Walter Intractability Territorial Conflict 2003

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Explaining the Intractability of Territorial ConflictAuthor(s): Barbara F. WalterReviewed work(s):Source: International Studies Review, Vol. 5, No. 4, Dissolving Boundaries (Dec., 2003), pp. 137-153Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The International Studies Association

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International tudiesReview 2003) 5(4), 137-153

Explaining the Intractability of

Territorial Conflict'BARBARA E WALTER

Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies,University of California, San Diego

The most intractable civil wars in the last half of the twentieth century were notethnic civil wars or ideological civil wars. The most intractable conflicts were thosefought over territory. Between 1940 and 1996, combatants fighting territorial civilwars were 70 percent less likely to initiate peace negotiations than combatants

fighting any other type of civil war (Walter 2002). And once begun, thesenegotiations rarely brought peace. In only 17 percent of the cases in which agovernment faced rebels who sought independence or greater regional autonomydid the government agree to accommodate the rebels in any way. This pattern alsoexists in the international arena. Evan Luard (1986), K. J. Holsti (1991), GaryGoertz and Paul Diehl (1992), and John Vasquez (1993) each found that territorialissues are one of the most frequent sources of war between states and competinggovernments are less likely to resolve disagreements over territory than any otherissue. Paul Hensel (1996) found that territorial disputes between states are morelikely to escalate, to produce a greater number of fatalities, and to be moreconflictual than nonterritorial confrontations. Unlike most other issues, govern-

ments show a surprising unwillingness to negotiate over land in order to avoid orend otherwise costly conflicts. Why do governments so often refuse to negotiateover territory? Under what conditions will they agree to negotiate and make someaccommodation for greater autonomy or independence?

Existing research on territorial conflict tends to focus on the value of a givenpiece of land to explain why fighting breaks out in some cases and not others(Gilpin 1981; Holsti 1991; Goertz and Diehl 1992; Coakley 1993; Diehl 1999).According to this view, governments are less likely to seek a peaceful settlement ifthe contested piece of land holds important natural resources, serves vital securityfunctions, or plays a critical role in the identity of a country; they will peacefullyrelinquish lands that do not. The nature of the stakes under dispute, therefore,

predictshow the

disputewill end.

Empirically, however, such is often not the case. Governments are often willing topart with resource-rich land as well as frequently fight over land that appears tohold little economic value. Argentina settled its dispute with Uruguay over the oilrich international boundary along the Rio de la Plata River, yet fought Britain overthe Falkland Islands. And Saudi Arabia settled border disputes with Iran, Iraq,Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates even though rich oil deposits were atstake (Huth 1996b). Governments are also often willing to expend more resources

'The author wishes to thank Rui de Figueiredo, Jr., George Gavrilis, Zoltan Hajnal, Ted Hopf, Patrick James,Andrew Kydd, Ken Schultz, participants at the conference on Bargaining and War at Yale University, March 2001,and participants in seminars at Columbia University, University of Southern California, Dartmouth College,University of California San Diego, and Columbia University. Thanks also to Kathleen Gallagher, StephanieMcWhorter, and Chad Rector for excellent research assistance.

( 2003 International Studies Review.Published by Blackwell Publishing, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA02148, USA, and 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK.


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138 Explaining he Intractability f Territorial Conflict

to keep a piece of land than they could ever hope to extract from it. East Timor'salleged oil reserves, for example, are believed to be far less than the hundreds ofmillions of dollars the Indonesian government spent to pursue its fifteen-year war.And Chechen oil fields are, by most accounts, not worth the cost of that war (seeespecially di Giovanni 2000).

Moreover, the strategic value of land often appears unrelated to howgovernments will respond when challenged. According to a widely cited study byPaul Huth (1996b), governments are only 6 percent less likely to compromise if theterritory under dispute is strategically important. Rapid technological innovationsin transportation and communication over the last hundred years might have madeterritorial buffers such as mountains, deserts, and rivers less critical for the defenseof a country, yet governments appear no more willing to part with land.Psychological explanations also do not appear to consistently explain whygovernments sometimes agree to relinquish territory deemed vital to the nationalidentity and other times not. The Israeli government, for example, negotiated awaythe Sinai and parts of the West Bank and may eventually agree on a division of

Jerusalem. These cases suggest that the economic, strategic, or psychologicalvalue of land does not fully explain government decisions to settle or fight whenterritory is at stake. Further work, therefore, needs to be done to understand whenand why governments choose to negotiate, and why territorial issues appear sointractable.

In contrast to existing explanations, I argue that a government's decision tonegotiate with one set of challengers has relatively little to do with the value itplaces on the piece of land being contested and more to do with what it expectswill happen in the future. In the case of territorial disputes, govern-ments consistently refuse to negotiate not because land is especially valuable asmany people have argued, but because they fear that a concession to one state orone

separatist groupwill

encourageother

partiesto seek their own share

of a limited pie. As a Jakarta-based political analyst (see Bull 1999) pointed out,"If Aceh is allowed to break away, other places will ask for the same treatment."Refusing to negotiate with the very first challenger and incurring the costs of animmediate war, even though seemingly irrational in the short term, becomes part ofa very rational strategy to eliminate the higher long-term costs of multiple futurewars.

