depicting the Athenian politician
Pericles delivering his famous
funeral oration in front of the
Assembly Democratic assemblies are as old as the human species and are found throughout human history, but up until the nineteenth century, major political figures have largely opposed democracy. Republican theorists linked democracy to small size: as political units grew in size, the likelihood increased that the government would turn despotic. At the same time, small political units were vulnerable to conquest. According to Johns Hopkins University political scientist
Daniel Deudney, the creation of the United States, with its large size and its system of checks and balances, was a solution to the dual problems of size. Forms of democracy occurred organically in societies around the world that had no contact with each other.
Origins Greece and Rome Essay of it The term
democracy first appeared in ancient Greek political and philosophical thought in the city-state of
Athens during
classical antiquity. The word comes from
dêmos '(common) people' and
krátos 'force/might'. Under
Cleisthenes, what is generally held as the first example of a type of democracy in the sixth-century BC (508–507 BC) was established in Athens. Cleisthenes is referred to as "the father of
Athenian democracy". The first attested use of the word democracy is found in prose works of the 430s BC, such as
Herodotus'
Histories, but its usage was older by several decades, as two Athenians born in the 470s were named Democrates, a new political name—likely in support of democracy—given at a time of debates over constitutional issues in Athens.
Aeschylus also strongly alludes to the word in his play
The Suppliants, staged in c.463 BC, where he mentions "the demos's ruling hand" [
demou kratousa cheir]. Before that time, the word used to define the new political system of Cleisthenes was probably
isonomia, meaning political equality. , known as "the father of
Athenian democracy", on view at the
Ohio Statehouse, Columbus, Ohio Athenian democracy took the form of direct democracy, and it had two distinguishing features: the
random selection of ordinary citizens to fill the few existing government administrative and judicial offices, and a legislative assembly consisting of all Athenian citizens. All eligible citizens were allowed to speak and vote in the assembly, which set the laws of the city-state. However, Athenian citizenship excluded women, slaves, foreigners (μέτοικοι /
métoikoi), and youths below the age of military service. Effectively, only 1 in 4 residents in Athens qualified as citizens. Owning land was not a requirement for citizenship. The exclusion of large parts of the population from the citizen body is closely related to the ancient understanding of citizenship. In most of antiquity the benefit of citizenship was tied to the obligation to fight war campaigns. Athenian democracy was not only
direct in the sense that decisions were made by the assembled people, but also the
most direct in the sense that the people through the assembly,
boule and courts of law controlled the entire political process and a large proportion of citizens were involved constantly in the public business. Even though the rights of the individual were not secured by the Athenian constitution in the modern sense (the ancient Greeks had no word for "rights"), those who were citizens of Athens enjoyed their liberties not in opposition to the government but by living in a city that was not subject to another power and by not being subjects themselves to the rule of another person.
Range voting appeared in
Sparta as early as 700 BC. The
Spartan ecclesia was an assembly of the people, held once a month, in which every male citizen of at least 20 years of age could participate. In the assembly, Spartans elected leaders and cast votes by range voting and shouting (the vote is then decided on how loudly the crowd shouts).
Aristotle called this "childish", as compared with the stone voting ballots used by the Athenian citizenry. Sparta adopted it because of its simplicity, and to prevent any biased voting, buying, or cheating that was predominant in the early democratic elections. , the patron goddess of
Athens, in front of the
Austrian Parliament Building. Athena has been used as an international symbol of freedom and democracy since at least the late eighteenth century. In addition, the
overthrow of the Roman Kingdom created a system with a democratic element in the form of many different
popular assamblies. Even though the
Roman Republic contributed significantly to many aspects of democracy, only a fraction of Romans were citizens with votes in elections for magistrates. The votes of the powerful were given more weight through a system of
weighted voting, so most high officials, including members of the
Senate, came from a few wealthy and noble families. The Roman model of governance inspired many political thinkers over the centuries.
Ancient India Vaishali, capital city of the
Vajjika League (Vrijji
mahajanapada) of
India, is considered one of the first examples of a
republic around the 6th century BC.
