The democratic peace is really a democratic absence-of-war.

Evidence

In short, “not” literally means the negation of the concept membership value. There are a variety of circumstances where it would be better to use the literal not, rather than the opposite of the pair. My favorite example is the “democratic peace” which should be called the “democratic not-war” because peace is literally defined as not war. — Gary Goertz, Social Science Concepts and Measurement, 620

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to any reading on the democratic peace thesis in IR; reframes the finding as a definitional artifact.
• CANDY: Tweetable: the famous ‘democratic peace’ is misnamed and should be the ‘democratic not-war.’