Territorial dispute is a broad term that encompasses many different situations. Two states may disagree over a territory’s legal or historical boundaries, or even whether another state is occupying its own land. These disputes may or may not militarize and are a key focus of international relations scholarship.
Generally, scholars have found that territorial disputes are significantly associated with the recurrence of militarized conflict. This association is largely driven by domestic concerns, such as a state’s desire to control its own territory and to avoid organized resistance. However, geography also matters, with geographic contiguity being one of the strongest predictors of a conflict’s severity.
In addition, a territorial dispute can be caused by an incident that has little or no military component, such as the reclaiming of a territory after it was lost. Such incidents are often called faits accomplis, and they are a common way for states to gain and hold territory without firing a shot. For this reason, scholars have argued that the term “territorial dispute” should include cases of territorial faits accomplis in addition to those where a state’s troops have occupied disputed territory.
Scholars have also studied the effect of territorial claims on public opinion and on the outcome of a dispute. They have found that individuals’ beliefs about the indivisibility of a disputed territory are conditional on their nationalistic emotions and their understanding of how the disputed territory was lost. Individuals are more likely to believe that a territorial dispute is an indivisible issue if they believe that their nation historically owned the contested territory and lost it as punishment for its wrongdoing.