What Are They Fighting For? The Importance of Issues in International Conflict Research

Most empirical research on international conflict has focused on national, dyadic, and systemic attributes to understand state behavior. Following the ideas of Vasquez & Mansbach, this study argues that scholars must take into account the issues and their salience over which states are in dispute in order to explain the onset and escalation of conflict. The article begins with a review of the most prominent data sets and models in the subfield. Most of the prominent theoretical approaches explicitly or implicitly ignore the issues in dispute. Furthermore, only a few of the available conflict data sets include issue components and even then only in a limited fashion. Several reasons for this are reviewed, including those related to realpolitik, ignoring the decision-making level of analysis, and methodological difficulties. There are some studies that do look at issues and their salience when trying to explain the incidence and escalation of international conflict. Almost uniformly, these demonstrate that foreign policy behavior varies by issue area and that states are more willing to fight for issues that they regard as important. The remaining part of the study is devoted to demonstrating how issues and their salience can affect decisions to use military conflict and discussing how these concerns might be integrated into international conflict research. Specific suggestions are offered concerning incorporating issues in research design, identifying issues, and measuring their salience.