Territorial dispute involves states contesting one another’s sovereignty claims over lands. Such disputes can be peaceful or violent in nature and may remain latent for years at a time before becoming active. When territorial disputes become active, it can be difficult for a state to give up a territory, especially when the territory is strategically or economically important. It is also often difficult to reach a bargaining solution for such disputes since the stakes for the claimant are very high. As a result, such disputes are the source of numerous international conflicts.
In the study of international conflict, many scholars have studied the relationship between territorial disputes and war. While structural perspectives of conflict have made the role of territorial disputes a central question, more recent studies have sought to understand the underlying mechanisms that drive states to press for their claims. The literature on territorial dispute tends to focus on the domestic political conditions that lead to a state deciding to assert its rights to land, but there is a need for more research into how territorial disputes move from latent to active and back again.
Identifying territorial disputes remains problematic, and current definitions vary significantly. The most common approaches limit the scope of a territorial dispute to disputes that have a significant territorial component and exclude nonviolent disputes. While this is a necessary step for advancing scholarship, it leaves out many types of territorial disputes and makes comparisons between studies difficult. Moreover, it limits the scope of studies to those that are militarized, which hampers research on why these disputes turn violent and how states might avoid a militarized response.