone is disputed, or that

every militarized dispute, crisis, or war between states sharing a border, river, or maritime zoneis evidence of such a claim. Requiring explicit statement of a claim by official government

representatives helps the issues approach avoid charges of tautology, which might otherwise

weaken or discredit the endeavor (for example, by arguing that all wars must be about territory

because the armies seek to control territory to win the war).

It is also important that the claim be stated by official government representatives, or

individuals authorized to state official government policy (and that this statement not be

disavowed by other official sources). Many potential claims are stated by private individuals,

legislators, corporations, rebel groups, or other actors, typically for personal or financial

motivations. Unless official governmental representatives support the claim, though, it does not

qualify for inclusion in the data set. For example, while various private groups have pushed for

the creation of a Greater Albania incorporating parts of Kosovo, Serbia's Presevo Valley, and


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Macedonia as well as Albania itself (perhaps among other locations), we have seen no credible

evidence that this is the official position of the Albanian government.

It should be noted that this definition does not require any specific form of contention

over the claim. In particular, it does not require that one or both sides resort to militarized force

over the claim, meaning that the data set includes a number of cases that never led to the threat or

use of force by either claimant. Similarly, it does not require that the adversaries negotiate over

the claim, submit it to third party arbitration or adjudication, or even take any action whatsoever

over the claim; some cases may not lead to any action of any kind, instead being allowed to fade

away gradually. Both peaceful and militarized actions over a claim are more properly the subject

of systematic analysis using complete compilations of all issue claims, rather than tools to be

used for case selection.8

Issue Settlement Attempts

Each ICOW claims data set includes data on attempts to manage or settle the issues involved in a

claim. As noted above, we focus on three general types of settlement attempts: bilateral

negotiations, third party settlement, and militarized conflict. Militarized attempts to settle issues

are identified using the Correlates of War Project's Militarized Interstate Dispute (MID) data set

(Jones, Bremer, and Singer 1996). Each of the more than two thousand MIDs in the data set is

examined to identify whether it involved the claimants in the territorial or river claim in

question.9 Two separate analyses are run using militarized conflict, one of which considers any

8In general, a separate ICOW claim is considered to exist whenever two or more actors contend over a piece of

territory, a river, or a maritime area that is not already covered as part of another ICOW claim. A separate dyadic

claim within an already existing ICOW claim is considered to exist whenever two or more actors contend over a

piece of territory, a river, or a maritime area that isalready covered as part of another ICOW claim. For example,

the overall Alaska territorial claim includes several distinct dyadic claims: a U.K.-Russia claim and a U.S.-Russia

claim from the period before Russia sold Alaska (Russian America) to the United States in 1867, each of which

covered somewhat different portions of Alaska, and a U.K. (acting on behalf of its then-colony Canada)-U.S. claim

covering a smaller portion of the Alaska-Canada border after the U.S. purchase. Because each of these dyadic

claims involved partially overlapping territory, they are all considered to be part of the overall Alaska claim. In

contrast, though, there are numerous different claims between the U.S.-U.K., U.S.-Mexico, and Argentina-Chilebecause the claims involve separate (rather than overlapping) pieces of territory and because the claimants treat the

claims to these distinct territories separately (Hensel, 2001b).9Because the official MID data set has not been released in dyadic form, we employ a version that has been

transformed into a dyadic data set, as described by Hensel (1996). Some dyads engage in multiple claims of a

certain type at the same time (most notably the United States and Canada, United States and Mexico, and Argentina

and Chile), making it difficult to determine which (if any) of these claims generated the dispute. For now, this

problem is resolved by attributing each such dispute to the earliest-starting claim that is still active at that point in

time, although this is admittedly an imperfect solution. Future research will attempt to resolve this question more

definitively by examining each such dispute more closely.


