Why are territorial conflict so difficult to resolve? There is a widespread consensus in peace research that territorial wars are different: They tend to be more enduring, and are more difficult to resolve than non-territorial conflicts. However, arguments why this relationship exists vary: Territorial conflicts may be more difficult to resolve because the conflict parties’ characteristics hamper compromise. Alternatively, the topics most relevant in territorial conflict, such as secession, might be more difficult to negotiate. We propose a theoretical framework which integrates how able the conflict parties at the table are to achieve a negotiated solution and how the difficult the topics on the table are to resolve in a given context. Our new theoretical framework directly translates into a statistical model, enabling us to measure and compare both the actors’ compromise ability as well as the relative difficulty of negotiation topics in territorial versus non-territorial conflicts. Our models’ ability to distinguish the two effects enables us to evaluate alternative claims why territorial conflicts are more difficult to resolve than conflicts on other issues.