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The strategies used by decision makers of states involved in territorial disputes in the latter half of the twentieth century have varied extensively. The purpose of this paper is to focus specifically on the possible explanations for why decision makers sometimes choose to initiate a crisis and other times choose to use only diplomatic means to handle a territorial dispute. This paper is part of a larger thesis, which theorizes that decision makers select strategies that provide the highest degree of benefits, both territorial and non-territorial. The research presented here proposes that decision makers will initiate a crisis only when the potential gain of a strengthened reputation for resolve is sought, regardless of potential territorial gains. Thus, the main hypothesis is that decision makers of states with vulnerable bargaining reputations are more likely to initiate or engage in a territorial dispute crisis. An analysis of a crisis as part of a territorial dispute between Spain and Morocco exemplifies the theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do some international boundaries evolve into bilateral regimes with a high capacity to solve functional disputes while others become sites of smuggling, poor administration, and escalation? This paper criticizes political science theory on boundary efficiency and conflict management and outlines alternative hypotheses to better understand variation in efficiency and stability of international boundaries. International relations scholarship tends to see modern, territorial boundaries as efficient responses to the international system. States are said to have a set of clear preferences on how to manage and control their borders as a means of protecting their sovereignty against other states, filtering out non-state threats, and managing the movement of goods and people to maximize economic gain. Yet logically and empirically states facing uniform types of problems and conflicts at their borders have displayed a diverse trajectory of border control strategies. This paper combines the literature on the evolution of cooperation with the comparative politics literature on state-building. The goal is to specify a model and testable hypotheses governing border control. A causal argument is proposed that border authorities of two contiguous states will tend toward cooperation if they have the opportunity to interact. Over time a boundary that is locally and jointly managed by border guards of both sides will be more cooperative, escalation-resistant, and less costly to operate than a unilaterally administered boundary. The paper gives a number of testable hypotheses and suggests an explanation for why new states tend not to recognize such boundary regimes as relatively superior solutions to border control and to managing relations in anarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The central thesis of this paper is that the classical notion that scientific concepts can be specified in terms of necessary and/or sufficient conditions does not reflect scientific practice. Instead, an understanding of concepts as being generated by the formation of focal or prototypical ‘core’ members and extended to novel observations or experiences on the basis of perceived similarities is proposed (Rosch 1973, 1975, 1983; Berlin & Kay 1969). This leads to conceptual sets characterized by graded membership and fuzzy borders, with much of the ‘construction’ of social reality, taking place at the borders of fuzzy concepts. Efforts to solve the problem of borderline cases through better definitions and operational specifications have been unsuccessful. Rather than viewing borderline cases as methodological problems to be ‘solved’, this paper argues that we should focus on the deliberative processes whereby an instance is rules ‘in’ or ‘out’ of a given conceptual category. Not only are such processes informative via-à-vis the assumptions, relationships, and theories that both imply and are implied by the concept, but also with regard to the normative, political, or deeper psychological processes that are always present in scientific practice. The understanding of concepts developed here helps make sense of contemporary social scientific practice and renders otherwise puzzling debates over topics such as ‘transitions to democracy’ or the ‘democratic peace’ both more intelligent and intelligible. The paper develops these ideas with specific focus on how we conceptualize and indeed effect international change. The interrelationship between conceptual change and apparent changes in the empirical world is thereby made central. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to explain why groups (states and groups aspiring statehood) claim specific pieces of territory but not others. In a word, the paper seeks to answer the question: "Where is the homeland?" [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

this paper critically examines the role of racialization in the political campaign to exclude unauthorized immigrants from inclusion in the national political community of the United States. The paper finds that racialization is pervasive in this political campaign, stemming from the framing of U.S. immigration policy enforcement as a project aimed at controlling the U.S.-Mexican border. From the foundational conceptualization and practices of border control, a series of examples of racializing practices - both discursive and material - are examined that operate to shore up and maintain a racial hierarchy that systematically subordinates Latinos as an ethno-racial group in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper about the building physical barriers and fences on country borders is presented which is prepared for presentation at the Annual Meetings of the American Political Science Association, in Toronto, Ontario, from September 3-6, 2009. The paper discusses topics including fortified boundaries on borders to prevent the flow of people or goods into a territory, and U.S. President George W. Bush's bill authorizing the construction of a 700-mile fence along the U.S.-Mexico border.

