Territory, Proximity, and Spatiality:
The Geography of International Conflict
Harvey Starr
Department of Government & International Studies
University of South Carolina
(803) 777-3109
starr-harvey@sc.edu
ABSTRACT
The paper will present an overview and partial survey of the literature on the ways in
which space, spatiality, and proximity are theoretically important to the context of
international conflict behavior (such as agent-structure models of opportunity, diffusion,
the loss-of-strength gradient, the effects of distance-space, etc). The opportunity and
willingness framework will be used to organize both the literature and the discussion,
which begins with Diehl’s (1991) seminal overview of geography and conflict.
Paper prepared for the Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association, February 2003,
Portland.
INTRODUCTION: THE CONTEXT OF SPACE, DISTANCE, TERRITORY
The “theme” of the 2003 meetings of the International Studies Association is “The
Construction and Cumulation of Knowledge.” As one of the papers on a theme panel, this paper
is directed toward these aims in regard to geopolitics and the geopolitical linkages found in the
study of international relations generally, and international conflict in particular. The broad
mandate of assessing and possibly improving our knowledge and understanding of geopolitical
aspects of international relations touches on a great variety of topics, and could lead to a paper of
immense proportions. Instead, I would like to comment on several broad approaches to the study
of geopolitics and conflict, ways in which to tie studies of the geography of conflict together, and
some comments on what would be productive methods for the study of spatial/geographic
aspects of international conflict. In so doing, I hope that through such an exercise the odds of
generating cumulation– especially Zinnes’ idea of “integrative cumulation (1976)– would be
greatly improved.
Territoriality, proximity and spatiality have all played central roles in the study of
international conflict. The place of territory in the analysis of conflict, and the study of the
diffusion of conflict are two areas where there has been considerable “additive cumulation”
(where “one study adds some information to the existing literatures on the subject;” Most and
Starr 1989, 7). I think, however, that both areas have also demonstrated a growing scope of
“integrative cumulation,” (where “the earlier studies are ‘crucial’ to the conceptual and
theoretical components of the subsequent study’s research design;” Most and Starr 1989, 7).
A
set of overview works on the role of territory, which will be noted below, and several overviews
of diffusion studies (contra Simowitz 1998) have presented strong evidence to this effect. Indeed,
except for the research program on the democratic peace (see Russett and Starr 2000), few other
areas in the study of conflict have developed such consistent, complementary, and reinforcing
sets of empirical findings. Variables representing proximity or the issue of territory are routinely
included in analyses as “standard” components, either as controls or as specific independent or
intervening variables; contiguity has become a standard component of models since its inclusion
as a factor in Bremer’s (1992) “dangerous dyads.”
There have been an unusually coherent set of useful and important overviews of
theoretical and empirical work that relates the study of international politics/conflict to
geography, territory and territoriality, distance, space and spatiality by students of international
relations. While the most overarching idea that holds all of these works together is that of the
spatiality of phenomena, the overviews of spatiality by scholars who are not geographers have
been relatively recent. In Starr (2001, 2003 forthcoming), I reviewed the thinking about space
and spatiality by geographers, to help political scientists in understanding why the spatial or
locational contexts of behaviors need to be included along with the temporal contexts.
Drawing
on the three approaches to the idea of “place” by the geographers Agnew and Duncan (1989),
Starr (2001, 5-6) notes:
The first approach– space– is the one with which I think students of conflict are
most familiar, emphasizing the location of things in relationship to other things,
and how things are distributed. This idea of spatial contingency is picked up in
Kirby and Ward’s (1987: 3) definition of “spatiality” as– “a contingent factor
within the operation of any social formation,” in which society’s “components are
themselves dependent upon their spatial setting” (see also O’Loughlin and
Anselin 1992: 12).
This view of spatiality or location matches the two basic ways to think about
location, as presented by Abler, Adams and Gould in their classic text, Spatial
Organization (1971: 59)– “absolute location” and “relative location.” According
to Abler, et al, “Absolute location is position in relation to a conventional grid
system designed solely for locative purposes.” In this view, location is provided
by such things as latitude and longitude or a street address. The concept becomes
much more rich, and trickier in the second way to think about location: “Relative
location is position with respect to other locations.” This can be expressed in
terms of distance or travel times from other locations, the cost of such travel, etc.
