ABSTRACT
The phenomenon of democratic peace more clearly extended beyond merely the rich industrialized countries belonging to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). A simple dichotomy between democracy and autocracy, of course, hides real shades of difference, and mixed systems share features of both. Moreover, the precise application of these terms is to some degree culturally and temporally dependent. Theoretical precision demands yet another definition, of "interstate" war. A simple dichotomy between democracy and autocracy, of course, hides real shades of difference, and mixed systems share features of both. For democracies, the chances that any militarized dispute would progress to the point of display of force were consistently lower, at every level, than for pairs in which one or both states were not democracies. Following World War II, however, and especially by the 1970s, increasing numbers of democracies emerged and the peace among them became harder to ignore.
