This book explores an enduring empirical puzzle of the democratic peace: Why don’t the factors causing peace between democracies also block democracies from attacking dictatorships? To tackle this puzzle, Schramm goes beyond a focus on domestic political institutions, incorporating psychological and social factors. The book proposes that during conflicts with personalist dictators, democratic leaders resort to cognitive shortcuts to understand the nature of the opponent. Further, the social identity of leaders as liberal democrats pushes them to frame personalist dictator opponents as threatening, in turn making the democratic use of force against the personalist dictator adversary more likely. The theory also proposes that the emotion of anger interacts with this dynamic, as cognitive shortcuts fuel and are fueled by anger, and anger in turn reinforces and is reinforced by liberal democratic identity. The book presents two sets of empirical tests. The first include quantitative, cross-national, tests of conflict initiation behavior, looking at militarized interstate disputes, crises, and wars. Those empirical tests demonstrate that amongst all pairs of states, liberal democracies are particularly likely to initiate force against personalist dictatorships. The second set of tests includes qualitative case studies. The book provides close examinations of US and British decision-making during the 1956 Suez Crisis, US and British decision-making during the 1990 –‘91 Gulf Crisis and War, and the decision-making of several non-democracies during the same crisis. The first two case studies in particular make thorough use of primary, archival materials. Scholars and students interested in the connections between domestic politics and international conflict will find this book to be an intriguing contribution. Incorporating psychological dynamics into understanding domestic political sources of conflict is an especially constructive insight, lighting the way for additional research.