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.

摘要

尽管人们早就认识到问题在冲突过程中起着重要作用，但对战争持续时间的研究却没有给予足够的重视。在本文中，我通过设计关于战争中问题的作用的原创理论来帮助弥补这一缺陷。我通过关注争议问题的有形性来做到这一点。我认为，随着无形显着性的增加，国家结束战争的难度就越大。归根结底，问题越具有无形的显着性，战争的时间就越长。我使用混合方法。在定量分析中，我使用来自全球专家调查的数据以及关于战争期间争论的问题的新数据，采用了原始的无形显着性措施。在定性部分，我对越南战争期间这些问题对战争持续时间的影响进行了深入的案例研究。最终，我发现我的断言得到了强有力的支持，即这些问题导致各国从事延长战争的行为，从而导致更长的战争。