The low rate of negotiation, therefore, is the result of reputation-building inwhich governments actively choose to fight an early challenger in order to deterothers from making similar demands. But why is reputation-building moreimportant when territory, rather than any other issue, is at stake? The answer has todo with supply and demand. In situations in which multiple challenges are

anticipated and supply is limited-a condition that appears to exist when territoryis at stake--reputation-building is likely to become the dominant strategy fordealing with these disputes, even seemingly inconsequential ones. Since 1980,governments have received seven times as many territorial challenges as any othertype of challenge and the number of challenges is rising (see the Minorities at Riskdata project). At the same time, governments have only a limited amount ofterritory over which to make deals; too many deals and a government will negotiateitself out of existence. As Boris Yeltsin pointed out to border guards in Chechnya,"we do not have any spare, unneeded land in Russia " (see Breslauer 2002). It isbecause land is so highly coveted and the supply limited that reputation-buildingbecomes so important.

This article is divided into five sections. Section one describes the theoryof

reputation-building in greater detail and draws out specific hypotheses for testing.The theory presented here is not new; arguments based on reputation have beenproposed by scholars in economics and political science. Indeed, the present piecestands very much on the shoulders of scholars such as Thomas Schelling (1966),


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BARBARA. WALTER 139

David Kreps and Robert Wilson (1982), and Paul Milgrom and John Roberts(1982).2 In addition, the theory builds directly on the chain store paradox firstintroduced by Richard Selten (1978) to understand predatory behavior by firms inthe marketplace. What this section is intended to show, however, is that reputationarguments can be fruitfully applied to the question of intractable conflicts ininternational relations, especially those fought over territory. Section two discussesthe two main critiques of reputation arguments, namely that government interestsand capabilities play a much larger role in government behavior than concernsabout future credibility. Section three provides an empirical test of the implicationof the reputation model in the context of all self-determination movements between1940 and 2000. And section four presents the findings.

What we see is that governments that preside over countries with multipledisaffected minority groups are far less likely to negotiate with any group ofseparatists than are governments that preside over more homogenous populations.Governments appear to be very conscious of the signal they are likely to send if theydecide to negotiate with one group. They will refuse to negotiate if they believe

such behavior will deter other minority groups from demanding their own share ofa highly desirable prize. The fifth, and final section, discusses some implications thisstudy might have for scholars interested in interstate wars as well as those interestedin the more narrow issues of territory, contiguity, and conflict.

Theory: When Will Governments Negotiate?In an application of signaling games, I argue that under certain circumstances it isalways rational for the government to refuse to negotiate if doing so impartsinformation that will deter additional challengers. The basic story is this. If a

government believes it will be forced to negotiate multiple separatist agreements, itwill choose to invest in a reputation for toughness now rather than face multiplechallenges down the road. A reputation for toughness means that others believethat given a sufficiently similar situation, the player will behave in the future thesame way he behaved in the past. In contrast, if the government knows it will facesuch a challenge only once, or relatively infrequently, there is less reason to invest ina reputation and negotiation will likely result (see especially Spence 1973:355-374).War, then, is a means to transfer information, not to the first group, which hasalready chosen to challenge the government, but to all the other potential territorialchallengers down the road (Kreps and Wilson 1982:543).

But why would reputation-building deter additional challengers? Here theanswer

dependson

uncertainty.Assume that a

countrycontains

onlyone

minoritygroup that must decide whether to seek self-determination or accept the status quo.If the group chooses to challenge the government for self-determination, thegovernment must decide whether to acquiesce or fight. Acquiescing would meanoffering the separatists some territorial concession in return for peace. If thegovernment refuses to acquiesce, the government has a chance to retain full controlover its territory, but it pays the costs of fighting, where "fighting" denotes anythingfrom repression to outright war. Faced with only one challenger, governments arelikely to acquiesce because there is no value in developing a reputation and payingfor a costly war. As long as the potential separatist knows that the government'soptimal response is to offer some form of accommodation, it is generally rational for

2The theory is also heavily influenced by work on entry deterrence and advertising in the economics literature(Spence 1973; Rosenthal 1981; Schmalensee 1981, 1983; Dixit 1982; Kreps and Wilson 1982; Kennan and Wilson1993; Milgrom and Roberts 1993) and by work on reputation and deterrence in political science (Schelling 1966;Alt, Calvert, and Humes 1988; Huth 1988; Nalebuff 1991; Huth, Gelpi, and Bennett 1993; Mercer 1996; Hensel1996; Toft 2001).


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the separatist to seek self-determination as well as for the government to agree tocompromise.

All this changes, however, when multiple separatists emerge. Here, thegovernment must consider that the game could be repeated as many times asthere are separatist groups. Moreover, the government's behavior in the firstperiod could affect decisions by other separatists in subsequent periods. The short-run benefits of accommodation with the first challenger must now be weighedagainst the possible long-run costs of additional confrontations.

In a situation of multiple potential challengers, the first group decides whether toseek self-determination or accept the status quo. This time, however, all otherpotential separatist groups have the chance to observe what the government doesand they can use this information to update their beliefs about what thegovernment will do if they themselves choose to act. If the government choosesto acquiesce, these groups will know they face an uncommitted opponent andwill launch their self-determination movements knowing they will be rewardedwith their own set of concessions. If the government chooses to fight, they remain

unsure about what type of government they face and are less likely to launch achallenge as a result. In this situation, it is generally in the government's interestto fight early challengers in order to develop a reputation for toughness andthus improve the chances that it will reap the long-term benefits of increased peacein the future. Basque leaders, for example, claim that the Spanish governmentwill never accept a self-determination referendum because the governmentfears it "would lead to similar demands from other autonomous regions, likeCatalonia and Galicia" (Anderson 2001:43). Reputational concerns, therefore,explain why a government would consistently refuse to negotiate over a piece ofland that by all other measures appears worthless or insignificant." It becomesrational to fight for any piece of territory if doing so would deter similar demandsin the future.