Thus, in earlier work I have noted that technology changes “relative location”–
places that were once weeks apart in time, are now only hours apart– and other
mechanisms, such as alliances, can do likewise.
As can be seen, with spatiality we are confronted with the question of “distance”– how
close or far units are within some concept of space. This is a classic question, raised by many
students of conflict, including Boulding’s (1962) seminal notion of the loss-of-strength gradient
(LSG), which has been used in many subsequent studies (e.g., Lemke 1995, Bueno de Mesquita
1981). It was also raised by Quincy Wright (1942) who tackled the issue of many forms of
physical and psychological distances between social units (and the basis of Russett 1967 as well).
Two recent reviews of ways to think about and measure distance are Gleditsch and Ward (2001)
and Henrikson (2002).
Students of international relations have been concerned with distance for two broad
reasons, which, conveniently, can be summarized by opportunity and willingness. States (or any
other social units) that are close to each other, that is are in proximity to one another, are better
able to interact– have the possibility or opportunity of interacting with one another. This is the
“interaction opportunity” argument or approach to be discussed below. It derives directly from
the work of Harold and Margaret Sprout on “environmental possibilism” (see Starr 1978, Most
and Starr 1989, chapter 2). States (or any other social units) that are close to each other are also
perceived as important or salient to each other, for any combination of reasons. Greater
perceptions of threat or gain or interdependence are ways in which proximity can generate
salience. These affect the willingness to interact and to manage subsequent conflicts in different
ways. Any combination of the opportunity and willingness generated by proximity makes states
(or other social units) that are close to one another “relevant” to one another. Students of
international conflict have structured research designs to include only “relevant” dyads– pairs of
states that are able to interact with one another, highly likely to interact with one another, and/or
perceive important stakes involved in that interaction (e.g. Lemke 1995, Leeds and Davis 1999,
or Lemke and Reed 2001). They have developed studies based on states within politically
relevant areas or neighborhoods (e.g. Maoz’s “politically relevant international environment” or
PRIE, 1996, Enterline 1998, or Murdoch and Sandler 2002). New work on “network” analyses
of various kinds (e.g. Maoz 2001, 2002, or K. Gleditsch’s 2002 “connectivity matrix” analysis)
extends the concept and utility of actors which are “relevant” to each other through spatial or
behavioral proximity.
If we are talking about states, we are talking about territorial units. States are proximate
to one another in a spatial or geographic manner if their territorial areas are near each other. How
close or far are these territorial areas from each other? Are they contiguous? That is, do the
territories of two states touch each other? Do they border each other? If they do not actually
touch each other, are they separated by rivers? If they do not actually touch each other, how far
apart are they across some other body of water? Thus, borders represent the highest level of
proximity– the touching of territory, (by dictionary definition, the condition of contiguity).
It should be clear that territory serves at least two distinct purposes in the study of
international relations. First , by defining the territorial political units, territory creates spatial
arrangements of the units indicating the physical/ geographic distance between those units (which
is dynamic, in that the time-distance between those units changes with changing technologies of
transportation and communication, or with the changes of the arrangements of the units through
alliances, or the merging of units through conquest or voluntary integration
). Secondly, as the
place where peoples live, territory provides an important component of group identity, and
becomes endowed with extraordinary symbolic importance to people.
In addition to value based
on symbol and identity, territory may also provide real resource value to peoples (arable land,
potable water, minerals of value such as gold, or uranium, or oil, access to seas or rivers, etc). So,
as will be noted below, territory takes on value across many dimensions; it is important to
people. It both becomes a source of conflict and raises the stakes of any conflict.
These broad ways by which territory becomes related to conflict have also been addressed
by a number of scholars in broad reviews, or as part of specific research projects. A special issue
of International Interactions edited by Michael Ward (1991) and the subsequent edited volume
(1992) contained a number of important articles linking distance/proximity and
territory/territoriality to international conflict. Perhaps the most influential of these pieces was
that by Diehl (1991) which has served as the basis for subsequent reviews and empirical research.
This collection was soon followed by the Goertz and Diehl (1992) book on territorial change and
conflict, significant sections of Vasquez’s War Puzzle (1993), and Paul Huth’s (1996) book on
territorial disputes. A more recent collection on geopolitical and territorial studies was edited by
Diehl (1999; see especially Diehl’s introductory chapter). An important review article, drawing
on his own recent work, and following on themes developed by Vasquez and Diehl, is Hensel
(2000).
