The territorial peace theory poses the most prominent challenge to the democratic peace theory. Although territorial peace theory has generated robust results in quantitative studies, the domestic processes involved in regime formation and change pre- and post-resolution of territorial threats still warrant consideration. This leaves open avenues of research that might augment the theory’s applicability to certain regime types rather than being understood as a universally applied systemic theory. This study examines two democratic and non-democratic dyads that do not entirely conform to territorial peace theory to help explain regime type formation. These case studies also investigate domestic processes of regime response to external territorial threat, and the impact of this threat on regime type.