Book Project

The Making of National Interest: What States (Don't) Fight For and Why

States often display puzzling behaviors when choosing what to fight over—they frequently fight over barren lands and uninhabitable islands while not fighting over other issue areas or lands with more evident benefits. So why are states and their citizens willing to expend costly resources over objects without clear benefits when they could be fighting over something more valuable? What becomes understood by states and their citizens as worth fighting for and why? 

I argue that domestic distributional consequences play an important role in determining what becomes understood as important national interests worth fighting for. Issues without clear economic value, such as barren lands, are more likely to be perceived as national interests because they do not benefit any single domestic group. Since who benefits is unclear, politicians have an easier time framing such issues as benefiting the entire nation. In contrast, issues with specific economic benefits are more likely to be seen as helping select domestic groups, which makes it harder for leaders to persuasively frame them as representing broad national interests. 

This book combines original survey experiments, geocoded data of historical territorial claims, qualitative case studies, and text analysis of political rhetoric to advance this argument. By showing how economic benefits can often become a liability in mobilizing unified support for conflict, the book challenges our conventional understanding of economic value in international relations and contributes to a new understanding of distributive politics and foreign policy. It also systematically unpacks how issue value in international relations is formed and hopes to deepen our insight into what states fight for and why.