When Good Fences Make Bad Neighbors: Fixed Borders, State Weakness, and International Conflict

Abstract

Since the end of World War II, the norm of fixed borders—the proscription against foreign conquest and annexation of homeland territory—has gained prevalence in world politics. Although the norm seeks to make the world a more peaceful place, it may instead cause it to become more conflict prone. Among sociopolitically weak states—states that lack legitimate and effective governmental institutions—fixed borders can actually increase instability and conflict. Adherence to the norm of fixed borders can lead to the perpetuation and exacerbation of weakness in states that are already weak or that have just gained independence. It does so by depriving states of what was traditionally the most potent incentive to increase efforts of state building: territorial pressures. By creating conditions that are rife for the spillover of civil wars and by supplying opportunities for foreign predation, sociopolitically weak states in a world of fixed borders have become a major source of interstate conflict in much of the developing world. Investigation into one case, the war in Congo, reveals the plausibility and the potential force of this argument. Good fences indeed can make bad neighbors.

Understanding Conflict Trends: A Review of the Social Science Literature on the Causes of Conflict

“…2 Intrastate conflict studies have in recent years turned away from using countries as the unit of analysis-that is, a trend toward understanding the local dynamics of conflict rather than using much blunter, less nuanced comparisons of countrywide trends. 3 Scholars have also made increasing use of experimental designs (both natural experiments and randomized control trials) in studies of intrastate conflict methods that offer considerably more powerful strategies to identify the effects of a given cause. 4 Despite these improvements, major disagreements remain about the causes of conflict, likely future trends, and what the United States can do to influence outcomes in its favor.…”

“…In The War Puzzle, 3 Vásquez provides a summary of this literature. Research into these relationships continues, particularly into the role that territorial issues play in explaining conflicts between states.…”

“…As Gartzke and Rohner put it, "Poor states cannot project power, while the rich do not desire to make war." 3 At very low levels of economic development, additional wealth tends to increase conflict (by enabling states to pursue latent conflicts), while very high levels of economic development and additional wealth tend to decrease conflict (by decreasing the incentive of the state to pursue the conflict). Since most analyses have operationalized economic development as a linear variable, its true effect might have been partially obscured.…”

Promoting the Hegemonic Paradigm: The Case Study of the Journal International Security in the Discipline of International Security Studies

“…xxxvi Among these articles, Menkhaus (2006) deals with governance in Somalia, Vera and Reich (2006) discuss child soldiers, while Atzili (2006) only skims over the African issues with a case study of the Congo. North American scholars wrote all of these articles.…”

“…xliv For example, see Atzili (2006Atzili ( -2007 and de Nevers (2007). xlv The number of methods employed exceeds the number of articles because authors often use more than one method.…”