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militarized dispute between the claimants regardless of the issue at stake. More relevant, though,

are militarized disputes over the specific territorial or river issues at stake in the claim. Disputes

over territorial claims are easily identified, because the MID data set codes whether territory is at

stake in a dispute, but there is no code for river issues in the official MID data set. Because only

ten militarized disputes occurred between river claimants in the Americas from 1816-1992,

though, all ten cases could be analyzed to identify the specific issues. Four (one between Bolivia

and Chile over the Lauca River and three between Argentina and Uruguay over the Ro de la

Plata) involve river issues, while the other six involve other issues between the United States and

Canada or its former British ruler (the Alaskan territorial claim, maritime fishing claims, and the

British dispute with Guyana).

While militarized attempts to settle issues can be identified using readily available data

sets, much more work is required to identify and code peaceful attempts to settle ICOW claims,

as this information is not available in any other social science data sets. Four specific topics can

be covered by these peaceful attempted settlements: negotiations meant to settle the entire claim,

negotiations over a smaller part of the claim, negotiations over procedures for future settlement

of the claim (a "procedural" settlement attempt, such as a treaty submitting the claim to

arbitration by a specific third party or an agreement to meet for new negotiations at some specific

time), and negotiations over the use of the claimed territory, river, or maritime area without

attempting to settle the question of ownership (a "functional" settlement attempt, such as a treaty

of free navigation along a disputed river border). Any other type of negotiations (e.g., talks over

a ceasefire to stop an ongoing crisis or war) is excluded.

Coded settlement attempts may involve bilateral negotiations, negotiations with non-

binding third party assistance (inquiry, conciliation, good offices, or mediation), or submission of

a claim to binding arbitration or adjudication.10

It is important to include all of these different

types of peaceful settlement attempts, as this variety allows study of numerous research topics.

For example, this allows the study of the relative frequency and effectiveness of each type of

effort, which has not been possible with most previous data sets. Collections such as the MID,

ICB, and SHERFACS data sets are focused around armed conflict, and either exclude conflict

management entirely (as with the MID data) or only include attempts to manage or settle

ongoing crises or wars (as with the ICB and SHERFACS data). An exclusive focus on attempts

10More detail on each type of settlement attempt is provided by Hensel (2001a, 2001b).


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to manage claims that have become militarized (e.g., Dixon 1993, 1994; Wilkenfeld and Brecher

1984) is likely to understate the effectiveness of peaceful means for dispute settlement, because

it only examines the most intractable and conflictual issues and ignores cases that never reach

such extreme measures. Furthermore, a focus on armed conflict leaves out the majority of all

issue settlement attempts. Less than fifteen percent of the settlement attempts involving ICOW

territorial claims in the Western Hemisphere begin during militarized disputes or wars, meaning

that over 85 percent of the ICOW cases would be left out of the data sets that have been used in

most recent research on conflict management.11

Hensel (2001b) provides more detail on the

identification and coding of peaceful settlement attempts.

Issue Salience

An important element of each ICOW data set is the collection of indicators that can be

used to measure issue salience. That is, scholars using the data set must have some way to

distinguish between claims of higher and lower salience. In the ICOW territorial claims data set,

salience is measured through numerous indicators, each of which addresses an aspect of the

claimed issue that should increase its general value to one or both claimant states.

We combine six dichotomous indicators of salience for each issue type to create an

overall measure of salience. On this twelve-point index, we assume that values from zero to four

represent low salience, values from five to seven represent moderate salience, and values eight to

twelve represent high salience.12

For territorial claims, the six indicators used to construct the

general measure of territorial claim salience include (1) homeland territory (as opposed to

colonial or dependent territory), (2) mainland territory (rather than an offshore island), (3)

contiguity of the claimed territory to the nearest portion of the state, (4) the presence of valuable

resources in the territory, (5) a militarily or economically strategic location for the territory, and

11

Raymond's (1994, 1996) data on international arbitration and mediation offers a partial exception, as it includes

numerous cases that began outside of the context of ongoing militarized conflict. Yet Raymond's data is limited to

conflict management cases involving at least one major power and involving states that share a direct or indirect

border, and his data set ends in 1965; only a small fraction of cases in the ICOW territorial claims data set would

appear in Raymond's compilation.12Each indicator can contribute up to two points to the overall total of this index (one point per state involved in the

claim).


