Critics within the international relations community argue that there is a deficit of effective leaders throughout the multi-tier levels of the public sector. Thereby, scholar-practitioners argue that researching effective leadership personality characteristics are problematic. Ikenberry argues that there “is one complaint in politics around the world today, it is about the absence of ‘leadership’ – local, national, global … no country or national leader seems to be articulating visions of the global future.” This constricts the examination of effective leadership traits and roles in addressing conflict resolution actions between interstate and non-state actors. As a result, Ikenberry contends that “filling the present leadership vacuum is one of the most crucial challenges facing the international system as [we] enter the 21st century.” The implication, according to Lieberfeld, is that “given the constraints imposed by the political environment, how might the personalities of individual leaders affect their decisions of war and peace?”

The challenge of international leaders to resolve conflict focuses on balancing the domestic interests of the state with the interpersonal relations with international leaders. On the one hand, state leaders invest in interpersonal relationships to strengthen the state’s security and power position within the international system. On the other hand, state leaders act to preserve personal power and status at the expense of state interests. Scholars contend that leaders of “states in the international system aim to maximize their relative power position over other states …. [and] …. to protect their personal as opposed to state interests, make alliance choices on the basis of internal threats to their domestic political control.” “It would appear that extremist leaders use violence or the threat of violence to bolster their own political power either vis-a-vis other states or internal opponents – and sometimes both.” Coolidge & Segal posit that world leaders must change how they relate to each other “in order to predict, understand, and better control their behavior for common good. As a result, researchers have begun to investigate the reasons for conflict and its impact on interpersonal characteristics and relationships between international and non-state leaders. Scholars investigate the central question in conflict studies today. What is the role of leadership as peace development actors execute stabilization and resolution activities?