How Domestic Commitment Contribute To Our Understanding of War Essay

How Domestic Commitment Contribute To Our Understanding of War - Essay Example Similarly, international factors affect domestic structures and processes of peace, economics, democratization, global issues and state systems or machinery. Modern political science professionals and scholars are faced with the challenge or question of why some conflicts end quickly while others last years and even decades. Consequently, their interest has been in unearthing and understanding what separates the wars or conflicts that cause deaths, suffering, and displacement of millions of people from those in which the death and displacement magnitude is of a lower order. Although most studies in on this topic seem to narrow on specific war or conflict mechanism, with variations in extremity or value from place to place, recent wars and conflict-related studies show that different distinct mechanisms explain the differences in the duration and consequences of war and other forms of conflict. The three main mechanisms that are used to explain this disparity among conflicts are the private information and incentives to misrepresent, domestic politics and its principal agent problems and commitment problems. The latter mechanism is often powered by shifting powers. Generally, domestic commitment problems are associated with increased war duration and increased war intensity. Thus, commitment problems offer reasons for people to believe that they are responsible for the largest wars. This paper discusses the manner in which the concept of domestic commitment has contributed to the current understanding of war. The idea or logic behind the domestic commitment problem is that big and quick shifts in power are highly likely to result in war regardless of the available information supporting a contrary scenario. The inkling of commitment problem as a mechanism of war is quite uncomplicated. For instance, if a country expects another to become stronger in the next period, expectedly, the latter country would require a bigger share of the territory tomorrow.