Territorial contenders are political entities that control territory but differ from sovereign states in that they lack diplomatic recognition as legal members of the international system. One consequence of this difference is that international relations data sets have historically excluded information about them. And yet, as evidenced by the Islamic State’s impact on politics in the Middle East and beyond, territorial contenders are important actors in the international system. In this article, we introduce a new data set of territorial contenders, compare territorial contenders to other categories of territorial nonstate actors, explore how the presence of territorial contenders affects the probabilities of civil war and state failure, illustrate the conditions under which territorial contenders are more likely to emerge, and discuss a series of studies now possible given the existence of this new data set.
BremerStuart. 1992. “Dangerous Dyads.” Journal of Conflict Resolution36 (2): 309–41.
7.
CaspersenNina. 2011. “States without Sovereignty.” In Unrecognized States in the International System, edited by CaspersenN.StansfieldG.. London, UK: Routledge, 73–89.
8.
CaspersenNina. 2012. Unrecognized States. Malden, MA: Polity.
9.
CogginsBridget. 2011. “Friends in High Places.” International Organization65 (3): 433–67.
10.
CogginsBridget. 2014. Power Politics and State Formation in the Twentieth Century. New York: Cambridge University Press.
11.
CollierPaulHoefflerAnke. 2004. “Greed and Grievance in Civil War.” Oxford Economic Papers56 (4): 563–95.
12.
CunninghamDavidGleditschKristian SkredeSalehyanIdean. 2013. “Non-state Actors in Civil Wars.” Conflict Management and Peace Science30 (5): 516–31.
13.
CunninghamDavidLemkeDouglas. 2013. “Combing Civil and Interstate Wars.” International Organization67 (3): 609–27.
14.
FarissChristopherJonesZachary. 2018. “Enhancing Validity in Observational Settings When Replication Is Not Possible.” Political Science Research and Methods6 (2): 365–80.
15.
FazalTanisha. 2004. “State Death in the International System.” International Organization58 (2): 311–44.
16.
FazalTanisha. 2007. State Death. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
17.
FazalTanisha. 2012. “Why States No Longer Declare War.” Security Studies21 (4): 557–93.
18.
FazalTanisha. 2013. “The Demise of Peace Treaties in Interstate War.” International Organization67 (4): 695–724.
19.
FazalTanisha. 2018. Wars of Law. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
20.
FazalTanishaGriffithsRyan. 2014. “Membership Has Its Privileges.” International Studies Review16 (1): 79–106.
21.
FearonJames. 2003. “Ethnic and Cultural Diversity by Country.” Journal of Economic Growth8 (2): 195–222.
22.
FearonJamesLaitinDavid. 2003. “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War.” American Political Science Review97 (1): 75–90.
23.
FloreaAdrian. 2014. “De Facto States in International Politics.” International Interactions40 (5): 788–811.
24.
FloreaAdrian. 2017. “De Facto States: Survival and Disappearance.” International Studies Quarterly61 (2): 337–51.
25.
GleditschKristian SkredeWardMichael. 1999. “A Revised List of Independent States since the Congress of Vienna.” International Interactions25 (4): 393–413.
26.
HerbstJeffrey. 2000. States and Power in Africa. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
27.
HuangReyko. 2016. The Wartime Origins of Democratization. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
28.
IqbalZaryabStarrHarvey. 2016. State Failure in the Modern World. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.
29.
JonesZacharyLinderFridolin. 2016. “edarf: Exploratory Data Analysis Using Random Forests.” Journal of Open Source Software1 (6): 92.
30.
KingstonPaul. 2004. “States-within-states.” In States within States, edited by P. Kingston andI. Spears. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 1–13.
31.
KoivuKendra. 2016. “In the Shadow of the State.” Comparative Political Studies49 (2): 155–83.
32.
KoivuKendra. 2018. “Illicit Partners and Political Development.” Studies in Comparative International Development53 (1): 47–66.
33.
KolstøPål. 2006. “The Sustainability and Future of Unrecognized Quasi-states.” Journal of Peace Research43 (6): 723–40.
34.
KrasnerStephen. 1999. Sovereignty. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
35.
LeBillonPhilippe2001 “The Political Ecology of War.” Political Geography20(5): 561–84
36.
LemkeDouglas. 2008a. “Balancing Against Extinction: Alliance Politics among Nonstate Actors.” In The Causes of International Conflict, edited by PalmerG.London, UK: Routledge, 186–202.
37.
LemkeDouglas. 2008b. “Power Politics and Wars without States.” American Journal of Political Science52 (4): 774–86.
38.
LemkeDouglas. 2011. “Intra-national IR in Africa.” Review of International Studies37 (1): 49–70.
39.
LemkeDouglas. 2019. “Do International Rules and Norms Apply to Non-state Actors?” International Studies Review21 (2): 210–224.
40.
LemkeDouglasWesthoffMikaela. n.d. “Assessing State Making Strategies.” Unpublished MS, Pennsylvania State University.
MartenKimberly. 2012. Warlords. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
43.
MukhopadhyayDipali. 2014. Warlords, Strongman Governors, and the State in Afghanistan. New York: Cambridge University Press.
44.
PeggScott. 1998. International Society and the De Facto State. Aldershot, MA: Ashgate.
45.
SarkeesMeredith ReidWaymanFrank. 2010. Resort to War. Washington, DC: CQ Press.
46.
ShmueliGalit. 2010. “To Explain or to Predict?” Statistical Science25 (3): 289–310.
47.
StewartMegan. 2018. “Civil War as State-making.” International Organization72 (1): 205–26.
48.
StroblCarolinBoulesteixAnne-LaureKneibThomasAugustinThomasZeileisAchim. 2008. “Conditional Variable Importance for Random Forests.” BMC Bioinformatics9 (1): 307.
49.
TillyCharles. 1985. “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime.” Chapter 5. In Bringing the State Back In, edited by P. Evans et al. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 169–191.
50.
TillyCharles. 1990. Coercion, Capital, and European States. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell.
51.
WalterBarbara. 1997. “The Critical Barrier to Civil War Settlement.” International Organization51 (3): 335–64.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
