Introduction

This chapter sets the stage for the remainder of the book. It identifies the phenomenon of democratic peace as a phenomenon that can still benefit from further examination, mainly because the question of its significance – what it means and how it matters – has not received systematic attention. In order to explain that claim, the introductory chapter discusses the meaning of the notion “significance” and shortly introduces the hermeneutical method as a particularly appropriate approach to questions of significance. Finally, the introductory chapter alerts the reader to the nature of the theoretical intervention that the book makes into the study of democratic peace, which is pitched at the level of social theory (entailing a fundamental reconceptualization of the phenomenon) rather than at the level of explanatory theory.