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(6) the presence of an ethnic, religious, or other identity basis for the claim. 13 We construct

similar indices of salience for river and maritime claims.14

Describing the ICOW Data on Territorial, River, and Maritime Claims

Before moving on to empirical tests of our theoretical hypotheses, we provide some basic

descriptive information about the ICOW data collected in the Western Hemisphere (North,

Central, and South America and the Caribbean) for each of the issue areas: territorial, river, and

maritime claims. Territorial claims are coded from 1816-2000, whereas river and maritime

claims are collected from 1901-2000.15

We begin by considering the frequency of actual claims relative to the number of

potential claims. For territorial claims, we assume that any two states with contiguous land

borders have an opportunity to become involved in a territorial claim. For river claims, any dyad

that shares a cross-border river might be counted as a potential river claim, although there are

thousands of streams or rivers that cross borders, most of which are not depicted or named even

on the best world atlases (such as the Times Atlas of the WorldorNational Geographic Atlas of

the World). As a result, we limit the list of potential river claims to "major rivers," or rivers of at

least 100 miles total length that enter the physical territory of at least two states. Finally,

potential maritime claims are based on overlapping territorial sea and/or economic exclusive

zones up to 200 nautical miles (Pratt and Schofield, 2000).16

13It is worth noting that several of these indicators reflect the "intrinsic importance" (Diehl 1992) of the claimed

territory, contributing to the salience of the claimed territory for all involved parties, while others may reveal

asymmetries in claim salience for different participants ("relational importance"). Thus, the presence of valuable

resources or control over a strategic location should presumably benefit each side in the claim, while territory that is

considered to be part of one state's homeland another state's colony may have much greater salience for one state

than the other. This may be an important influence on the two states' decisions and interactions regarding the claim.14The six indicators for river claim salience are homeland territory (versus colonial or dependent territory),

navigational importance of the river, level of population served by the river, the presence of a fishing or other

resource extraction industry on the river, hydroelectric power generation along the river, and irrigational value of the

river. The six indicators for maritime claim salience are homeland territory (versus colonial or dependent territory),

strategic location, fishing resources, migratory fishing stocks, oil resources, and relation to an ongoing territorialclaim.15

We have several reasons to limit river and maritime claims data collection to the twentieth century. First,

particularly for maritime claims, such issues simply do not appear to have been important enough to many states to

have generated explicit claims until some time in the twentieth century. Second, and perhaps related to the first

reason, historical sources have not given such issues anywhere near the attention that is given to territorial claims

until the twentieth century, leaving us much less confident that we could identify most relevant claims or that we

could collect sufficient data on claim characteristics or on attempts to settle each claim.16Each data set can include additional claims not represented on these lists of potential claims, such as territorial

claims to islands by geographically distant adversaries, claims over rivers as short as twenty or thirty miles, or


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Table 1 reveals that there are 40 potential territorial claims, 162 potential river claims,

and 60 potential maritime claims in the Americas. 39 of the 40 land borders (97.5%) have been

disputed at some point in the past two centuries. The percentage of actual claims for rivers and

maritime zones is much smaller. 26 of the 60 overlapping maritime zones (43.3%) have

produced a maritime claim, whereas only 14 of the 162 cross-border major rivers (8.6%) have

been contested. Not surprisingly, territorial claims are the most frequent. This is consistent with

our argument that territorial claims are very salient to leaders (being high in the tangible and

intangible dimensions), and thus much more likely to be the subject of a claim. It makes sense

that maritime claims would be the next most frequent, largely because many disputed maritime

zones stem from contested land borders, and that river claims would be the least frequent.17

While territorial claims have been the most frequent type of contentious issue in the

Americas, our expectation is that the number of territorial claims should decline over time as

borders become established, and states resolve their territorial disagreements. On the other hand,

we expect river and maritime claims to become more frequent over time for two reasons. First,

we believe that a states level of economic development affects its ability to exploit the resources

contained in rivers and oceans. Most maritime claims, for example, did not arise until after

World War II precisely because states did not have large fishing fleets and oil companies

competing for oceanic resources. Likewise, the ability of a state to develop hydroelectric power

plants on a river depends on its overall level of economic development. Second, the resources

contained in the ocean and freshwater rivers have become much more scarce over time. Canada,

for example, has had disputes with a variety of states (such as the United States, Spain, and

