The razor’s edge: A review of contiguity in conflict studies and an argument for redefining neighbors

Abstract

Political scientists generally agree that contiguity is a significant predictor of interstate conflict; that is, they observe that it is neighbors that most frequently fight one another. Defining contiguity, however, is an unsettled matter. Still dominating conflict studies is the view that neighbors are those who share physical borders, or spatial delineations, between one sovereign territory and another. Yet an increasingly integrated international system, accompanied with shifting political identities and technological advances in communication and transport, suggest that power relations are more than a function of sheer corporeal distance. To anticipate contemporary interstate relations, therefore, we might tap the potential of constructivist theory to derive new understanding of what it means to be a neighbor.