Editing Democratic peace theory (section)

==Conflict initiation==
According to a 2017 review study, "there is enough evidence to conclude that democracy does cause peace at least between democracies, that the observed correlation between democracy and peace is not spurious".{{sfn|Reiter|2017}}

Most studies have looked only at who is involved in the conflicts and ignored the question of who initiated the conflict. In many conflicts both sides argue that the other side was the initiator. Several researchers have argued that studying conflict initiation is of limited value, because existing data about conflict initiation may be especially unreliable.{{sfn|Gleditsch|Christiansen|Hegre|2004}} Even so, several studies have examined this. Reitner and Stam argue that autocracies initiate conflicts against democracies more frequently than democracies do against autocracies.{{sfn|Reiter|Stam|2003}} Quackenbush and Rudy, while confirming Reiter and Stam's results, find that democracies initiate wars against non-democracies more frequently than non-democracies do to each other.{{sfn|Quackenbush|Rudy|2006}} Several following studies have studied how different types of autocracies with different institutions vary regarding conflict initiation. Personalistic and military dictatorships may be particularly prone to conflict initiation, as compared to other types of autocracy such as [[One-party state|one-party]] states, but also more likely to be targeted in a war having other initiators.{{sfn|Peceny|Beer|2003}}{{sfn|Peceny|Butler|2004}}{{sfn|Lai|Slater|2006}}{{sfn|Peceny|Beer|Sanchez-Terry|2002}}

One 2017 study found that democracies are no more likely to settle border disputes peacefully than non-democracies.{{sfn|Gibler|Owsiak|2017}}