The theory presented above offers at least one hypothesis for testing:

HYPOTHESIS 1: A government's willingness to accommodate demands forterritorial autonomy or independence will be inversely related to thenumber of additional challengers a government expects to encounter inthe future.

Alternative Explanations

Opponents of the reputation argument contend that the behavior of thegovernment has less to do with reputation than with the interests at stake or therelative capabilities of the disputing parties (Maxwell 1968; Jervis 1970; George andSmoke 1974; Press 2001). Governments will choose to fight (and separatists willchoose to challenge) when the land under dispute is highly valued or when they aresignificantly more powerful than their opponent, and not for any reputationalreasons.

Interests at Stake

Most of the existing literature on territorial disputes relies on interest-basedarguments to explain why fighting breaks out in some cases and not others (Gilpin

3It also explains why some minority groups will still choose to challenge a government even if the governmentrefused to negotiate with earlier groups. There will almost always be a group that is so committed to obtainingautonomy or independence that they are willing to risk war. For an analysis of the incentives ethnic groups face, seeWalter (2002).


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BARBARA WALTER 141

1981; Holsti 1991; Goertz and Diehl 1992; Coakley 1993; Diehl 1999). Contestedregions often contain natural resources, fertile agricultural zones, or critical taxbases that are vital to the well-being of the central government. It is these resourcesthat make governments hesitant to negotiate. Much of Nigeria's petroleum, forexample, came from the secessionist region of Biafra. Congo's Katanga corridorholds important mineral deposits. And East Timor is believed to lie just north ofsignificant deep-sea oil reserves.

Strategic value is another possible influence on the decision to negotiate.Outlying territories can provide access to strategic waterways and mountain rangesthat are crucial for maintaining the security of the state (Mackinder 1919;Richardson 1960; Touval 1972; Luard 1986; Holsti 1991; and Diehl 1999,especially the chapter by John P. Vanzo). The Golan Heights, for instance, shel-tered Israel from Syrian rocket attacks and gave it a vital listening post to Syrianarmy movements. Bosnia offered Serbia at least limited access to the MediterraneanSea. And one could argue that Kashmir's mountains help buffer Pakistan from India.

Territory can also be valued for a third, less tangible, reason. Certain pieces of

land hold great symbolic value, containing sites, landmarks, and buildings that formthe basis of a group's identity (Coakley 1993; Diehl 1999; Newman 1999).Ownership and occupation of these territories is often perceived to be critical to thecohesiveness and socialization of the group. Israel and the Palestinians, forexample, have consistently rejected the notion of a shared binational state,demanding instead exclusive rights to their own land. If two groups hold the samestrong attachment to a piece of land, as the Arabs and Jews do in the West Bank, thestakes could easily be defined in all-or-nothing terms, making compromise unlikely.Thus, three additional hypotheses can be drawn from these theories:

HYPOTHESIS : Governments will be less willing to acquiesce to a challengethe higher the economic value of the disputed

pieceof land.

HYPOTHESIS : Governments will be less likely to acquiesce to a challengeas the strategic value of the land under dispute increases.

HYPOTHESIS : Governments will be less willing to acquiesce to a challengeas the symbolic value of the territory under dispute increases.

Balance of CapabilitiesIn contrast, a large literature in international relations has argued that relativecapabilities are a far better predictor of how a government will respond to a

challenge than any investments in reputation (Huth and Russett 1984; Leng andGochman 1984; Huth 1988; Huth, Gelpi, and Bennett 1993). If this statement istrue, then governments will base their decision to fight or negotiate not on anyexpectation of future interactions but on their likelihood of victory against aparticular opponent. Governments will fight against weaker challengers whom theybelieve can be easily overpowered and will negotiate with the stronger ones. In thecase of territorial conflict, it could be that secessionists are relatively easy to defeat,creating few incentives for the government to negotiate. When accommodationdoes occur, it occurs because a government is weak and unable to decisively defeata challenger. Deterrence is all about power and capabilities, not reputation(Morgenthau 1978; Waltz 1979; Grieco 1988).

One final hypothesis, therefore, can be drawn from theories that focus on thebalance of capabilities.

HYPOTHESIS : The stronger a government is relative to a challenger, theless likely the government is to acquiesce.


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Empirical AnalysisCase Selection

The aim of this research is to determine whether governments invest in reputation-building when determining whether to negotiate with groups seeking greaterterritorial autonomy or independence. To do this, the hypotheses were tested forevery self-determination movement included in the Center of InternationalDevelopment and Conflict Management's (CIDCM) global survey of self-determination movements between 1956 and 2000. The CIDCM has defined aself-determination movement as any attempt launched by a territorially concen-trated ethnic group for autonomy or independence from the central governmentusing political or military means (see Gurr 2000:14).

