Cultural Differences

According to Slate:
"The Los Angeles Times fronts the commission but leads with more worry from Iraqis that the draft constitution is too Islam-heavy. The piece also acknowledges, as Slate's Mickey Kaus has argued, that the draft is actually so vague that nobody know how it will play out.
"Considering Iraq's draft constitution, one Islamic scholar in the U.S. said, "It's not a workable document. They brushed their differences under the carpet and crafted language that they could vote for." He added Sudan tried something similar 20 years ago. What followed was a 20-year internal war."

This makes me think about contracts and the approaches different cultures have to them. As I learned in the culture section of my instruction design classes, some culture view contracts as commitment to a relationship, rather than encompassing all imaginable contingencies. The details are left to be worked out in practice since an overspecification is seen as a lack of trust. If this caused a 20-year war in the Sudan, is it that this style of contract is worse than our own, or is it that the war was inevitable due to irreconcilable goals?

That area of the world seems to be pretty fractious. Are there more wars or fewer wars in places with looser contracts. Has contractual language changed in Europe, leading to fewer battles and eventual union?

Possibly, if two people are committed to a decision, a contract maintains that commitment. If they are not, the most finely-worded document could not hold them together.