Americas Other cultures, such as the
Iroquois in the Americas also developed a form of democratic society between 1450 and 1660 (and possibly in 1142), well before contact with the Europeans. This democracy continues to the present day and is the world's oldest standing representative democracy.
Africa Middle Ages While most regions in
Europe during the
Middle Ages were ruled by
clergy or
feudal lords, there existed various systems involving elections or assemblies, although often only involving a small part of the population. In
Scandinavia, bodies known as
things consisted of freemen presided by a
lawspeaker. These deliberative bodies were responsible for settling political questions, and variants included the
Althing in
Iceland and the
Løgting in the
Faeroe Islands. The
veche, found in
Eastern Europe, was a similar body to the Scandinavian thing. In the Roman
Catholic Church, the
pope has been elected by a
papal conclave composed of cardinals since 1059. The first documented parliamentary body in Europe was the
Cortes of León. Established by
Alfonso IX in 1188, the Cortes had authority over setting taxation, foreign affairs and legislating, though the exact nature of its role remains disputed. The
Republic of Ragusa, established in 1358 and centered around the city of
Dubrovnik, provided representation and voting rights to its male aristocracy only. Various Italian city-states and polities had republic forms of government. For instance, the
Republic of Florence, established in 1115, was led by the
Signoria whose members were chosen by
sortition. In the 10th–15th century
Frisia, a distinctly non-feudal society, the right to vote on local matters and on county officials was based on land size. The
Kouroukan Fouga divided the
Mali Empire into ruling clans (lineages) that were represented at a great assembly called the
Gbara. However, the charter made Mali more similar to a
constitutional monarchy than a
democratic republic. , 1215, England The
Parliament of England had its roots in the restrictions on the power of kings written into
Magna Carta (1215), which explicitly protected certain rights of the King's subjects and implicitly supported what became the English writ of
habeas corpus, safeguarding individual freedom against unlawful imprisonment with the right to appeal. The first representative national assembly in
England was
Simon de Montfort's Parliament in 1265. The emergence of
petitioning is some of the earliest evidence of parliament being used as a forum to address the general grievances of ordinary people. However, the power to call parliament remained at the pleasure of the monarch. Studies have linked the emergence of parliamentary institutions in Europe during the medieval period to urban agglomeration and the creation of new classes, such as artisans, as well as the presence of nobility and religious elites. Scholars have also linked the emergence of representative government to Europe's relative political fragmentation. Political scientist
David Stasavage links the fragmentation of Europe, and its subsequent democratization, to the manner in which the Roman Empire collapsed: Roman territory was conquered by small fragmented groups of Germanic tribes, thus leading to the creation of small political units where rulers were relatively weak and needed the consent of the governed to ward off foreign threats. In
Poland,
noble democracy was characterized by an increase in the activity of the middle
nobility, which wanted to increase their share in exercising power at the expense of the magnates. Magnates dominated the most important offices in the state (secular and ecclesiastical) and sat on the royal council, later the senate. The growing importance of the middle nobility had an impact on the establishment of the institution of the land
sejmik (local assembly), which subsequently obtained more rights. During the fifteenth and first half of the sixteenth century, sejmiks received more and more power and became the most important institutions of local power. In 1454,
Casimir IV Jagiellon granted the sejmiks the right to decide on taxes and to convene a mass mobilization in the
Nieszawa Statutes. He also pledged not to create new laws without their consent.
Modern era Early modern period progressively limited the power of the
English monarchy, a process that arguably culminated in the
English Civil War. In 17th century England, there was
renewed interest in Magna Carta. The Parliament of England passed the
Petition of Right in 1628 which established certain liberties for subjects. The
English Civil War (1642–1651) was fought between the King and an oligarchic but elected Parliament, during which the idea of a political party took form with groups debating rights to political representation during the
Putney Debates of 1647. Subsequently,
the Protectorate (1653–59) and the
English Restoration (1660) restored more autocratic rule, although Parliament passed the
Habeas Corpus Act in 1679 which strengthened the convention that forbade detention lacking sufficient cause or evidence. After the
Glorious Revolution of 1688, the
Bill of Rights was enacted in 1689 which codified certain rights and liberties and is still in effect. The Bill set out the requirement for regular elections, rules for freedom of speech in Parliament and limited the power of the monarch, ensuring that, unlike much of Europe at the time,
royal absolutism would not prevail. Economic historians
Douglass North and
Barry Weingast have characterized the institutions implemented in the Glorious Revolution as a resounding success in terms of restraining the government and ensuring protection for property rights. expanded on
Thomas Hobbes's
social contract theory and developed the concept of
natural rights, the
right to private property and the principle of
consent of the governed. His ideas form the ideological basis of
liberal democracies today. Renewed interest in the Magna Carta, the English Civil War, and the Glorious Revolution in the 17th century prompted the growth of
political philosophy on the British Isles.