Although the list of movements included in CIDCM is fairly comprehensive,three potential problems with case selection were detected. First, CIDCM fails toinclude many of the claims for self-determination that arose in the former SovietUnion before and during its collapse, including demands from the Estonians,

Ukrainians, and Georgians. In addition, some obvious cases such as the Slovaks inCzechoslovakia and the Sardinians in Italy are omitted for reasons that remainunclear. The CIDCM also only includes nonviolent cases of self-determination thathave continued through the year 2000; cases that ended or were peacefullyresolved before 2000 are not included. In an attempt to correct these oversights,the CIDCM list of self-determination cases was cross-referenced with a list ofseparatist and autonomy movements compiled by the Minorities at Risk (MAR) dataproject. The MAR project includes all separatist or autonomy movements launchedby a minority group between 1940 and 1999.4 Although a significant amount ofoverlap existed between the MAR and CIDCM case lists, cross-referencing the twohelped fill in many of the missing cases.5 Still, a number of prominent casesremained absent from both CIDCM and MAR for unexplained reasons. Lithuaniaand Latvia, for example, were not included in either list. To correct this oversight,both country specialists and detailed case histories were consulted, yielding thefollowing cases: Croats/Yugoslavia, Karachay/Russia, Kazahks/USSR, Latvians/USSR, Lithuanians/USSR, Tadhziks/USSR, Uzbeks/USSR, Moldavians/USSR,Russians/Estonia, Crimean Tatars/Ukraine, Uzbeks/Kyrgyzstan. In total, thirty-twoadditional cases were added to create a final list of 153 cases. The following analyseswere performed using both case lists with no significant differences in the findings.

A second concern arose regarding the problem of nonindependence of caseswithin the same country. The more potential challengers there are within a country,the more observations in the data set that will be accounted for by that country.Hence, there is a danger that one country (or a small number of countries) with

many potential challengers could have an undue influence on the results. Thisproblem was dealt with in two ways. First, countries were sequentially deleted tomake sure that no single country was driving the results. In all but one case, this

4The variable in the MAR data project that was used was the variable Separatism (SEPX). Although MARexamines latent, historical, and active separatist or autonomy movements under this heading, only historical andactive movements with a clear territorial component were added to this study. "Latent" movements were notincluded because these represented cases where a group had not actively challenged the state, but had merely been

historically autonomous or had resided in another state at some point in the past.5MAR lists twenty-three cases not included in the CIDCM survey. They were Lezgins/Azerbaijan, Muslims/

Bosnia, Slovaks/Czechoslovakia, Luba/Democratic Republic of the Congo, Arabs/Iran, Azerbaijani/Iran, Baluchis/Iran, Turkmen/Iran, Sardinians/Italy, Russians/Kazakhstan, Basters/Namibia, Ingush/Russia, Kumyks/Russia,Tatars/Russia, Tuvinians/Russia, Zulus/South Africa, Jurassians/Swizerland, Russians/Ukraine, Estonians/USSR,

Georgians/USSR, Ukrainians/USSR, Nilo-Saharans/Ethiopia, Konjo-Amba/Uganda. All of these cases except theNilo-Saharans and the Konjo-Amba were added to the case list. The last two cases were omitted because no

confirming evidence could be found in the secondary literature showing a historical or active separatist/autonomymovement.


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BARBARA WALTER 143

process had no substantive effect on the results. The one case in which theexclusion of a single country altered the results is noted below. Second, thestandard errors were corrected for potential nonindependence within countriesusing the cluster option in STATA.6

Measuring the Dependent Variables

To see whether the number of potential challengers predicts if governments willchoose to negotiate, I created a categorical dependent variable called Accommoda-tion that included four outcomes: no accommodation; some accommodation butnot over territory (hereafter referred to as "reform"); accommodation offeringsome form of territorial autonomy; and accommodation granting full indepen-dence. These outcomes were ordered from zero to three ranging from thecomplete absence of any attempt to accommodate the challenger (0) to concedingfull independence (3) (see Appendix for data sources). The dependent variable wasbroken down into these four categories to determine not only the conditions underwhich a

governmentwill make

any compromisewith a

territorial challenger, butalso the conditions under which a government will make successively greaterconcessions.7

Measuring the Independent Variables

Three sets of hypotheses were proposed to account for when governments arelikely to acquiesce if faced with demands for greater territorial autonomy orindependence. The first set is drawn from the reputation model. Hypothesis oneposited that the greater the number of potential separatist challengers, the lesswilling a government would be to negotiate. Governments would look down theroad, determine how many groups could be potentially troublesome, and behave

accordingly. The proxy used to measure the number of potential separatistchallengers, therefore, is the "Number of Ethnopolitical Groups" in a given countrylisted in the Minorities at Risk data project. To be included as an ethnopoliticalgroup by MAR, a group had to meet one of two criteria. A group had to bedisadvantaged in comparison to other groups in their society, usually because ofdiscriminatory practices, or a group had to be politically organized to promote ordefend their collective interests (Gurr 2000:7-13). These criteria helped identifythose groups that had either the incentive or the organizational capability to launcha separatist challenge against the government and would be most likely perceivedby the government as a possible future threat.

The second set of hypotheses claimed that the economic, strategic, and

psychological "value" of land is likely to play a more important role in determiningthe actions of government. Three measures were used to test this proposition. Thefirst, Economic Value, was measured using an additive scale that assessed thenumber of marketable resources a given piece of land contained. It was expectedthat a greater number of marketable resources would lead to less accommodation.

6It should be noted, however, that the nonindependence of cases is not simply a statistical problem. If the theoryof reputation is correct, then challengers should be conscious of the number of additional challengers that may existand will take this into account when deciding whether to challenge. Potential challengers in countries with manyother potential challengers, therefore, may be less prone to confront the government because they assume that thegovernment will be more concerned about reputation and more willing to fight. Although this relationship isdifficult to directly test without isolating and empirically analyzing the decision of each potential challenger, one canrerun the analysis without clustering by country to see how the results change. In this case, no substantively differentconclusions emerged.

7Although these four categories are presented as if they are clearly distinct on a theoretical level, all of thesubsequent analyses were rerun with one or more categories of accommodation collapsed together to ensure thateach category was in fact distinct empirically. The results indicated that none of the alternate codings provided asignificantly better fit than the four-category variable used here.


