Philip Hultquist and Christopher K. Butler
Copping Turf: The Psychology of Territorial Claims
WORKING PAPER
2007
Abstract
We examine territorial claims in light of the endowment effect and other implications of prospect theory. The endowment effect suggests that the state in possession of the disputed territory would perceive the status quo from a gains frame and place a higher value on the disputed territory than if it did not possess it. Conversely, the state claiming the disputed territory would perceive the status quo from a losses frame and, ceteris paribus, be willing to take risks to gain possession. From these premises, Levy (1996: 190) argues that ”Each will accept larger than normal risks in order to maintain its version of the status quo.” A model melding prospect theory and game theory (Butler, 2007) suggests that this argument only holds for a range of the model’s parameters. In particular, the probability of winning must be in a moderate (e.g., parity) range while the expected costs must not be too high. We examine six dyads involving territorial claims from Hensel (2001) to see how the model may be tested with available data. With this small data set (N = 316 directed dyad years), we demonstrate that it is possible to test the model in a fairly direct manner, though some measurement issues remain to be resolved.
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