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Research on the relationship between territorial disputes, militarized conflict, and economic integration occurs at the intersection of two large research programs in international relations: one linking territorial disputes to violence, and another exploring the effects of conflict on trade and vice versa. Although we know that territorial disputes fuel conflict and that conflict dampens trade, we know less about whether the prospects of economic gains contribute to the settlement of disputes and subsequent compliance with those settlements. I argue that research in this area could profitably adopt an emerging view of borders as institutions that not only distribute territory but also allow cooperation and the production of joint gains. This review identifies gaps in the existing literature on the resolution of territorial disputes and helps to reframe a persistent methodological challenge in this area: missing and noisy data on trade flows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This note uses a new data set on international territorial disputes and boundary agreements to explore whether and how legal commitments affect state behavior. Do border treaties reduce subsequent conflict simply through their effect on the distribution of the disputed good, or do treaties have legal and political implications such that a given distribution of territory has different effects depending on whether it is de facto or de jure? There are three main results. First, among states that have homeland territory disputes, the adoption of a legally binding border is associated with a significant reduction in the likelihood of future militarized conflict over the territory. Second, this effect is the same regardless of whether the treaty transfers territory or converts a de facto or contested border into a de jure border without changing the status quo distribution. Third, there is no equivalent reduction in conflict when states create explicitly provisional borders that allow them to retain their claims to areas that they do not possess. These findings suggest that border treaties do more than simply specify the distribution of territory and provide for transfers. By requiring states to renounce claims to territories that they do not receive, treaties generate ex ante costs of signing and/or ex post costs for reneging that explain their association with subsequent peace. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Although research on conflict has tended to separately study interstate conflict and civil war, states experiencing civil wars are substantially more likely to become involved in militarized disputes with other states. Scholars have typically focused on opportunistic attacks or diversionary wars to explain this domestic-international conflict nexus. The authors argue that international disputes that coincide with civil wars are more often directly tied to the issues surrounding the civil war and emphasize intervention, externalization, and unintended spillover effects from internal conflict as important sources of international friction. They empirically demonstrate that civil wars substantially increase the probability of disputes between states. An analysis of conflict narratives shows that the increased risk of interstate conflict associated with civil wars is primarily driven by states' efforts to affect the outcome of the civil war through strategies of intervention and externalization and not by an increase in conflicts over unrelated issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]