France) to protect the dwindling oceanic fish stocks in and outside their economic exclusive

zone. More broadly, the total world catch of marine fish reached a record high of 86 million

metric tons in 1989, before beginning a rapid decline in thirteen of nineteen FAO statistical areas

(Bailey, 1996).18

maritime claims involving fishing rights that are disputed between distant adversaries. For the purposes of Table 1,though, such additional claims are left out, because of the impossibility of constructing a meaningful list of the many

thousands of small islands or short rivers; this table only indicates the proportion of these listed potential cases that

have been the subject of at least one explicit ICOW claim. The remaining tables in this paper use the full list of all

claims, regardless of whether they appear in Table 1's list of potential claims.17

While not all maritime claims are related to territorial claims, there are enough cases where such a link exists to

complicate the delimitation of maritime areas.18We also see rising scarcity of fresh water resources suitable for drinking or agriculture, with vast disparities across

regions in the world. For example, the Amazon River accounts for twenty percent of all global river runoff triple

the combined total runoff for all of Europe -- and the Congo/Zaire River accounts for thirty percent of all runoff in


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Table 2 presents information on claim frequency over time in the Americas. We report

the total number of claims (where each disputed area is counted as one claim) in the first column,

and the total number of dyadic claims in the second column (where a disputed area may have

multiple dyadic claims).19

The total number of claims is higher in Table 2 than in Table 1

because here we include claims over other issues (noncontiguous territories such as islands,

small rivers, or noncontiguous maritime zones) that were not identifiable as potential claims in

practical terms. There have been a total of 75 territorial claims from 1816-2000, 17 river claims

from 1901-2000, and 39 maritime claims from 1901-2000. Even with this more complete listing

of claims, then, territorial claims have been the most frequent type of issue claim in the

Americas. When we break down the overall time periods, however, our expectation with respect

to the frequency of these issues over time is confirmed. Territorial issues have become less

frequent over time; there are 63 active territorial claims in the nineteenth century and only 26

active claims in the latter half of the twentieth. Table 2 also shows that river and maritime

claims have become much more frequent over time, as we expected. Only three river claims and

sixteen maritime claims were active between 1901-1950, while fifteen river claims and 39

maritime claims have been active at some point between 1951-2000. The same temporal trends

hold for dyadic claims, as well.

Empirical AnalysesWe turn now to empirical analyses designed to test the theoretical hypotheses described earlier in

the paper. We have argued that the salience of an issue has a strong effect on the types of

settlement attempts chosen by leaders and on the chances for contentious issues being

Africa. Similarly, Oceania as a region has over twenty times the per capita water availability of Asia, largely

because of rich water resources and low populations (Gleick 1993: 3-4). At least nine Middle Eastern countries

already use more water each year than can be replenished through either renewable internal water sources or river

inflows from other countries, and twelve countries around the world are unable to provide even minimally

acceptable supplies of fresh water per capita; both lists are expected to lengthen considerably in the next several

decades (Gleick 1993: 105-106). Many fresh water resources are shared across nation-state borders, whether in theform of rivers that form or run across a border or lakes that touch two or more states; at least thirteen countries

depend on water sources beyond their borders for three-fourths or more of their total river flow (Gleick 1993: 108).19

Issues are studied based on specific claims by policy makers, or explicit goals that are expressed with regard to

preferred settlements of a specific type of disagreement. Issue claims are aggregated based on the specific topic

under contention, whether it is a piece of territory, a river, or a maritime zone. If there are multiple actors who claim

a particular area, then there are multiple dyadic claims for the overall claim. For example, Venezuelas claim to a

200-mile economic exclusive zone around Aves Island is contested by many Caribbean states, including Dominica,

Grenada, St. Lucia, St. Kitts and Nevis, and St. Vincent. This is treated as a single maritime claim involving five

separate dyadic claims (each state versus Venezuela).


