The "third wave of democratization" (Huntington 1991; Vanhanen 2000) has raised hopes for a more peaceful world. The thesis of the democratic peace suggests that the spread of democracy will promote a decline in interstate warfare (Doyle 1986; Russett 1993), at least once the unsettling effects of the transition period are overcome (Ward and Gleditsch 1998). But does democratization also lead to civil peace?

Considerable research has examined how regime type or the level of democracy relates to domestic conflict. Much of it focuses on the result that semidemocracies (regimes intermediate between a democracy and an autocracy) exhibit a higher propensity for civil conflict ...