In his paper “Complicating Commitment: Free Resources, Power Shifts, and the Fiscal Politics of Preventive War” published in International Studies Quarterly, Strauss Center Distinguished Scholar Pat McDonald explores how domestic institutions shape power transitions and impact international peace agreements between states.

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In his paper “Complicating Commitment: Free Resources, Power Shifts, and the Fiscal Politics of Preventive War” published in International Studies Quarterly, Strauss Center Distinguished Scholar Pat McDonald explores how domestic institutions shape power transitions and impact international peace agreements between states. He examines the implications that free resources have for domestic politics, in particular their potential for enhancing domestic political capacity to support arms races and create relative military advantages. McDonald argues that great power states negotiate sustainable peace settlements that intrinsically self-regulate against shifts in the global distribution of military power. With these peace settlements in play in the international system, states are better able to avoid undertaking preventive war. McDonalds provides the reasoning that if domestic institutions support international peace agreements, then they must be associated with an optimal level of military spending that sustains peace and prevents dramatic shifts in the balance of power between states.

As evidence in support of his argument, McDonald explores situations that directly oppose his central claims. He finds that, in contrast to governments engaged in sustainable international peace settlements, governments with access to free resources do not feel the need to make political concessions to society and therefore have a greater sense of fiscal autonomy and freedom to expand militarily and launch a preventive war. He explores the effects of free resources, specifically public property and access to international lending, on a government’s basic fiscal contract with society and on creating incentives for preventive war. To illustrate how free resources can sustain an arms race he compares the initial phases of World War I with the early Cold War period. He concludes the paper with a survey of the historical implications of his argument.