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Even though a dollar value might have been preferable, regional estimates of themonetary value of different resources are rarely available and thus could not beincluded. In an attempt to get a measure that might more closely approximate themonetary value of the resources, a dummy variable was included (in alternate tests)indicating whether a given region had either oil or natural gas. The substantive

findings did not change.To test for the effects of Strategic Value, a six-point additive scale was used to

denote whether a given piece of territory included: (1) a sea outlet, (2) a shippinglane, (3) a military base, (4) an international border, (5) an attack route, or (6) amountain range. Given that a sea outlet is arguably the most important strategicresource, in alternate tests a dummy variable was substituted indicating whether agiven territory had access to the sea. It led to the same results as the originalspecification.

The third variable, Psychological Value, was more difficult to measure and twoadmittedly inadequate proxies were used. The first was the length of time a givenethnopolitical group had resided on a piece of territory; its effect on psychological

value could be either positive or negative. On the one hand, a government'sattachment to a piece of land may decrease the longer a minority group resides onthat piece of territory. On the other hand, its psychological attachment may alsoincrease the longer that land remains in the hands of a rival group. Two differentpredictions, therefore, could be made on how this measure may behave. Thesecond was a dummy variable indicating whether a particular ethnopolitical grouphad been historically autonomous from the central government at any point priorto the conflict. Governments were assumed to have less psychological attachment toterritory that had previously been controlled by another group.

The final set of hypotheses claimed that the balance of capabilities betweenthe government and the challenger would significantly influence whether the

governmentwould choose to

negotiateor fight. The concept of balance of power

was particularly difficult to measure as it related to intrastate disputes. Measuresthat are available to assess the military capabilities of the government side, forexample, are generally not available to assess the military capabilities of variousethnic groups. In lieu of data comparing the relative capabilities of the two sidesusing the same measures, I assessed Balance of Capabilities by including severaldifferent indicators of strength on each side. Two indicators were used to measurethe strength of the separatist group. The first measure-the existence of ethnic

brethren--indicates whether the group seeking self-determination was part of alarger ethnic group that extended beyond that country's borders. All else beingequal, groups with ethnic brethren in neighboring states were viewed as relativelymore powerful than groups with no such outside support. The second measure was

the percent of the total population the separatist group represented. The larger thegroup, the stronger it was assumed to be.

Two indicators were then used to measure the strength of the targetedgovernment. The first looked at the average annual military expenditures of thegovernment during the duration of a challenge, the second at the average annualnumber of military personnel during a challenge. Countries with relatively smalldefense expenditures and relatively small armies were expected to be more likely toaccommodate challengers than countries with large defense expenditures and largearmies.

In addition to this main set of explanatory variables, three control variables wereincluded to ensure that the existence of any aforementioned relationships in the

analysis were not spurious. A large literature has arisen in the last two decadesarguing that democratic regimes are more likely to negotiate with challengers thannondemocracies. Democratic governments are thought to face greater domesticconstraints on the use of force, be more sensitive to the rights of individuals seekingself-determination, and have a greater range of possible compromise solutions to


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BARBARA . WALTER 145

offer ethnic groups (see Doyle 1986; Morgan and Campbell 1991; Goemans 2000).If this is true, then the type of regime or regimes in power during a challenge willalmost certainly affect the likelihood of accommodation. A control variable,Democracy, therefore was included to test for this effect. A dummy variable for"Violence" was also included to see if the use of force by a separatist groupincreased the likelihood that a government would accommodate their demands.Finally, a measure of the Duration of a conflict was included to address thepossibility that longer disputes were more costly to governments and thereforemore likely to end in some form of accommodation. Details on the measurementand coding of each of these variables as well as data sources can be found in theAppendix to this article.

FindingsAre governments more concerned with the long-term reputational effects of theiractions when they decide how to respond to a demand for greater self-determination or are they, as many people have argued, more influenced byinterests and capabilities? Table 1 presents the results of an ordered probitregression with Accommodation as the dependent variable. What we see is that agovernment's reaction to the demands of one separatist group is heavily influencedby reputation, but also is affected by the level of democracy and governmentmilitary spending.8 As the top of Table 1 reveals, the greater the number ofethnopolitical groups in a country, the less likely the government is to accommodateany given territorial challenge. Governments appeared to be quite conscious ofpotential future challengers when determining whether to negotiate or acquiesce toany demand.

The number of ethnopolitical groups in a country, however, was not the onlyfactor to influence government decisions to accommodate separatists. As Table 1also shows, two additional variables appear to play a significant role in thegovernment's willingness to offer compromise settlements. First, more democraticcountries appear to be significantly more likely to accommodate the demands ofterritorial challengers than less democratic countries. In an attempt to determinewhy this might be so, two additional variables were created that measured specificinstitutional features of democracy. The first was a dummy variable indicatingwhether a democracy was based on Proportional Representation; the secondmeasured the degree of State Centralization/Federalism within each country. (Seethe Appendix for a detailed description of each.) Each of these variables was thenadded separately to the ordered probit model in Table 1 to see which of the three

democracymeasures was most

closelylinked to

governmentaccommodation.