Thomas Hobbes was the first philosopher to articulate a detailed
social contract theory. Writing in the
Leviathan (1651), Hobbes theorized that individuals living in the
state of nature led lives that were "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short" and constantly waged a
war of all against all. In order to prevent the occurrence of an anarchic state of nature, Hobbes reasoned that individuals ceded their rights to a strong, authoritarian power. In other words, Hobbes advocated for an absolute monarchy which, in his opinion, was the best form of government. Later, philosopher and physician
John Locke would posit a different interpretation of social contract theory. Writing in his
Two Treatises of Government (1689), Locke posited that all individuals possessed the inalienable rights to life, liberty and estate (property). According to Locke, individuals would voluntarily come together to form a state for the purposes of defending their rights. Particularly important for Locke were property rights, whose protection Locke deemed to be a government's primary purpose. Furthermore, Locke asserted that governments were
legitimate only if they held the
consent of the governed. For Locke, citizens had the
right to revolt against a government that acted against their interest or became tyrannical. Although they were not widely read during his lifetime, Locke's works are considered the founding documents of
liberal thought and profoundly influenced the leaders of the
American Revolution and later the
French Revolution. His liberal democratic framework of governance remains the preeminent form of democracy in the world. In the Cossack republics of Ukraine in the 16th and 17th centuries, the
Cossack Hetmanate and
Zaporizhian Sich, the holder of the highest post of
Hetman was elected by the representatives from the country's districts. In North America, representative government began in
Jamestown, Virginia, with the election of the
House of Burgesses (forerunner of the
Virginia General Assembly) in 1619. English Puritans who migrated from 1620 established colonies in New England whose local governance was democratic; the hard power of these local assemblies
varied greatly throughout the
colonial time period however officially they held only small amounts of devolved power, as ultimate authority belonged to the Crown and Parliament. The
Puritans (
Pilgrim Fathers),
Baptists, and
Quakers who founded these colonies applied the democratic organisation of their congregations also to the administration of their communities in worldly matters.
18th and 19th centuries addressing the
House of Commons of the United Kingdom The
first Parliament of Great Britain was established in 1707, after the merger of the
Kingdom of England and the
Kingdom of Scotland under the
Acts of Union. Two key documents of the
UK's uncodified constitution, the English
Declaration of Right, 1689 (restated in the
Bill of Rights 1689) and the Scottish
Claim of Right 1689, had both cemented Parliament's position as the supreme law-making body and said that the "election of members of Parliament ought to be free". However, Parliament was only elected by male property owners, which amounted to 3% of the population in 1780. The first known British person of
African heritage to vote in a general election,
Ignatius Sancho, voted in 1774 and 1780. During the
Age of Liberty in Sweden (1718–1772),
civil rights were expanded and power shifted from the monarch to parliament. The taxed peasantry was represented in parliament, although with little influence, but commoners without taxed property had no suffrage. The creation of the short-lived
Corsican Republic in 1755 was an early attempt to adopt a democratic
constitution (all men and women above age of 25 could vote). This
Corsican Constitution was the first based on
Enlightenment principles and included
female suffrage, something that was not included in most other democracies until the 20th century. on the east coast of North America issued a
Declaration of Independence in 1776
Colonial America had similar property qualifications as Britain, and in the period before 1776 the abundance and availability of land meant that large numbers of colonists met such requirements with at least 60 per cent of adult white males able to vote. The great majority of white men were farmers who met the property ownership or taxpaying requirements. With few exceptions, no blacks or women could vote.