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successfully resolved (duration). States are more likely to employ bilateral negotiations or

militarized action when the issue at stake is highly salient (Hypothesis 1). They are also less

likely to involve third parties in ways that are binding (arbitration or adjudication) for highly

salient issues (Hypothesis 2). Furthermore, because highly salient issues are difficult to resolve,

claims over these issues last longer than claims over other, less salient issues (Hypothesis 3). We

also expect territorial issues to be more salient in general than river or maritime issues, which

would suggest that territorial claims should differ from river claims in the same general ways

that higher salience claims of a given issue type should differ from their lower salience

counterparts. Because of slower progress in data collection, we are not yet able to report results

for maritime claims in these final three tables, although work is continuing on that data set and

we plan to add maritime claims to the territorial and river claims in these tables as soon as

possible.

Table 3 describes the frequency of territorial and river claims that are characterized by

high, moderate, or low salience. Among the 114 dyadic territorial claims in the Americas from

1816-2000, 29% (33) are highly salient. Of the 23 dyadic river claims in the Americas from

1901-2000, 26% (6) are highly salient. The modal salience category for both territorial and river

claims is moderate salience, constituting 36.8% of territorial claims and 43.5% of river claims.

Table 4 compares the duration of territorial and river claims (section A), and then

comparing the duration of each issue separately based on the salience level (sections B and C).

The first column includes data for all claims, whether they were resolved or still ongoing. The

second column omits the claims that are ongoing as of the year 2000. It is clear that territorial

claims have lasted much longer than river claims, with a mean duration of 43.3 years relative to

9.6 years for river claims. This difference is statistically significant (p


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either all claims or uncensored claims.20

On other hand, territorial claims of high salience (44.2

years) have a somewhat shorter average duration than claims of moderate salience (49.4 years),

although again the result is not statistically significant.

Table 5 presents the frequency of the various types of settlement attempts (bilateral

negotiations, non-binding and binding third party involvement, and militarized conflict) based on

the salience of the issue claim (high, moderate, or low). As we had hypothesized, there is a

significant difference across issue types in both bilateral negotiations (p < .01) and militarized

conflict behavior overall (p < .02). The results are slightly weaker but still approach

conventional levels of statistical significance when examining conflict over territorial or river

issues specifically (p < .09) and non-binding third party involvement (p < .11). Territorial claims

generate an average of 2.5 militarized disputes (1.4 of them over territorial issues), while river

claims generate only 0.4 (with a total of only ten disputes across 23 dyadic river claims, only

four of them specifically involving river issues). Similarly, territorial claims generate nearly

three times as many rounds of bilateral negotiations as do river claims, and an even greater

disparity in non-binding third party activity.

The only surprise in the upper portion of the table lies in the results for binding third

party settlements, with territorial claims averaging one such settlement per three claims and no

such settlements occurring in Western Hemisphere river claims (p < .02). This result may

indicate in part that river claims are easier to resolve bilaterally or with non-binding assistance,

leaving no need to turn to binding third party judgments. It may also indicate that river claims

lack an appropriate international body to resolve claims through adjudication, at least in the

twentieth century Western Hemisphere, or that river claims rarely generate the militarized

conflicts or stalemated negotiations that may lead states to choose a binding third party

technique. In any case, further research is warranted.

With regard to differences within each issue type, neither issue produces very significant

results. Territorial claims of high, moderate, and low salience generate 2.7, 1.1, and 0.5

militarized disputes over territorial issues respectively, indicating that the most salient claims

produce much more militarized conflict than the least salient (p < .02), and more salient

territorial claims also generate significantly more negotiations (p < .001). River claims do not

20To some extent, these results are impeded by the small N; these analyses are based on comparisons of mean

values across just 23 dyadic river claims.


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produce any noteworthy differences based on salience levels for any type of settlement attempt,

nor are there any significant differences for third party activities in territorial claims.

Taken together, these analyses suggest that the salience of a contentious issue strongly

influences the ways in which states try to settle their differences. States are more likely to use

militarized means and bilateral negotiations to settle highly salient claims. Furthermore, claims

over issues that are more salient in general, such as territory, last longer than claims over less

salient issues, such as cross-border rivers. Our analyses demonstrate the impact of variation in

salience both within and across issue types, offering the first systematic empirical examination of

multiple issues.