The analysis (not shown) suggests that it is something about democracy itself,rather than either of these institutional features, that affects a government'swillingness to cooperate, although it remains unclear what it is about democracythat encourages cooperation. It could be that the constraints imposed by thepublic's aversion to war increase the likelihood of accommodation, but it could also

8Given the possibility of nonlinear relationships between some of the independent variables and different levelsof accommodation (that is, that violent conflict might not affect the willingness of a government to offer politicalreform, but increase the likelihood of a government acceding to full independence), the model was rerun as amultinomial logit regression. Although an identical multinomial logit model could not be run because of the limitednumber of cases, a modified model confirmed the basic results of ordered probit regression. In particular, thenumber of potential challengers, democracy, and government military expenditures retained their significance. Themultinomial regression did, however, differ from the ordered probit in three minor ways. The economic value of a

disputed region had a significant negative effect on the likelihood that the government would offer political reform.Also the proportion of the population that belonged to the ethnopolitical group and the strategic value of a disputedregion had a significant and negative effect on the likelihood that a government would offer some form of increasedterritorial autonomy.


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TABLE . Ordered Probit Analysis of Government's Decision to Accommodate Demands forSelf-Determination

Independent Variables Coefficient Standard Error

Number ofEthnopolitical Groups

-.23** .05Economic Value .06 .06

Strategic Value -.06 .17Psychological Value:

Length of Residence .18 .31

History of Autonomy -.07 .10

Democracy .06* .02Balance of Power:

Neighboring Ethnic Group -.18 .13

Group's Proportion of Population -2.63 1.52Government Military Expenditures 3.85e** 1.18e

Violent Conflict .07 .32Duration .00 .01

Constant 1 -.04 .98Constant 2 .38 .98Constant 3 2.27 1.02Pseudo R2 .19

X 40.61**N 106

Heteroscedastic-consistent standard errors clustered by country; *p < .05, **p < .01.

be greater sympathy for the rights of individuals seeking self-determination or the

greater varietyof

possibleconcessions that democracies can offer that drives

behavior. Future research will be required to distinguish which of these alternativesis really at play.

Second, there is a significant relationship between the government's averagemilitary expenditures during the period of conflict and the level of accommodationin that conflict. Balance of capabilities arguments predicted that strongergovernments would be less likely to accommodate challengers, all else being equal.However, Table 1 shows that governments with higher military expenditures aremore likely to accommodate territorial challengers, not less. One possibleexplanation is that government military spending is actually a sign of relativegovernment weakness rather than strength. Governments that face particularlystrong challengers may be forced to increase military spending in response to this

significant threat. In many cases, this increased military spending may not beenough to secure the government's victory over a strong challenger andaccommodation may result. Indonesia's war in East Timor illustrated this type ofdynamic in which Jakarta's military expenditures as a percent of gross nationalproduct almost doubled in the years leading up to the granting of independence(World Bank figures, 1985-1997). Further analysis (not shown) found a similarsignificant, positive relationship between the number of military personnel underarms, an alternative measure of government strength, and accommodation.

None of the other variables included in Table 1 were found to be significantlyrelated to government accommodation. Table 1 provides no support for argumentsthat place the value of a given piece of land as the primary determinant of how the

governmentwill

respond.Governments are no more or less

likelyto accommodate

demands for self-determination if the land in question has high economic value oris strategically important. This conclusion was confirmed by additional tests inwhich different measures of economic and strategic value were substituted into theanalysis. Table 1 also reveals that the psychological value of a given piece of land


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does not appear to play any role in a government's decision to compromise.Neither the length of time that a group has occupied a piece of territory nor anyhistory of regional autonomy is significantly related to government accommodationin this case. These findings suggest that previous accounts emphasizing the specificcharacteristics of a parcel of land to explain government behavior have overlookeda key motivation driving government decisions. Governments seem to care far lessabout the land itself than about the implications their behavior will have onchallengers on the horizon.

The strength of the challenger group, the presence of violence, and the durationof the conflict also had no predictive power in determining how governmentswould respond to self-determination movements. Governments were no morelikely to accommodate separatist groups that comprised a large share of thepopulation than a small share or ethnic groups that extended into neighboringstates. This mirrors two findings from Paul Huth's (1996b) study of interstateterritorial disputes. He finds that the presence of minority groups along the borderwith ethnic ties to the general population of the challenger had no strong effect on

the likelihood of a compromise settlement. He also reports that military strength ofthe challenger is not a necessary condition for the challenger to remain unyieldingin its negotiating position over disputed territory. Similarly, Gary Goertz and PaulDiehl (1992), in their research on interstate territorial disputes, do not find a strongrelationship between the balance of military capabilities and the use of armed forcein achieving territorial changes from 1914 to 1980 (but see Mandel 1980 and Huth1996a:13-14 on this debate).

Ordered probit results, however, are difficult to interpret. To make the resultseasier to understand and to show which factors are more likely to trigger differentlevels of government accommodation, each of the significant coefficients wasconverted into predicted probabilities (King, Tomz, and Wittenberg 1999).Predicted

probabilitieswere calculated

by varyingthe measure of interest while

holding all other variables at their mean (or modal) values. Table 2 presents theprobability of different levels of government accommodation as each of thesignificant variables in Table 1 moves from their lowest to highest values. Thepredicted probabilities confirm the strong relationship between the number ofethnopolitical groups and government accommodation, between democracy and

TABLE . Predicted Probability That Governments Will Accommodate

Probability Probability ofof No Probability Increased Territorial Probability ofAccommodation of Reform Autonomy Independence

Number of GroupsLow (1) 16 12 60 12High (28) 99 0 0 0

Percent Difference 83* - 12* -60** -12"**

Level of DemocracyLow (-10) 87 7 7 0High (+ 10) 48 16 34 2

Percent Difference -39* 9 27* 2

Government MilitaryExpenditures

Low (333) 79 10 11 0High (142,000,000) 0 0 9 90

Percent Difference -79* -10* -2 90*

Probabilities are derived from the ordered probit analysis presented in Table 1; *p < .05, **p < .01.