Another way to pull these works together is to note that they deal with, and stress, the
concern that social relations be studied within a geographic or spatial context as well as a
temporal context. Hensel (2000) stresses this idea, as does Starr (2001, 2003). Context has also
been the focus of work by Goertz (see 1992 and 1994). Defining context as “factors that
influence fundamental relationships and meanings,” Goertz (1992, 301) has stressed the need to
include spatial factors in the spatial-temporal domain. As with Starr, Goertz then stresses the
crucial ways context affects research design. As noted in Starr (2001), it is clear that despite
some exceptions (the study of contiguity, for example), most of our research has stressed the
temporal dimension or temporal context. This is easily seen in the design of our research where
temporal patterns are central, the use of time series data and designs are standard, and the use of
time to delineate of our units of analysis is standard. There is no denying the significance of time
and the temporal context in social science. Nevertheless, analysts must pay more explicit and
extensive attention to the spatial elements, or the spatial contexts, of social phenomena. Why?
Again, as noted in Starr (2001), it is obvious that time and space are two of the primary ways in
which we contextualize social behavior and interactions. Abler et al (1971: 10) succinctly
indicate the importance of these two dimensions: “Time and space are obvious and immediate
aspects of human existence.. Time and space are the fundamental contexts of all experience...
Experience must be located in time and space before we can begin to process it further...
Locating an event in the spatio-temporal continuum is our first step in ordering our experience of
it.” While this is rather obvious, it is key to understanding that analyses structured solely (or
almost entirely) around time are only telling us half of the story. The welcome cumulation of
studies linking the spatial context to international conflict has gone a long way to helping us
understand the “other half’ of the story. As seen in the work of both Goertz and Diehl (together
and separately), the territorial/spatial context is needed to complement and fill out the temporal
context found in the study of rivalry, especially enduring rivalries (see also, for example,
Vasquez 1996, and Rasler and Thompson 2000).
OPPORTUNITY, WILLINGNESS & ORDERING SPATIAL/GEOGRAPHIC EFFECTS
Looking across the literature on territoriality, geography and international conflict, several
broad themes emerge (many briefly noted above). As with the general study of conflict, the
concepts of opportunity and willingness can be useful in organizing literatures, making sense of
disparate studies and approaches, and serve minimally as a pre-theoretic device for generating
hypotheses, conceptualizing components of our theories or models, and searching for non-intuitive relationships (see Starr 1978, Most and Starr 1989, and Cioffi-Revilla and Starr 1995).
While these ideas will be familiar to many readers (now used so frequently that many authors do
not feel it necessary to supply citation or attribution), a brief overview is in order (see Starr 1997
for a fuller discussion).
Opportunity and willingness is a form of agent-structure model, initially created to deal
with the ways in which “entities” are related to their environments. To go back to basics,
interdependence is a quality of systems. Systems are composed of units of some kind, and the
interaction among them. In the simplest of terms, we must be concerned with each unit, and how
each unit adapts to its environment. This individual adaptation produces the patterns of
interaction that characterize the system. The ecological triad of Harold and Margaret Sprout (e.g.
1969) helps us think about units and their environments. The ecological triad is composed of
three elements: (1) an actor, or entity, of some sort, (2) an environment that surrounds the entity,
and (3) the entity-environment relationship.
This seemingly elemental construct has served as the basis for the development of the
opportunity and willingness framework. The ecological triad provides great utility in its ability to
link the entity and the environment; by helping us see how and why different environments
constrain, limit, or enable what entities are able to do and what they are likely to do. As critics of
deterministic geopolitical or environmental models, the Sprouts presented alternative forms of
the entity-environment relationship. Three of these are particularly useful to our thinking:
environmental possibilism, where the environment is seen as a set of constraints on what is
actually possible for the entity to do in the environment; environmental probablism, where the
environmental constraints and possibilities make certain behaviors more or less likely; and,
cognitive behaviorism where the entity– as ultimately embodied by individual decision makers–
is linked to the environment through the images of the environment that people hold. Ultimately,
then, we are concerned with the possibilities and constraints that face decision makers
(opportunity) and with the choices that they make in light of these possibilities and constraints
(willingness).The various levels of analysis involved in the analysis of international politics are
thus linked by thinking of a decision maker as an entity who must behave within the very
complex environment that surrounds him or her. Each level of analysis describes one of the
environments within which the decision maker must operate (see Gleditsch 2002 for the
application of this framework to zones of regional clustering).