Conclusions and Implications

International relations scholars often assume that states foreign policy interests are dominated

by a single overarching goal, such as the maximization of power and/or survival in an anarchic

environment. We believe that this vision of world politics is quite limited, and we argue that

states contend over many issues, with some issues being more salient or important than others. It

is important to examine these various contentious issues because foreign policy decisions vary

based on the issue at stake and the salience of the issue at hand. We argue that different types of

issues vary along two general dimensions of salience: the tangible importance of an issue, such

as economic or strategic value, and the intangible importance of an issue, such as prestige oridentity value. Territorial issues are salient for both tangible and intangible reasons, while other

issues, such as cross-border rivers and maritime zones, are less salient. The salience of issues

within these general issue types (territory, rivers, maritime areas) varies as well, with some

territorial claims being much more important to leaders than other territorial claims.

Our theoretical model identifies a variety of substitutable foreign policy tools that states

can adopt to resolve disagreements over issues, ranging from cooperative endeavors to

militarized conflict. We contend that states should be more likely to employ bilateral

negotiations or militarized action, more likely to attract non-binding third party assistance, and

less likely to use binding third party assistance, when the when the issue at stake is more salient.

We also argue that issues that are more salient in general, such as territory, should last longer

because they are more difficult to resolve. Empirical analysis of territorial, river, and maritime

data for the Americas generally confirms our hypotheses.


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The ICOW data seta on territorial, river, and maritime claims will be useful in testing

numerous additional propositions on phenomena in world politics beyond issue management.

Arguments that certain types of states (such as democracies) are less likely than others to

contend over certain types of issues can be tested more meaningfully with data that are collected

independently from data on militarized conflict. The ICOW data sets will thus help to overcome

a potential criticism of research by Bueno de Mesquita and Siverson (1997) and Mitchell and

Prins (1999). Both studies examine the issues at stake between democracies but their

contributions are limited to issues involved in militarized disputes, which are unlikely to be

representative of all issues under contention (particularly for democracies, which are known to

become involved in fewer militarized disputes overall than other types of adversaries).

Analyses of peaceful conflict management techniques (e.g., Dixon 1993; Raymond 1994)

can benefit from the collection of data on a specific type of disagreement between states, which

allows the study of all attempts to manage such disagreements -- whether or not the adversaries

become involved in militarized conflict (Dixon) or employ third-party settlement assistance

(Raymond). Because data are collected on characteristics of each claim, analyses of conflict

management techniques can also benefit from the measurement of issue salience, which has been

impossible with recent research by Dixon, Raymond, and others. States involved in territorial,

river, maritime, and regime claims also offer an excellent set of cases to be used in testing

propositions about status quo dissatisfaction (e.g., Kugler and Lemke 1996), because the

existence of the claims clearly indicates a form of dissatisfaction with the local (dyadic or

regional) status quo and additional data on claim salience can be used to indicate the extent of

this dissatisfaction.

The ICOW data will also allow for a more detailed understanding of the effects of water

scarcity and maritime disagreements on world politics than is currently possible, by indicating

the extent to which countries facing disagreements over such issues employ peaceful versus

military means in settling their issues and the extent to which different approaches are likely to

be successful at resolving the issues. The few studies that have dealt with water scarcity issues or

maritime disagreements and conflict have generally followed impressionistic research designs,

involving the intensive study of a single case (as with Lowi's 1995 study of the Jordan River

basin) or a brief listing of prominent cases that have made news headlines. None of these studies

have attempted to compile a list of all cases of actual or potential water scarcity problems around


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the world, nor have they made any systematic effort to collect additional information about the

magnitude of each such problem or about attempts to manage these problems through peaceful or

military means.

Furthermore, the broad temporal span of the ICOW data will facilitate analysis of the

impact of significant changes in the regional (e.g., with the development of the European Union)

and global (e.g., the development of the Law of the Sea) institutional context on the settlement of

various issues over time. Beyond the role of institutions, these data sets will allow scholars to

compare the impact of issues with that of more traditional realist factors such as power.

