Although many of Sebastian Rosato's criticisms of the causal foundations of both institutional and normative explanations of the democratic peace are valid, his analysis of the failure of the public bond is incomplete. While I do not disagree with Rosato's statement that “democracies are as likely to go to war as non-democracies” (Rosato, 2003, p. 594), I believe this does not confirm a key thesis of democratic peace: that democracies are less likely to fight wars against other democracies. I argue that democracies are particularly averse to conflict with other democracies, which would explain why democracies are not less likely to go to war in general, but avoid war with democratic nations. Applying the observation that the democratic peace is essentially a post-World War II phenomenon limited to the Americas and Western Europe strengthens this argument. Rosato offers three reasons why public constraint does not reduce the willingness of democracies to go to war: (1) the costs of war fall on a small subgroup of the population, (2) nationalism can prevail over concerns about the cost of war, and (3) Democratic leaders can exploit nationalism to invoke public support for war. Using empirical evidence on conflicts excluding the two world wars, Rosato points out that casualties of democratic nations have remained small, leading Rosato to argue that the general public rarely suffers losses associated with war and therefore has little incentive to organize dissent (Rosato, 2003). ).One could argue that the loss of any life would create an incentive for citizens to organize dissent. However, Rosato's next point – that nationalism trumps cost concerns – can be used to explain why such dissent would be limited and… halfway through the paper… not an issue in this situation. In some cases, the cost of war plays no role in explaining the democratic peace, but only in explaining why democracies are unlikely to engage in fewer wars overall. While nationalism can be used to overcome concerns about the cost of war and mobilize popular support, it does not work against nations that share similar principles and in fact works against the predilection towards war. In part, this could help redeem the public constraint component of the structural explanation of the democratic peace. In particular, when combined with the assumption that democratic peace is valid only in the post-World War II regions of the Americas and Western Europe, this explanation becomes more plausible. Works Cited Rosato, S. (2003). The flawed logic of democratic peace theory. The American journal of political science, 97(4), 585–602.