Territorial disputes and individual willingness to fight

Abstract

Extant scholarship establishes that territorial issues are more likely than other types of issues to lead to militarized interstate disputes and war. One key premise is that a strong attachment to the material and symbolic values of the homeland makes people more willing to fight for their country in territorial disputes. However, there is no systematic evidence for this premise. Although recent studies investigate the effect of territorial conflict on individual attitudes and find that territorial issues are qualitatively different from other types of issues, researchers have not yet investigated how territorial threats influence people’s willingness to fight. By combining data on territorial claims from the Issue Correlates of War project with individual-level data from the World Values Survey, this article tests the relationship between territorial claims and individuals’ willingness to fight. My analysis reveals that respondents are more willing to fight for their country when their countries experience territorial claims. Building on the contentious issues approach, I further demonstrate the importance of issue salience and issue context in the relationship between territorial claims and willingness to fight. Last, I show that the relationship between territorial claims and willingness to fight depends on a country’s level of economic development or regime type.