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government accommodation, and between military expenditures and governmentaccommodation. They also reveal the extent to which each of these variables affectsdifferent levels of government accommodation.

As can be seen in the top left corner of Table 2, the number of ethnopoliticalgroups greatly affects the probability that governments will agree to different levelsof accommodation. In line with the reputation argument, governments that facemany ethnopolitical groups are 83 percent more likely to refuse any form ofaccommodation than if they faced only a few ethnopolitical groups. A large numberof ethnopolitical groups also significantly reduced the odds of a governmentoffering reform, increased territorial autonomy, or independence. Governmentsfacing multiple potential challengers were 12 percent less likely to offer reform, 60percent less likely to offer some form of increased territorial autonomy, and 12percent less likely to offer independence.

Democracy's effect on a government's willingness to accommodate territorialchallenges was similarly strong. As we can see in the middle row of Table 2, highlydemocratic regimes were 39 percent more likely to agree to some type of

accommodation than highly autocratic regimes, and were significantly more likelyto offer both reform and increased territorial autonomy when confronted with aself-determination movement. However, higher levels of democracy appeared tohave little effect on a government's willingness to offer full independence. Thisfinding suggests that democracies, although perhaps more willing than theirauthoritarian counterparts to offer a variety of territorial concessions, are equallyunlikely to grant full independence.

The effects of government military expenditures were more variable. Countriesthat spent a large amount of money on their military were 79 percent more likely tooffer some form of accommodation. In contrast, military expenditures were lessclosely related to a government's willingness to offer some form of political reformor increased territorial

autonomy. Military expenditureswere, however, most

closely related to the likelihood that a government would agree to independence.Governments that dedicated large sums of money to defense were 90 percent morelikely to ultimately agree to independence than low spending governments. Thisresult lends further support to the argument that military expenditures are a signof government weakness, not strength. In this case, high levels of military spendingindicate a particularly weak government that has little choice but to eventually grantfull independence. This lends support to a balance of capabilities view of theseconflicts.

A Closer Look at Democracy

The results to this point strongly suggest that governments are forward-lookingand concerned about their reputations. They do not, however, tell us whether alltypes of governments are equally likely to care about setting these types ofprecedents. To determine whether democracies and nondemocracies are equallylikely to take into account the number of potential future challengers when theydeal with a given conflict, I divided the cases into these two groups. The results arepresented in Table 3.

The results presented above reveal that democracies and nondemocracies areequally likely to care about reputation. Both types of governments appeared toinvest in reputation-building when confronted with a large number of challengers.Still, the results in Table 3 suggest that democracies and nondemocracies are not

alike in all ways. Democracies appear to be more willing to accommodate minoritygroups that have resided on a particular piece of territory for long periods of time.Such may be the case since it is more difficult for democracies to ignore groups withlong histories in a particular country either because they are better able to workwithin the system or because longevity may reinforce the legitimacy of a group's


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BARBARA E WALTER 149

TABLE 3. Ordered Probit Analysis of Factors Affecting a Government's Decision to AccommodateDemands for Self-Determination: Democracies versus Nondemocracies

Independent Variables Democracies Nondemocracies

Number of Ethnopolitical Groups -.25 (.07)** -.32 (.11)**Economic Value .11 (.08) -.25 (.14)Strategic Value -.17 (.19) -.04 (.28)Psychological Value:

Length of Residence .96 (.49)* -.10 (.46)History of Autonomy .08 (.15) -.17 (.17)

Balance of Power:

Neighboring Ethnic Group .02 (.17) -.17 (21)Group's Proportion of Population -2.49 (1.99) -1.82 (1.94)Government Military Expenditures 4.02e (1.52e)** -2.18e (3.31e)

Violent Conflict .01 (.45) -.41 (.60)Duration -.00 (.01) .00 (.01)Constant 1 1.51 (1.32) -2.92 (2.43)Constant 2 1.95 (1.33) -2.43 (2.41)Constant 3 4.39 (1.42) -.41 (2.41)Pseudo R2 .21 .24S2 27.47** 19.7*N 62 48

Standard Errors in Parentheses; *p < .05, **p


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example, should be significantly less willing to negotiate boundary disputes with itsneighbors than Canada should with its neighbor: the United States. Extending thistheory to the international arena, therefore, would tell us that border disputes,especially those between countries with many potential territorial claimants, willbe particularly difficult to resolve and will exhibit many of the characteristics ofintrastate territorial conflicts. Empirical studies on territory, contiguity, and conflictappear to support this prediction. Not only are governments frequently unwillingto negotiate over interstate territorial disputes, but proximity is one of the bestpredictors of whether two states will go to war. Although scholars have long knownthat a significant relationship exists between contiguity and war, they have assumedthis relationship exists because proximity creates more opportunities for countriesto come into conflict and war is easier when distances are small. What the presentresearch indicates, however, is that another explanation might be more accurate.Neighboring states are more apt to go to war to settle territorial disputes becausethese are the cases in which reputation-building is most important. Just asgovernments appear to care deeply about deterring ethnic groups within their state

from seeking self-determination so, too, do they care about deterring neighborsoutside their state from seeking greater territorial gains.Finally, it is important to be clear about the policy implications of this research.

The results of this study do not suggest that the international community shouldencourage every government to fight every challenger that seeks some redefinitionof a boundary in order to deter additional challenges over time. What it doessuggest is that reputation-building is a very issue-specific strategy and thatgovernments can reduce the number of potential disputes by very carefullydifferentiating one conflict from another. Israel can grant the Palestinians their ownstate without encouraging Syria, Jordan, or Egypt to demand their own territorialadjustments by accentuating the unique and exceptional characteristics of each

particularcase.