The environments of decision-making entities provide a structure of opportunities, risks,
and potential costs and benefits, constraining decision makers. How are all these elements
captured by the concept of opportunity? First, the environment makes certain opportunities, and
not others, possible. Here the environment is seen as a set of constraints on what is actually
possible for the entity to do in the environment; Goertz (1994) elaborates on this in his
discussion of context as "barrier." Possibility includes two dimensions. First, the phenomenon
must already exist somewhere in the world system. The phenomenon--be it nuclear weapons, or
telecommunications satellites, or Protestantism, or Marxism, or railroads--must have been
"invented" so that it is available as a possibility to at least some actors in the system. The second
dimension is the distribution of this possibility in the system. For example, nuclear weapons do
exist; however, most states cannot "take advantage" of them because they have neither the wealth
nor the expertise to produce their own. Though a possibility may exist, limits on resources will
affect the ability to make use of it.
To summarize, opportunity requires three related conditions: (1) an environment that
permits interaction between states, (2) states that possess adequate resources to be capable of
certain kinds of actions, and (3) decision makers, or human agents of some kind, who are aware
of both the range of interactions and the extent of capabilities available to them. Opportunity is
the possibility of interaction because of objective conditions that may be perceived in varying
ways by decision makers.
Willingness is concerned with the motivations that lead people to avail themselves of
opportunities. Willingness deals with the goals and motivations of decision makers and focuses
on why decision makers choose one course over another. Willingness is therefore based on
perceptions of the global scene and of domestic political conditions. It derives from calculations
of the costs and benefits of alternative courses of action, based not only on objective factors but
also on perceptions (for instance, of threat) and emotions (for instance, fear, insecurity, or desire
for revenge). Willingness thus depends on choice and perception. A person reacts according to
what she thinks she can do and what others expect her to do. Willingness will involve all those
factors that affect how decision makers see the world, process information about the world, and
make choices.
Finally, it is important to understand that both opportunity and willingness are required
for a given behavior to occur; they are jointly necessary conditions. Wishing for something to
happen is not enough--the capabilities to act for its fulfillment must be available. Simply being
able to do something doesn't mean it will happen unless you have the will to take action (see
especially Cioffi-Revilla and Starr 1995).
Geography as a Facilitating Condition
These ideas come into play when returning to Diehl’s seminal article (1991; see also
Goertz and Diehl 1992, chap.1) assessing the work on geography and war. In the earlier piece
Diehl breaks down the empirical studies into two groups– “geography as a facilitating condition”
for conflict, and “geography as a source of conflict.” In the 1992 book, the word “geography” is
replaced by “territory” but the arguments remain substantially the same. This distinction has been
quite influential in later studies of territory and geopolitical factors relating to conflict. For
example, Hensel (e.g. 2000) speaks of territory as “context” (that is, as a facilitating condition),
and “source.” Vasquez (1995) provides three theoretical perspectives, which actually reduce to
Diehl’s two views. Vasquez’s “territoriality perspective” discusses geography as a source of
conflict, something that states fight over. His two other perspectives come under Diehl’s rubric
of geography as “facilitating condition.” Vasquez notes a “proximity perspective,” which is
about the ease of states reaching each other militarily, and an “interaction perspective” which
links closeness or proximity to the frequency of interaction.
Given that one set of studies used by Diehl for the category of “geography as a facilitating
condition” for conflict, is the combined work of Starr, Most and Siverson (e.g. Most and Starr
1980, 1989; Siverson and Starr 1991), it should not be surprising that the variety of work Diehl
includes in this category (for example, studies of diffusion) can be covered under the concept of
opportunity. Most and Starr develop the idea of interaction opportunity, based on the work of
Boulding as well as geographers– that units interact more with those that are closer to them, and
with which they have the greatest possibility of interaction. Siverson and Starr see proximity, as
measured by borders and contiguity as a factor of “loose necessity.” That is, it creates the
possibilities for conflict through increased possibilities of interaction (both positive and
negative), and thus it raises the probability of interactions, both positive and negative.
As Diehl notes, the effect is “not necessary”– meaning that proximity of territory only
increases the probability of conflictual interaction but does not ensure it.