This paper probes the relationship between space and power in the examination of the state's internal borders. Despite a growing body of scholarship on borders and borderlands in anthropology, political geography, history, and sociology, comparative politics has only recently started to grapple with the problem of borders. The literatures on state building, democratization, federalism, and cultural pluralism often assert the importance of borders, but this is usually presented in terms of overcoming "artificial" borders and coping with their constraining influence in crafting the political institutions that inhabit them. Comparative politics tends to treat borders as the static political outcomes such that stable borders are taken as given while territorial change appears as a dramatic rupture. In this sense, political science replicates the problem identified in anthropology by Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson that "the presumption that [social and cultural] spaces are autonomous has enabled the power of topography to conceal successfully the topography of power." Drawing on insights from other social science disciplines, this paper argues that borders are not static outcomes but are productive and dynamic categories of political practices: institutional (the centralization or decentralization of governing institutions), spatial (the reduction or enlargement of social space), and social (the binding of community identity to territorial divisions of the state). This approach provides a means to conceptualize how changes to the territorial shape of the state become legitimate and compelling, even in cases where territorial divisions remain in place but the salience of borders is contested.These theoretical claims are examined in light of Russia's experience with state building and the manipulation of its internal borders. In accounting for why Russia stood on the brink of disintegration in the 1990s, most analysts neglected to account for why it managed to hold together. The tools developed for understanding regionalism in Russia left little room for explaining (much less predicting) how regional mobilization against the state might be contained or even reversed. In this regard, Vladimir Putin's rule has been striking for the speed and apparent ease with which the Kremlin managed to tame the regions. And contrary to expectations, regional leaders greeted the increasingly authoritarian re-centralization of power in the Kremlin not with jeers, but with applause. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in four Russian regions, the paper argues that the tide of regionalism was reversed by the activation of integrative practices along Russia's internal borders. The research makes an original contribution to the empirical literature on post-Soviet politics in accounting for the puzzling success of the Kremlin's regional policy under Putin. It further contributes to the theoretical understanding of borders in political science by conceptualizing the relationship of internal borders to regime type and processes of state formation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regions compete to attract resources, including human energy and capital, a competition widely understood to be increasingly global. Decisions regarding strategy choice and resource mobilization are the key elements of regional governance. This paper analyzes how nine mid-sized regions, of 1-3 million populations, organize across governmental boundaries and sectors with an early assessment of their success. The regions compared are Austin, Texas; Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Columbus, Ohio; Indianapolis, Indiana,; Kansas City, Missouri; Nashville, Tennessee; Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina; and Sacramento, California. There are important differences in structures, resources and apparent results among the regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses questions of borders, communities and refugees through an examination of the work of film director Theo Angelopoulos, in particular his so-called Balkan trilogy, which includes Eternity and a Day (1998). In these films, Angelopoulos looks at the nature of borders and communities and at what they do to people in general and refugees in particular. I argue that the refugees cannot be placed in any straightforward fashion according to the logics of political sovereignty and national divisions. They are a heterogeneous excess from the constitution of borders and divisions, yet by making visible this heterogeneity, Angelopoulos shows the contingency of