Final submission to International Studies Quarterly A Menace to the Democratic Peace? Dyadic and Systemic Difference

commentaries on the earlier versions of this study. 1 Do democracies become less peaceful with one another as the overall number of democratic states in the international system increases? Gartzke and Weisiger (2013, 2014) claim that they do. This study argues that their evidence stems from a mathematical error in their statistical model. Once this study corrects that error, their findings no longer hold. In other words, when Gartzke and Weisiger’s model is properly specified, no dyadic and systemic difference persists, while democracy emerges as a pacifying factor that reduces the likelihood of interstate dispute. Simply put, the democratic peace prevails over other possible explanations