Siverson and Starr
(1991) find only that borders (as well as alliances) increase the probability that ongoing wars
might diffuse to “warring border nations,” not that they necessarily will do so. Similar results
abound, for example, Maoz and Russett (1992, 260) note that while contiguity is a strong factor
in predicting dyadic conflict, “it does not account for the relative lack of conflict between
democratic states.” And, of course, none of the arguments for the interaction opportunity apply
only to territorially proximate homelands. Starr and Most (1976) raise the issue that territorially
proximate possessions of states will have the same effects. In addition, the interaction
opportunity argument (based on the LSG) also recognizes that “great” or “major” powers are so
named because they possess a greater ability to interact with states far from their homelands.
These are states with that can project military power globally so that their interaction
opportunities have transcended first-order territorial contiguity (see Morton and Starr 2001).
It is important that those studying territory and proximity get the arguments behind
interaction opportunity/ease of interaction as a facilitating condition right. As a form of
opportunity the facilitating condition argument starts with the idea that it must be possible to
interact, it must be possible to have conflict, and it must be possible to have militarized conflict.
Proximity both creates such possibilities, and raises their probabilities. But, proximity is only one
of other potentially substitutable ways by which these possibilities occur! Possibilities for
interaction, with low cost power projection, for example, exist for a state with long-range nuclear
tipped missiles. As noted above, behavior cannot occur without both opportunity and
willingness. Opportunity can be created by a number of “second-order substitutable mechanisms”
(the terminology used by Cioffi-Revilla and Starr 1995). Spatial proximity (e.g. through
contiguity) is one of those mechanisms. Thus, geography or territoriality as a facilitating
mechanism is not a contending model with geography/territory as a source of conflict.
Representing opportunity and willingness both must be present. The facilitating condition makes
conflict possible, increases it probability, but does not guarantee that it will occur.
Geography as a Source of Conflict
The work on geography or territory or the “territorial perspective”– where territory acts
as the cause of conflict, the source of conflict, or the stakes of conflict– is quite extensive. Diehl
(1999a) reviews the value or importance of territory. He reviews the tangible “intrinsic
importance of territory (1999a, x) including such items as natural resources, control over
populations, access to trade, and strategic value. More intangible or symbolic aspects of territory
include its historic value, and its relationship to group identity/ethnicity of the people living on it.
Newman (1999) sees territory as a “demographic container” which holds people, providing
territorial symbolism to their identity, such that territory becomes an “exclusive entity” for a
people (1999, 14). This creates a powerful we/they or us/them divide over territory (see, e.g.
Henderson 1997), and is vital to models based on the cohesion of social groups. For example,
Thies (2001) links territory as an issue to the factor of national identity, and discusses how this
connection helps to generate and maintain an enduring rivalry.
Given the variety of factors which give territory value, it is not surprising that territory
serves as the origin of conflict, through territorial claims, territorial changes, territorial disputes,
and strategic concerns, among others. Arguments for, and reviews of empirical findings for
territory/geography as a source of conflict are fully developed in, among others, Holsti (1991),
Goertz and Diehl (1992), Vasquez (1993), Kocs (1995), Huth (1996), Gibbler (1996), Hensel
(1996, 2000). A review of the continuously updated set of contemporary armed conflicts in the
Journal of Peace Research by Peter Wallensteen and colleagues also reveals the extent to which
territorial issues underlie international conflict.
Territory (or geography) as a source of conflict fall under both opportunity and
willingness. Territory which connects, or sits between, or is disputed by two states provides
something to fight over. This is not simply a facilitating condition. Territory exists as a possible
issue for conflict; it is available as a source of conflict or contention. Because of territory’s value,
however– both tangible and intangible– territory is something that people care about, and are
willing to fight over. Thus, territory is directly connected to willingness. People, groups, and
states, come into conflict everyday during the course of normal social transactions and
interactions: incompatibilities occur, representing the incompatible claims of interests and
preferences. Most such incompatibilities are managed simply through routine mechanisms or are
ignored, because they do not make claims to things that are highly valued. The research on
territory and conflict indicates that territory is literally always of high value, salience, or
importance to people and groups. Territory raises the stakes/value of conflict, thus raising the
probability of escalation, and lowering the probability of easy management. Perhaps the study of
protracted social conflicts best represents all of these points, (see Friedman 1999, 2002). The
typical protracted conflict situation finds the “geodemographic integration of rival nations”
(Friedman 2002, 11)– that is, the intermingling of peoples from different ethnic/national groups
on the same territory. This constant opportunity for conflict is also embedded within conflicting
claims over ownership of territory; claims that are of the highest values to each group.
