The question of "democratic peace" in the history of contemporary wars

The "democratic peace" thesis is one of the most interesting foci of the present debate about the history of wars. This article presents a critical analysis the most important contributions to this subject, such as those of Weart (1998), Geller and Singer (1998), Midlarsky (2000), Mansfield and Snyder (2007) and Gat (2007), confronting them with the research of a team headed by the authors. Although some scholars have maintained that there are at least eight historic cases (wars between 1812 and 1999) which could raise doubts about the validity of the above mentioned thesis, a careful check of those cases comes to the conclusion that it still is a quite solid one, except when we deal with covert interventions below the level of wars in the classic sense of the word.