Territorial dispute is a conflict between states concerning the extent to which a state has sovereignty over a specific piece of land. It is a fundamental issue of international law and it can have significant implications for peace, as evidenced by the long-running territorial dispute between Japan and Russia.
In the academic literature, scholars have developed a variety of conceptual and operational definitions for territorial disputes. In general, the most prominent approaches try to exclude from consideration conflicts that only have a secondary territorial component. They also tend to ignore maritime claims and focus almost exclusively on conflicts over land. Consequently, they provide little insight into how these disputes move between latent and active phases of conflict and back again.
Most studies that have looked at the relationship between territorial disputes and militarized conflict have found that these disputes are more likely to lead to war than other types of interstate disputes. These findings are consistent with the theory that territorial disputes have a greater impact on peace because they challenge the very essence of a state’s existence and raise questions about its right to exist as a sovereign person under international law.
Moreover, some research on territorial disputes has highlighted the potential for conflict escalation due to the importance of these issues to states’ security strategies and the resulting reluctance by many governments to compromise on their claims. However, this finding has also been contested by other scholars.