By doingso,

governmentscan

negotiate long-standing disputesin

one case without encouraging additional conflicts in the future.

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Appendix

Description of Dependent and Independent Variables

Dependent Variable:

ACCOMMODATION. categorical variable that includes four outcomes: (0) noaccommodation, (1) some accommodation but not over territory, (2) accommoda-tion leading to some form of territorial autonomy, (3) accommodation leading toindependence. A dispute was coded as having ended in "no accommodation" if thegovernment was either unwilling to negotiate with the challenger or if thegovernment chose to negotiate but was then unwilling to make any concessions. Ifthe government was willing to make a concession, one of three outcomes waspossible. A dispute was coded as having ended in "accommodation, reform" if thegovernment was willing to offer some concessions such as greater participation ingovernment or greater cultural autonomy in response to a challenge. A dispute wascoded as having ended in "accommodation, territorial autonomy" if thegovernment was willing to grant the challenger some degree of territorialautonomy. Finally, a dispute was coded as having ended in "accommodation,independence" if the government granted full independence to the challengingparty. Source: Keesing's Contemporary Archives, group profiles provided by the

Minorities at Risk (MAR) data project (see www.bsos.umd.edu/cidcm/mar/list.html),and individual case histories.

Independent Variables:

NUMBER F ETHNOPOLITICAL ROUPS. variable indicating the total number ofethnopolitical groups in a given country. Each group had to meet one of twocriteria. A group had to be disadvantaged in comparison to other groups in theirsociety, usually because of discriminatory practices, or a group had to be politicallyorganized to promote or defend their collective interests. Source: MAR data set.

ECONOMIC VALUE. A 31-point scale ndicating how many marketable esources wereknown to exist on a given piece of land. These resources included oil/petroleum,natural gas, coal, iron ore, steel, aluminum, titanium, bauxite, salt, sulfur, tin,nickel, chromium, cobalt, tungsten, phosphate, gold, silver, copper, zinc, lead,magnesium, uranium, diamonds, water, wheat, timber, fishing, tourism, commer-cial nuclear plants, or important manufacturing plants. Source: US GeologicalSurvey maps, the CIA Factbook, and group profiles provided by the MAR dataproject.

STRATEGIC VALUE. A 6-point scale indicating whether a given piece of territoryincluded (1) a sea outlet, (2) a shipping lane, (3) a military base, (4) an internationalborder, (5) an attack route, or (6) a mountain range. Source: US Geological Survey

maps,the CIA Fact

book,and

group profiles provided byMAR.

PSYCHOLOGICAL ALUE. wo indicators were used to measure psychological value. (1)Length of Residence: A variable coded 1 if immigration occurred since 1945,2 immigration occurred in the nineteenth or early twentieth century, or


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3 = immigration occurred pre-1800. Source: MAR data set (variable TRADITN2).(2) History of Autonomy: A dummy variable coded 1 = the group was historicallyautonomous at some point in time, 0 = group was never historically autonomous.Source: MAR data set (variable AUTON).

BALANCE FCAPABILITIES. ive indicators were used to measure the balance of power.(1) Neighboring ethnic groups: the number of adjoining countries in whichsegments of the ethnopolitical group involved in the dispute also resided. Source:MAR data set (variable: NUMSEGX). (2) The percent of the total population anethnopolitical group represented was also obtained from MAR (variable: GPRO).(3) Military expenditures: average annual military expenditures in thousands of1996 US dollars during the self-determination movement under observation.Source: J. David Singer and Melvin Small's "Material Capabilities, 1816-1995" dataset, which collected its information from "The Military Balance" published annuallyby the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). Information for 1992-1998 was added using IISS. (4) Military personnel: average annual number of

military personnel during the case of self-determination movement underobservation. Source: Same as for military expenditures.

DEMOCRACY. A democracy-autocracy scale was used that assigns two scores (0-10) toevery country: one based on a government's autocratic features, and one based onits democratic features. The incumbent government's autocracy score was thensubtracted from its democracy score to produce a net democracy number thatranges in value from very autocratic (-10) to very democratic ( + 10). If there werea number of regime changes during a dispute, the case was coded based on themost democratic year during the duration of the dispute, assuming that this wouldhave been the moment at which combatants were most likely to settle. Source: PolityIII data set, Jaggers and Gurr (1996).

PROPORTIONAL EPRESENTATION. dummy variable coded 1 if a political system wasbased on proportional representation, 0 if not. This variable was also coded basedon the highest level of proportional representation during the duration of thedispute. Source: World Bank (Keefer data set) for years 1975-1998; Stateman'sYearbook for years 1955-1970.

DEGREE F CENTRALIZATION/FEDERALISM. rom the Polity III data set, this variableindicates the degree to which political authority is centralized (variable: CENT).Coded 1 for unitary states (centralized) in which only moderate decision-makingauthority is vested in local or regional governments; 2 for an intermediate category;

3 for a federal state (decentralized) in which local or regional governments havesubstantial decision-making authority. This variable was coded based on the lowestcentralization score during the duration of the dispute. Source: Jaggers and Gurr(1996).

DURATION/YEARS. A continuous variable ranging from a low of one year to a high offifty-six years. Measured from the year a challenge was initiated to the year itofficially ended. Source: Group profiles provided by MAR.

VIOLENCE. A dummy variable coded 1 if a given group scored a 4, 5, 6, or 7 onMAR's "REBEL"' cale. Coded 0 if it scored

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