Intractable territorial disputes: Concessions, salience, and the political gain of domestic opposition factions

This dissertation explores how making territorial concessions through peaceful settlement methods can affect a leader’s political fate in office. While there has been extensive empirical research that suggests territorial issues are the primary sources of war and are less likely to be resolved than other types of non-territorial issues, there is a lack of scholarly consensus on why territorial disputes are highly contentious and intractable. To gain a deeper understanding on why territorial issues are hard to resolve, this dissertation explores the linkage between territorial disputes and domestic political dynamics. The central argument of this dissertation is that incumbent leaders who make territorial concessions through peaceful settlement attempts are more likely to be punished and be replaced by a leader from the political opposition faction – leadership change with a coalition shift occurs. Also, this study makes one of the initial attempts to break down the components of territorial salience (into overall, tangible, intangible saliences, and specific attributes), and investigates how salience can have a systematic impact on the relationship between making territorial concessions and leadership change with a coalition shift. For empirical analysis, I use two different territorial claims datasets that each covers different regions and periods: all the regions of the world from 1919 to 1995, and the Western Hemisphere and Western Europe from 1816 to 2001. Concerns of potential selection bias that leadership turnover with a coalition shift can be systematically affected by political leaders’ calculation to avoid engaging in risky foreign policy activities that can negatively affect their tenure are addressed both theoretically and through additional robustness checks. This study demonstrates that making territorial concessions through peaceful mechanisms can be regarded as a critical foreign policy failure that can negatively impact a leader’s tenure in office. This implies that political leaders have domestic political incentives to avoid making major territorial concessions, which can make territorial disputes more difficult to resolve. Furthermore, this dissertation contributes to the literature by studying beyond the influence of territory per se and focusing on how variation within territory or specific attributes of territory can affect conflict dynamics.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Political Science

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2022

Author dc:creator

• Cho, Hyun Joo

Contributors dc:contributor

• Dai, Xinyuan
• Vasquez, John
• Prorok, Alyssa
• Carroll, Robert
• Mondak, Jeffery

• Territorial disputes
• conflict resolution
• leadership change
• political leaders

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2022 Hyun Joo Cho

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/116070

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F116070