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War is the most destructive activity of mankind; yet it has been and remains a persistent pattern of international relations. That is why the research on the subject of war and peace is a very important study-field of social sciences. The primary interest of the research in this area is to explain why wars occur. Following Kant´s idea of Perpetual Peace, the "Democratic Peace Proposition" asserts that democracies do not fight each other and that a world of democratic states would therefore be a world of peace. This proposition is accepted by many scholars of international politics, and by some policy makers. The democratic peace proposition is not only theoretically important, but it also has real-world importance as well. This book, in its broadest sense, is an attempt to provide an overview to war and peace studies; in its particular sense, it will review the democratic peace literature and evaluate it in relation to war and peace studies. Moreover, this study aims to contribute to the debate on the war and peace research by suggesting that a structural understanding of world politics may offer better chances to understand the causes of wars in the international system.

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Bihter €arhoglu, born in Ankara-Turkey, completed her undergraduate degree in Middle East Technical University and hold her master´s degree in Political Science at the Freie Universitaet-Berlin. She is currently working as a research assistant at the Department of International Relations at the Faculty of Political Science at Ankara University.

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