Therefore, the choice for conflict or escalation– willingness– is made more probable for
issues involving territory because the value of territory contributes to the positive expected utility
of choosing conflict or conflict escalation. Hensel (2000) , for example, explicitly links territory
to EU considerations. This is a key reason why territory or contiguity are regularly used as
independent, intervening, or control variables in models of international conflict.
The relationship of the value of territory to international conflict can also be explained by
prospect theory (or, the prospect theory variation of expected utility models); see, for example,
Levy (2000). The almost immediate endowment effects that occur with the gain of highly valued
things such as territory, will push both sides into framing the situation as one of losses. That is,
the state that loses territory frames the situation as one of loss, and thus becomes risk acceptant in
terms of the escalation or pursuit of the conflict. Because of the endowment effects argued in
prospect theory, the state that has newly acquired territory now claims the territory, and also
frames any return of the territory in the realm of losses. Thus, both sides frame the situation as
losses, and are risk acceptant in regard to the escalation or militarization of the conflict.
CONCLUSION
There are a number of exciting developments in the study of geography and international
conflict. As briefly outlined in Starr (2001, 2003 forthcoming), a number of methodological
innovations are taking place in the study of the spatial context of political phenomena, many
developed by or borrowed from geographers. Another example is new work by students of
international relations using network analyses (e.g. Maoz 2002) drawing upon methods
developed by sociologists. In addition, more IR scholars are taking advantage of the data and
methods of Geographical Information Systems (GIS). Such studies have been directed to both
geography/territory as the source of conflict, and geography/territory as facilitating conditions.
One of the papers on this panel, Lujala and Buhaug (2003) uses GIS to look at the spatial
distribution of the assets of territory in order to link them to look at armed conflict. As with the
GIS-based studies by Starr and colleagues, the use of GIS in the Lujala and Buhaug paper
permits the analyses to drop to sub-state levels, and disaggregate country-level data and analyses.
The use of GIS by Starr and colleagues (e.g. Starr 2002, and Starr and Thomas 2001) has
permitted a reconceptualization of borders, along with a new approach to operationalizing
opportunity and willingness. Looking at GIS generated indexes for “ease of interaction” and
“salience” that can apply to any single border, or any segment of any border, this project revisits
both geography as facilitating condition (opportunity as ease of interaction) and geography as
source of conflict (by looking at willingness to engage in conflict or cooperation through the
importance or “salience” of any border area). A brief description of the dataset developed by this
project is attached as an Appendix (see also Starr 2001a).
In concluding the Peace Science Presidential Address on spatial analysis in the study of
conflict, I draw from assertions that I make in Starr (2002a, 370): “Cumulation and ‘progress’ in
the study of global phenomena will depend on the quality and rigor of our theories and our
methods. Synthesis will follow broad agent-structure approaches that cut across more standard
levels of analysis and disciplinary boundaries. The challenges facing researchers arise from
finding the appropriate methods by which to study the agent-structure problem.” The challenges
listed in Starr (2002a) include the question of how to cut into the continuous feedback loops
between agent and structure-- between endogenous and exogenous factors, how to design studies
of necessity, and how to craft the proper designs and methods to study substitutability. With my
Presidential Address, I added an additional challenge– one which broadened my concern with
the agent-structure problem. For research on international conflict to meet the stringent criteria of
integrative cumulation, we will also need to meet the challenge of how to study space and
spatiality, and the even more difficult challenge of combining spatial and temporal
contexts/perspectives/modes of analysis.
APPENDIX
Reconceptualizing International Borders Through the Application of GIS (Geographic
Information Systems): A New Dataset on the “Nature” of Borders
Based on earlier work which conceptualized and described international borders (Starr
and Most, 1976), this project was designed to establish a major reconceptualization and revision
of how borders may be seen (theory) and measured (method). The use of GIS (Geographic
Information Systems) allows a much fuller and clearer specification of borders by enabling us to
operationalize the specific qualities of borders in terms of opportunity and willingness: ease of
interaction and salience, respectively. Using data available in the 16 data layers found in
ARC/INFO's 1992 Digital Chart of the World, indexes of both ease of interaction and of salience
have been constructed. Aggregating values generated from ARC/INFO, they can be used to
characterize any border or border segment on the globe, and thus values can be attached to the
ease of interaction and/or the importance of any particular border or border segment. These two
dimensions can be used separately or combined. A border with high values on both could be
considered a "Vital Border." This dataset therefore permits investigators to go beyond simply
observing the number of borders a state possesses, whether or not a border existed between two
states, or the length of that border, to a fuller conception of the nature of that border.