political and national borders. As a consequence, the critique of the injustices resulting from existing borders must start from what is heterogeneous to them. Only in this way is it possible to transform existing structures. However, this does not mean that politics should aim simply at the elimination of borders and exclusion. Rather, we must accept the ineradicability of borders and exclusion while contesting any ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do some territorial disputes persist for decades whereas others, often over land more valuable, are resolved within months of initiation? This paper proposes an explanation for territorial dispute entrenchment that draws on changes in dispute perception. I argue that as territorial disputes mature they undergo processes that increase the integrity of the disputed territory, clarify the definition of the territory’s boundaries and make it more difficult to find substitutes for the territory. Territorial disputes resolution is both stochastic and exogenous to the entrenchment process and thus impossible to predict. It is possible to forecast ex-ante the degree to which young territorial disputes are likely to resist resolution efforts in the future based on two variables: Perceptions of indivisibility at the outset of the dispute and material constraints on expansion and settlement into the territory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International borders are usefully conceptualized as international political institutions that provide joint gains for the polities whose jurisdictions they distinguish. Far from irrelevant in an age of globalization, settled political borders help to make economic integration possible. But the international relations literature that focuses on territorial disputes has put too much emphasis on territory per se and far too little on the institutions of boundary settlement that produce joint gains. Students of international politics have cast the issues relating to territorial settlement in overly zero-sum terms, and may very well be missing an important impetus to conflict resolution in many cases. This paper shows empirically for the case of Latin America that territorial and border disputes entail opportunity costs (operationalized here as bilateral trade foregone). Mutually accepted borders mitigate these costs by reducing uncertainty, transactions costs, and other bilateral externalities of disputing. Theories of territorial settlement should take into account the possibility of such joint gains in their models of state dispute behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political boundaries may, and probably most often do, correspond with some social boundaries but not others. This paper looks at a little examined aspect of majority-minority districts, their effect on other sorts of demographic communities. We examine this question to test the Supreme Court’s assumption (in Shaw v. Reno) that race does not serve as a proxy to identify citizens who have common characteristics other than race. Our hypothesis is that race is a surrogate for many other characteristics that are relevant in describing congressional districts and that are useful to representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the territorial dimensions of enduring internal rivalries (EIRs), which are defined as protracted domestic violent conflicts between governments and insurgent groups. Prior research notes that some civil conflicts concern issue of territorial control - in forms such as the insurgent demands for territorial autonomy or outright independence - but the potential impacts of this issue on the conflict's proclivity to evolve into a domestic rivalry, to recur, and to shorten the duration of interim peace spells have not been explored thoroughly in the context of domestic conflict research. To address this analytic gap, we integrate theoretical insights of the territorial dispute and civil war research agendas through the framework of EIRs and consider the relationship between territory and internal conflict intractability. The empirical findings confirm that domestic-level territorial disagreements contribute to the development of EIRs and that territorially-based EIRs are particularly problematic in terms of conflict recurrence and shortening of the periods of post-conflict peace. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explains the variation in the emergence of regional parties across India's states. Definitions of a region; Information on regional parties; Theories on the emergence of regional parties in some regions of the country.

