Democracies were actually rare until relatively recently, and combined with the fact that war is actually fairly rare (when looked at from the view point that of all interactions between sets of two countries, across time and space, only a few develop into war), the data set is quite limited. In addition to this criticism, it has been concluded by some researchers from their analysis of historical war periods that most new democracies came about during the Cold War. Also, it has been found that the state of democratic peace was significantly different only during this period as opposed to earlier periods, when the difference in the frequency of wars between democracies and that between other types of states was not really significant at all. This suggests the possibility that democratic peace during this period could have been the result of the need to create some sort of balance against a hostile and threatening Communist alliance. For this reason, democratic states would have avoided going to war against each other for fear of appearing to be weak to the greater perceived threat, which was the Soviets. In other words, the statistical evidence used to back up the democratic peace theory could actually be the product of alliance factors during the Cold War.

             Supporters of the democratic peace theory would assert that the secrecy of an authoritarian regime would likely mean that the leader could bluff with freedom, and that other states might easily misperceive his true motives and determination to carry through, unlike a liberal democracy, which would be transparent enough in its decision-making process that another democracy would be able to recognize its intention if it were willing to go to war. The result of all this is that war is less likely to occur as a result of a democratic nation's misperception that another liberal state is making empty threats or is bluffing. To test this idea China is the first country to be analyzed as they have an authoritarian regime.