The issues are the issue: Intangible salience and war duration

Abstract

While it has long been acknowledged that issues play an important role in conflict processes, research on war duration has paid insufficient attention to them. In this paper, I help to remedy this deficiency by devising an original theory concerning the role of issues in war. I do this by focusing on the tangibility of the issues under dispute. I contend as the intangible salience increases, the more difficult it will be for states to bring their wars to an end. Ultimately, the more intangible salience that the issues possess, the longer wars will be. I use a mixed-methods approach. In the quantitative analysis, I employ original measures of intangible salience using data from a world-wide expert survey as well as new data on issues fought over during war. In the qualitative portion, I perform an in-depth case study on the effects of the issues on the war duration during the Vietnam War. Ultimately, I find strong support for my assertions that the issues lead states to engage in war prolongation behavior which in turn leads to longer wars.