Examines the tendency for government agencies to open political opportunity structure and to support civil society activity in Mexico's border communities. History of the relationship between the state and the society in Mexico; Reason of government agencies for opening the political arena to civil society participation; Role of water and sewer service provision in the relationship between the state and the society.

Despite China’s repeated assurance of her peaceable foreign policy intentions and ‘never seek hegemony’ claims, skeptics rebuke these as mere smoke screen that covers her ambitious forward thrust, as evidenced by, for example, China’s ‘aggressive’ moves in South China Sea and Taiwan Strait. Some China specialists, from both academic and policy-making circles, affirm that China is more prone to using force to settle territorial disputes, which implicitly assumes that it is China’s inherent preference to resort to militarized confrontation in territorial conflicts. However, one wonders whether this is a true reflection of China’s foreign policy preferences? Furthermore, if her preferences can be identified, are they invariant or are they subject to change under certain external and internal conditions? This study aims to identify China’s preferences by employing a positive methodology, the Boolean algebraic approach, to determine the conditions under which China would be likely to resort to force in international disputes, and then extrapolates from the derived result to depict a probable scenario in the future of South China Sea territorial controversies. A unique advantage of the Boolean approach is that it not only identifies the very specific combination of variables that would lead to certain results, it also elucidates the causal conditions that bring about the outcomes. Based on the examination of China’s past (1949-1996) international disputes, the current analysis indicates that a conflict that involves sovereignty and ideological controversies or pure territorial disputes would not easily escalate into militarized confrontation unless there lack any check-and-balance effects from international institutions. These findings suggest that China’s preferences are not necessarily fixed, and that international institutional mechanisms have a substantial impact in shaping her preferences and their policy implementations regarding territorial disputes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When a Greek national state was established along the fringes of the multinational Ottoman Empire, foreign observers warned of further instability and conflict. Yet despite hostile diplomatic relations, for most of the 19th century Greece and the Ottoman Empire managed their international boundary as if it were a broad institutional zone rather than a line of first defense separating sovereign territories. The two states ignored territorial violations, suppressed many boundary incidents, traded goods and services across the boundary efficiently, and expressed unwillingness to fight over territory for much of the 19th century. This presents an empirical puzzle and a challenge for existing international relations theory on territoriality. Realist and ethnic conflict scholarship would expect states, in the context of a security dilemma and outstanding territorial claims, to demonstrate a high rate of escalation of boundary incidents and little cooperation in managing their mutual border. Using archival evidence, I argue that the stability seen along the Ottoman-Greek boundary demonstrates that states do not necessarily have a set of instinctual preferences in defending and monitoring their boundaries as a direct means to maximize exclusive territoriality. Instead, Greece and the Ottoman Empire devolved boundary management to highly autonomous domestic security agencies that broadly cooperated with one another along the boundary to suppress banditry and illegal activity while promoting the efficient movement of goods and people across the boundary zone. This cooperation collapsed in the late 19th century when both the Greek and Ottoman states implemented domestic reforms in their security agencies that unintentionally disrupted cooperation along the boundary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The political processing of policy problems that span multiple policy areas is distinctive for American politics because the issues and their solutions crosscut the traditional bases for policymaking. We analyze the political processing of a dozen such problems. These include the thorny problems of the financial crisis, global climate change, health care, and immigration; the persistent problems of K-12 education, drug abuse, and food safety; and the looming problems associated with critical infrastructure, the obesity epidemic, ocean health, terrorism, and the national debt. Based on secondary accounts of the contours of these problems, we identify different patterns of policymaking that we label disintegrative, integrative, bureaucratic, and anemic policymaking. We discuss how the underlying political properties limit opportunities to fashion cohesive policies and the prospects for overcoming these limits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the relations between European and non-European states in the 19th century based on the context of international law, diplomacy and boundaries. The author argues that the mapping of geographical boundaries of international society will not help explain the relations of member and non-member states. He claims that the idea of stratification is more effective than the concept of expansion of society in assessing the boundaries between different kinds of membership in international society.

We argue that new international borders are rarely new. Following Schelling (1960,1966) we argue that states use previous administrative frontiers as focal points to helpsolve a difficult international bargaining problem. We systematically examine thenew international borders of the twentieth century resulting from secession, partition,and the use of force. New international borders, we find, are drawn not accordingto principles of "nationalism" or military strategy, but rather according to previousadministrative frontiers. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article highlights how the nature of and change in the boundaries of institutions has important consequences for broader social organization and order. Boundaries transmit social and institutional rules internally. However, they also transmit social rules between and among institutions. In these course, boundaries can protect institutions and aid institutional survival and continuity.

The article focuses on territoriality as the defining characteristic of ethnoregional parties (ERP). There are many ways by which an ERP may identify its territory. One is by de jure demarcation of the territory whose boundaries and/or institutional organization they seek to adjust. Another is by de facto demarcation of their territory through contesting elections across as many districts as possible, even at the expense of electoral success.

Most theoretical treatments of insurgents and terrorists emphasize the vital importance of sanctuary or base areas from which to launch attacks, gather information and resources, and to recover from operations. Typically, the emphasis is on tough terrain (mountains, jungles, swamps, or in the case of terrorism, densely populated areas). But increasingly we are seeing recourse to a different sort of sanctuary: the interstate border. In this essay I explore the impact of this trend on the legal, political, and logistical difficulties it is likely to pose for counterinsurgency and counter-terrorist operations worldwide. I argue that states grappling with insurgencies will be faced with a cruel dilemma of having to choose between having to endure the increasingly costly consequences of failed states (of which cross-border insurgencies are only one), or attempting to restore failed states to health, which might amount to a neo-colonial project. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]