Although many of Sebastian Rosato's critiques of the causal underpinnings of institutional and normative explanations of the democratic peace are valid, his analysis of the failure of public coercion is incomplete. Although I do not disagree with Rosato's assertion that "democracies are just as likely to go to war as non-democracies" (Rosato, 2003, p. 594), I believe she shifts to side of a key argument of the democratic peace: that democracies are less likely to wage 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 coercion does not reduce the willingness of democracies to go to war: (1) the costs of war fall on a small subset of the population, (2) nationalism can prevail on 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 the death toll in democratic nations has remained low, leading Rosato to assert that the general public rarely suffers casualties associated with war and is therefore little encouraged to organize dissidence (Rosato, 2003). ).One could argue that the loss of human life would inspire 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 why it is not a problem in this situation. In some cases, the cost of war does not play a role in explaining democratic peace, but only in why democracies are unlikely to engage in fewer wars in general. Although nationalism can be used to ignore concerns about the cost of war and mobilize popular support, it does not work against like-minded nations and in fact goes against the predilection for war. This can partly help redeem the public constraint component of the structural explanation of the democratic peace. Particularly, when combined with the hypothesis that the democratic peace is only valid 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 Political Science Review, 97(4), 585–602.