For ease of interaction (or opportunity), three central factors for the movement of land-based military capability (or other goods) have been selected-- out of the hundreds of variables
found in ARC/INFO-- the existence of roads, railroads, and the steepness of terrain. An index has
been created which notes the presence or absence of roads and railroads, and represents the
hypsography or slope of terrain. This creates a simple combined 1 to 4 index, with 4
representing the greatest ease of interaction, and 1 the most difficult areas to move across.
Salience (or willingness) is concerned with the importance or value of territory along or
behind a border. Here we must be concerned with indicators which would discriminate the level
of value or concern over territory. Drawing on upon the work of geographers, demographics are
seen as important: the territory on which a state's population lives. This is operationalized by
areas of population concentration. A capital city, the locus of governmental activity and the
symbol of the state, is also be used to indicate the importance of territory. Other coverages
provide the location of items that indicate the importance of an area: active civil and military
airports are identified, as well as such items as: military camps, forts, oil wells and refineries,
power plants of various kinds, water tanks, factories, industrial complexes, hospitals,
telecommunications stations, etc. The wide variety of items taken from the GIS are used because
the substantive importance of any single type of installation can vary considerably across states.
By identifying the location of key aspects of a state's transportation, communication, energy
production, industrial, agricultural, and security infrastructures, we have items that tap
"importance" in a manner generally relevant to all states. Hence, the salience of a border area is
determined by places of population concentration, state capitals, airfields, and selected cultural
features located within a 50,000 meter buffer of the region's borders. Capital cities are
automatically coded with the highest value found in any of the units of analysis. Each feature
identified has been given a value based on the number of other features that fall within 4
kilometers of it. These can then be mapped based on the value, showing where clusters arise.
Now any area in a buffer around a border can now be characterized by a value from 1 to 4. A four
value scale has been created, again with 4 indicating areas of the greatest salience, 1 indicating
those areas with the least.
The core of the vital border concept is that any Border or border segment may combine
high or low values reflecting both opportunity and willingness. Again, scores of 4 indicate a high
level of "vitalness" (with either a 4 or a 4 and 3 on both indexes), with 1 indicating the lowest
level for the combined indexes.
The global dataset derived from the GIS analyses includes 151 states with land borders,
which generate 301 separate contiguous land borders between states. For each of these borders,
17 variables have been developed, which can be transformed into a variety of nominal, ordinal,
and interval measures. For any dyad border (see the examples in Table 1) we can present the
length of that border in kilometers, and the area in square kilometers under the buffers created
from that border. From these two variables we can present the percentage of each border that
falls into categories 4 through 1. This can be done for ease of interaction, saliency, and vitalness.
Knowing the length of the border (or arc), the area under the buffer along it, and the percentage
of each category, permits the analyst to use interval data (as noted below) or broadly based
categories such as high-salience or low-salience. Note also that Table 1 provides a weighted
average for each border in terms of ease of interaction, salience, or vitalness, showing the
average value across the whole border.
TABLE 1. Components of a New Dataset With Examples
Variables France- India- Chile-
Germany Pakistan Peru
Length (km) 400 2800 170
Area (sq km) 3400 240,000 17,000
Per cent
Ease of Interaction
Category:
1 8.8 16.6 61.7
2 4.1 4.84 15.0
3 59.6 76.6 21.9
4 27.6 1.94 1.35
Per cent
Salience
Category:
1 78.3 99.00 99.5
2 15.6 0.85 0.52
3 5.49 0.11 0.00
4 0.52 0.00 0.00
Per cent
Vital Border
Category:
1 12.1 21.4 76.6
2 51.4 76.0 21.7
3 33.3 2.56 1.65
4 3.3 0.02 0.00
Weighted Average
of Ease of Interaction 3.06 2.64 1.63
Weighted Average
of Salience 1.28 1.01 1.00
Weighted Average
of Vital Border 2.28 1.81 1.25
NOTES
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