Borders and borderlands: An institutional approach to territorial disputes

Territorial disputes are one of the most dangerous sources of friction between states. As we are only recently beginning to learn, boundary controversies are more likely than any other dispute to end in armed conflict. Yet, the amount of theorizing devoted to this topic, as compared to other investigations into the factors that promote conflict, is surprisingly limited. In this work, I investigate why territorial squabbles are so volatile. Drawing upon the assumption that territorial borderlines are a spatial manifestation of a certain kind of legal-political order, I investigate the types of rights, obligations, and meanings bundled in the institution of an interstate border. More specifically, I identify a number of precious functions that boundaries perform for state decisionmakers. An identification of these functions elucidates why policymakers may aggressively assert or defend their understandings of the lines that ring their state. I also highlight a number of situations that may give particular functions greater salience. These “triggers” help to illuminate the circumstances under which territorial disputes may arise and escalate. I evaluate the usefulness of my institutional approach to borders against the power political and issues-based approaches by examining the Sino-Indian boundary controversy, the Soviet-Chinese border dispute, and the Sino-Vietnamese territorial squabble. I show that an institutional approach can shed considerable light on the dynamics of the three disputes. The findings of my work have three important implications for the study of territorial disputes. First, they show that it is fruitful to take into account the functional attributes of boundaries to understand why territorial disputes emerge and escalate. Second, they demonstrate that researchers need to take into account events transpiring in the internal borderlands (the borderlands within the state) when analyzing territorial controversies. Third, analysts should pay more attention to the national identity and constitutive/sovereignty functions that boundaries serve