Shannon, Morey, Boehmke (2010) hypothesize a negative relationship between

state membership in international organisations and the duration of conflicts they

enter during that membership. More specifically, they find that international
oganisations (IOs) designed to mitigate commitment problems decrease dispute
duration, while IOs charged with reducing information asymmetries have no
influence on the duration of conflict.
One issue with this study is the freedom by which the authors alternate between
referring to the independent variable as international organization, generally and
the differentiated security-charged IOs.
This alternation, though convenient to the authors hypothesis, is misleading. It
glosses over the possibility that the causal factor is not the security-based IO itself,
but its membership. Which states would join IOs chartered for global security
purposes? Well, states interested in defining the global security structure would
definitely rank high in the possible listings. I would not expect such states to desire
continued fighting
Noncombatant states in such organisations would be expected care more about
ongoing conflict
Another issue concerns the commitment problems Shannon et al. (2010) claim that
IOs mitigate against. One important problem is that of domestic audience costs
attributed to surrender or settlement. When leaders fear that these costs weaken
their maintenance of power, they will not seek the end of concflight.