Ruling the Sea: Managing Maritime Conflicts through UNCLOS and Exclusive Economic Zones

Nemeth, Stephen C.; Mitchell, Sara McLaughlin; Nyman, Elizabeth; Hensel, Paul R.

doi:10.1080/03050629.2014.897233

Cited by 31 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Indeed, states explicitly recognize this divergence from land claims (Kraska 2011, 108), arguing that the world’s oceans are a “public good” of interest to every state. A central challenge emerges, however: coastal states want sovereignty over areas adjacent to their land (i.e., an extension of the land regime), while the international community seeks access to “the commons.” To reconcile these competing demands, states established the UNCLOS, which institutionalizes commonly defined maritime spaces and establishes detailed claim management processes to decide cases, including the creation of an international court (e.g., ITLOS; see Nemeth et al 2014).…”

Section: A Theoretical Framework For the Management Of Territorial CLmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conflict Management in Land, River, and Maritime Claims

Owsiak¹,

Mitchell²

2017

PSRM

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Why do disputants favor some conflict management strategies when managing certain territorial claim types—land, river, or maritime—but not others? We propose that state interests—defined via claim characteristics and interdependence—and transaction costs (i.e., the challenges associated with aggregating state preferences over outcomes) differ across claim types. These differences then incentivize states to cede varying levels of control over claim management, ultimately encouraging them to prioritize and institutionalize certain conflict management strategies when managing particular types of territorial claims. More specifically, we theorize and find that states pursue distinct management strategies when addressing their land (informal; bilateral negotiations and arbitration), river (more formal; third-party non-binding), and maritime claims (most formal; multilateral negotiations and legal processes).

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Section: A Theoretical Framework For the Management Of Territorial CLmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conflict Management in Land, River, and Maritime Claims

Owsiak¹,

Mitchell²

2017

PSRM

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“…Table 1, Model 1 includes a dummy variable to capture the post-September 2001 environment, yet it is not statistically significant. On the other hand, the years since UNCLOS came into force in 1994 have witnessed a significant drop in the chances of maritime claims (Table 1, Model 4), showing the positive influence this multilateral institution has had on the management of oceanic resources (see also Nemeth et al, 2014). Prior to 1994, the dyadic risk of maritime claims (0.028 (0.026-0.031)) was 40% higher than in the post-1993 period (0.020 (0.018-0.024)).…”

Section: Empirical Analysesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These dyads represented our opportunity cases for maritime conflicts, although we also considered politically relevant dyads as an alternate opportunity group (contiguous states up to 450 m water or involving a major power). We utilized data from the Issue Correlates of War (ICOW) project on maritime claims (Hensel et al, 2008;Nemeth et al, 2014) to identify years in which a given pair of states had one or more ongoing diplomatic disagreements over the ownership or usage of a maritime area. Of the 125,891 total dyads that could have engaged in maritime claims, only 5794 dyad years (4.6%) witnessed such conflicts of the sea.…”

Section: Regime Type and Contentious Issuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bones of democratic contention: Maritime disputes

Daniels

Mitchell

2017

International Area Studies Review

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While no two democratic states have fought an interstate war against each other, democratic dyads experience militarized disputes with some frequency. Previous research suggests that a large percentage of militarized disputes between two democracies involve fishing and oil resources of the sea. Yet this research selects on cases where militarized conflict occurs, and fails to consider whether democracies have more frequent diplomatic conflicts over maritime areas relative to other regime pairings. Analyzing data from the Issue Correlates of War project, which includes diplomatic conflicts over maritime areas (1900-2007) in the Americas, Europe, Middle East, and Asia, this study finds that pairs of democracies have the highest chance of experiencing diplomatic maritime disputes among all pairs of countries in the same region or dyads involving major powers. Three theoretical explanations were empirically evaluated to account for this pattern: (a) greater opportunities for democratic maritime conflicts given higher levels of economic productivity and the sizes of fishing fleets in democratic states, (b) the increasing securitization of maritime issues, especially after the terrorist attacks of September 2001, and (c) variations in the number of democracies across regional contexts. Several illustrative case studies for each theoretical argument are presented. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for the democratic peace literature and the law of the sea regime.

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“…Hensel (2009, 2011) find that greater water scarcity in the basin generally increases the risk of a new river claim, but also increases the likelihood and effectiveness of peaceful settlement attempts (as both sides need access to the shared resource), and the existence of treaties over the river increases the likelihood of peaceful management (Mitchell and Zawahri, 2015). With respect to maritime claims, Nemeth et al (2014) find that institutionalization and legalization matter; membership in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) reduces the likelihood of new maritime claims and increases third party involvement when such claims begin, while legally declared exclusive economic zones (EEZs) increase the success of peaceful settlement attempts. In addition to these issue-specific findings, collection of data on three separate contentious issues has also demonstrated the utility of the issue-based approach to world politics more generally.…”

Section: River and Maritime Claimsmentioning

confidence: 99%

From territorial claims to identity claims: The Issue Correlates of War (ICOW) Project

Hensel

Mitchell

2016

Conflict Management and Peace Science

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The Issue Correlates of War (ICOW) research project began nearly 20 years ago by collecting data on territorial claims in South America. Since then, the ICOW territorial claims dataset has expanded to cover the entire world, while ICOW has collected new data on river claims and maritime claims and is beginning a new project on identity claims. This article discusses the development and expansion of ICOW data, illustrating how the additional datasets offer important new information and open up new avenues for scholarship.

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Ruling the Sea: Managing Maritime Conflicts through UNCLOS and Exclusive Economic Zones

Cited by 31 publications

References 21 publications

Conflict Management in Land, River, and Maritime Claims

Conflict Management in Land, River, and Maritime Claims

Bones of democratic contention: Maritime disputes

From territorial claims to identity claims: The Issue Correlates of War (ICOW) Project

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