Mansbach and Vasquez (1981; Vasquez 1993), among others, have argued strongly against a

realist interpretation of world politics on a variety of theoretical, empirical, and other grounds;

these data sets will finally allow for a direct comparison of the realist "power politics" approach

with an "issue politics" approach.

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Brecher, Michael and Jonathan Wilkenfeld. 1997.A Study of Crisis. Ann Arbor: University of

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Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce, and Randolph M. Siverson (1997). "Inside-Out: A Theory ofDomestic Political Institutions and the Issues of International Conflict." Paper presented at the

Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association, Toronto.

Coplin, William D., Stephen Mills, and Michael K. O'Leary (1973). "The PRINCE Conceptsand the Study of Foreign Policy." In Patrick J. McGowan, ed., Sage International Yearbook ofForeign Policy Studies,volume 1. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, pp. 73-103.

Diehl, Paul F. (1992). "What Are They Fighting For? The Importance of Issues in International

Conflict Research." Journal of Peace Research29, 3 (August): 333-344.

Dixon, William J. (1993). "Democracy and the Management of International Conflict." Journalof Conflict Resolution37,1 (March): 42-68.

Dixon, William J. (1994). "Democracy and the Peaceful Settlement of International Conflict."

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Gleick, Peter H. (1993). Water in Crisis: A Guide to the World's Fresh Water Resources. New

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Hensel, Paul R. (2001a). Contentious Issues and World Politics: The Management of

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Hensel, Paul R. (2001b). General ICOW Project Codebook: Issue Correlates of War (ICOW)Project. Unpublished manuscript, Florida State University. http://www.icow.org.

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Table 1: Potential and Actual Claims in the Americas

Potential Claims: Actual Claims:

Land Borders Claimed

A. Territorial Claims 40 39 (97.5%)

Major Rivers Claimed

B. River Claims 162 14 (8.6%)

Adjoining

Maritime Zones Claimed

C. Maritime Claims 60 26 (43.3%)

Notes

The percentage reported in the Actual Claims column is the percentage of eligible borders,rivers, or maritime zones that have been the subject of an explicit claim. Because we cannot

reasonably count the potential number of cases for noncontiguous states (such as potential claimsover islands), we exclude claims that do not involve a direct homeland border, river, or maritime

zone in this table. We also exclude multiple claims involving different portions of the same riveror land or maritime border (e.g., the USA-Canada dyad has experienced five different territorial

claims and six different maritime claims, each involving distinct portions of the land or maritimeborder between the same two states; this dyad counts as one territorial claim and one maritime

claim for this calculation). The borders, rivers, and maritime zones that are used to measure potential claims are current as

of August 2001. This may undercount the total, as some borders have vanished with thedisappearance of states or dependencies (e.g., European possessions in what is now the United

States) and some rivers have gained or lost international status following major territorialchanges. Nonetheless, these figures are reasonably accurate, as most past colonial borders (both

land and maritime) have been replaced by similar post-independence international borders (and

the few remaining colonial borders, involving French Guiana, are counted in this table), andmost territorial changes do not involve the entire course of any rivers in our list.


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Table 2: Claim Frequency Over Time in the Americas

Total Claims Dyads

A. Territorial Claims1816-1900 63 82

1901-1950 29 661951-2000 26 35

Total 75 114

B. River Claims1901-1950 3 5

1951-2000 15 19Total 17 23

C. Maritime Claims

1901-1950 16 20

1951-2000 39 53Total 39 53

Notes The frequency in the Total Claims column is calculated such that each distinctly claimed area

is a single case. The frequency in the Dyads column counts the number of separate dyadswithin these total claims. The values in this table are higher than those reported in Table 1

because they include claims over other issues (noncontiguous territories such as islands, smallrivers, or noncontiguous maritime issues).

Total figures include all claims that were active in one or more historical periods. Figures forthe individual periods do not add up to these total figures because a given claim may be active in

more than one period.


