Interstate Identity Claims Under the Territorial Integrity Norm

• In Event: The Changing Nature of Interstate Territorial Conflict and Its Management

Abstract

Scholars have suggested that nation-states have developed a norm of territorial integrity, under which state borders are considered final and should not be challenged. If states are restricted from challenging borders, though, what does this mean for their support of their ethnic kinsmen abroad? We suggest that states should be less likely to make demands for the separation of their co-ethnics from a neighboring state as the norm strengthens, but that they should be more likely to make demands for better treatment of the co-ethnics within the state. We test this expectation with very preliminary data from the ICOW Identity Claims data set, and find support using multiple measures of the strength of the supposed norm.

Authors

• Paul R. Hensel, University of North Texas

• Christopher Cody Macaulay, West Texas A&M University

• Sara McLaughlin Mitchell, University of Iowa

• Andrew Owsiak, University of Georgia

• Krista E. Wiegand, University of Tennessee