ABSTRACT
A central claim of this volume is that the character of a country’s domestic political system affects its foreign and security policy, and, in particular, that democracies are different from non-democracies in their preparation for and conduct of warfare. The essays collected here build on a solid body of literature on Democratic Peace theory and an especially strong research effort carried out at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF) on “Antinomies of Democratic Peace.” The purpose of this chapter is to offer a sympathetic, but critical, assessment of the findings presented in this volume, with an eye to promoting further research to elucidate the relationship between democracies and war.
