Beyond territorial contiguity: Issues at stake in democratic militarized interstate disputes

Scholars of international politics have been slow to address the fundamenta l issues that ground interstate conflict. Territory has frequently been cit ed as a primary source of contention among states, but it remains only one issue and not even the one most prevalent in the post-World War II time per iod. We take the first step toward understanding the broader theoretical li nk between regime type, issues, and militarized conflict by collecting new data on the issues in dispute between democracies from 1946 to 1992. We fin d that (1) a large proportion of the militarized disputes between democraci es in the post-WWII period involve fisheries, maritime boundaries, and reso urces of the sea, (2) well-established democracies are able to remove terri tory as a contentious issue among them, (3) disputes between democracies ha ve become less severe and shorter in duration over time, and (4) a majority of the post-WWII militarized disputes between democracies are not resolved . We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these empirical find ings for the democratic peace literature.