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Table 3: Claim Salience in the Americas

Claim Salience:

High Moderate Low Total

Territorial Claims 33 (29.0%) 42 (36.8) 39 (34.2) 114

River Claims 6 (26.1%) 10 (43.5) 7 (30.4) 23

Notes

Salience for each issue type is measured with a twelve-point index, with six indicators each

contributing up to two points to the overall total (one point per state involved in the claim). Lowsalience includes cases with zero to four points on this index, indicating the presence of no more

than two of these six indicators of salience. Moderate salience includes cases with five to sevenpoints on this index, indicating the presence of several of these salience indicators. High

salience includes cases with at least eight points in this index, indicating the presence of at least

four of the indicators. The six indicators for territorial claim salience are homeland territory (versus colonial ordependent territory), mainland territory (rather than an offshore island), contiguity of the claimed

territory to the nearest portion of the state, the presence of valuable resources in the territory, amilitarily or economically strategic location for the territory, and the presence of an ethnic,

religious, or other identity basis for the claim. The six indicators for river claim salience are homeland territory (versus colonial or dependent

territory), navigational importance of the river, level of population served by the river, thepresence of a fishing or other resource extraction industry on the river, hydroelectric power

generation along the river, and irrigational value of the river. The six indicators for maritime claim salience are homeland territory (versus colonial or

dependent territory), strategic location, fishing resources, migratory fishing stocks, oil resources,and relation to an ongoing territorial claim.


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Table 4: Claim Duration in the Americas

Claim Duration Claim Duration

(all claims) (uncensored claims)

A. Comparison of Issue Types N Mean (S.D.) N Mean (S.D.)Territorial Claims 114 43.3 (35.4) 98 42.6 (33.9)

River Claims 23 9.6 (15.1) 18 10.2 (16.5)

Total 137 37.7 (35.2) 116 37.6 (33.9)

F = 20.08 F = 15.69

(p < .001) (p < .001)

B. Territorial Claims N Mean (S.D.) N Mean (S.D.)High Salience 33 44.2 (29.7) 28 44.4 (28.2)

Moderate Salience 42 49.4 (41.7) 37 45.5 (38.5)

Low Salience 39 36.1 (31.7) 33 37.8 (33.3)

F = 1.47 F = 0.50

(p < .24) (p < .61)

C. River Claims

N Mean (S.D.) N Mean (S.D.)High Salience 7 17.9 (25.1) 7 17.9 (25.1)

Moderate Salience 10 6.9 (7.0) 7 5.3 (3.4)

Low Salience 6 4.3 (4.8) 4 5.3 (6.0)

F = 1.66 F = 1.29

(p < .22) (p < .31)


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Table 5: Attempts to Manage Issues in the Americas

A. Comparison of Issue Types

Frequency of Settlement Attempts (mean per claim):

Bilateral Third Party: Militarized Conflict:Claim Salience Negotiations Non-binding Binding Any Issue Terr/Riv

Territorial Claims: 4.6 1.1 0.3 2.5 1.4

River Claims: 1.6 0.2 0.0 0.4 0.2

F = 8.86 F = 2.65 F = 5.79 F = 6.40 F = 3.08(p < .01) (p < .11) (p < .02) (p < .02) (p < .09)

B. Territorial Claims

Frequency of Settlement Attempts (mean per claim):

Bilateral Third Party: Militarized Conflict:

Claim Salience Negotiations Non-binding Binding Any Issue Terr.High Salience 7.4 1.9 0.3 3.4 2.7

Moderate Salience 4.8 1.1 0.4 2.7 1.1

Low Salience 2.0 0.6 0.2 1.5 0.5

F = 14.11 F = 2.16 F = 0.74 F = 2.22 F = 4.45

(p < .001) (p < .12) (p < .49) (p < .12) (p < .02)

C. River ClaimsFrequency of Settlement Attempts (mean per claim):

Bilateral Third Party: Militarized Conflict

Claim Salience Negotiations Non-binding Binding Any Issue RiverHigh Salience 2.4 0.4 0.0 0.4 0.4

Moderate Salience 1.4 0.1 0.0 0.6 0.0

Low Salience 1.0 0.2 0.0 0.2 0.2

F = 1.67 F = 0.85 N/A F = 0.31 F = 0.89

(p < .22) (p < .45) (p < .74) (p < .43)

Contentious Issues in World Politics

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