Vermont, which, on declaring independence of Great Britain in 1777, adopted a constitution modelled on Pennsylvania's citizenship and democratic suffrage for males with or without property. The
United States Constitution of 1787 is the oldest surviving, still active, governmental
codified constitution. The Constitution provided for an elected government and protected civil rights and liberties, but did not end
slavery nor extend
voting rights in the United States, instead leaving the issue of suffrage to the individual states. Generally, states limited suffrage to white male property owners and taxpayers. At the time of the first
Presidential election in 1789, about 6% of the population was eligible to vote. The
Naturalization Act of 1790 limited U.S. citizenship to whites only. The
Bill of Rights in 1791 set limits on government power to protect personal freedoms but had little impact on judgements by the courts for the first 130 years after ratification. philosophers, the
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen had a significant impact on the development of popular conceptions of
individual liberty and democracy in Europe and worldwide. In 1789,
Revolutionary France adopted the
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and, although short-lived, the
National Convention was elected by all men in 1792. The
Polish-Lithuanian Constitution of 3 May 1791 sought to implement a more effective
constitutional monarchy, introduced political equality between townspeople and nobility, and placed the peasants under the protection of the government, mitigating the worst abuses of
serfdom. In force for less than 19 months, it was declared null and void by the
Grodno Sejm that met in 1793. North Carolina was the last state to abolish property qualification in 1856 resulting in a close approximation to universal white male suffrage (however tax-paying requirements remained in five states in 1860 and survived in two states until the 20th century). In the
1860 United States census, the slave population had grown to four million, and in
Reconstruction after the Civil War, three constitutional amendments were passed: the
13th Amendment (1865) that ended slavery; the
14th Amendment (1869) that gave black people citizenship, and the
15th Amendment (1870) that gave black males a nominal right to vote. Full enfranchisement of citizens was not secured until after the
civil rights movement gained passage by the US Congress of the
Voting Rights Act of 1965. in France in 1848 The voting franchise in the United Kingdom was expanded and made more uniform in a
series of reforms that began with the
Reform Act 1832 and continued into the 20th century, notably with the
Representation of the People Act 1918 and the
Equal Franchise Act 1928.
Universal male suffrage was established in
France in March 1848 in the wake of the
French Revolution of 1848. During that year, several
revolutions broke out in Europe as rulers were confronted with popular demands for liberal constitutions and more democratic government. In 1876, the Ottoman Empire transitioned from an
absolute monarchy to a constitutional one, and held two elections the next year to elect members to her newly formed parliament. Provisional Electoral Regulations were issued, stating that the elected members of the Provincial Administrative Councils would elect members to the first
Parliament. Later that year, a new constitution was promulgated, which provided for a
bicameral Parliament with a
Senate appointed by
the Sultan and a popularly elected
Chamber of Deputies. Only men above the age of 30 who were competent in
Turkish and had full civil rights were allowed to stand for election. Reasons for disqualification included holding dual citizenship, being employed by a foreign government, being bankrupt, employed as a servant, or having "notoriety for ill deeds". Full universal suffrage was achieved in 1934. In 1893, the self-governing colony
New Zealand became the first country in the world (except for the short-lived 18th-century Corsican Republic) to establish active
universal suffrage by recognizing women as having the right to vote.
20th and 21st centuries scale, another widely used measure of democracy 20th-century transitions to liberal democracy have come in successive "
waves of democracy", variously resulting from wars, revolutions,
decolonisation, and religious and economic circumstances. Global waves of "democratic regression" reversing democratization, have also occurred in the 1920s and 30s, in the 1960s and 1970s, and in the 2010s. in the early 20th century
World War I and the dissolution of the autocratic
Ottoman and
Austro-Hungarian empires resulted in the creation of new nation-states in Europe, most of them at least nominally democratic. In the 1920s democratic movements flourished and
women's suffrage advanced, but the
Great Depression brought disenchantment and most of the countries of Europe, Latin America, and Asia turned to strong-man rule or dictatorships.
Fascism and dictatorships flourished in
Nazi Germany,
Italy,
Spain and
Portugal, as well as non-democratic governments in the
Baltics, the
Balkans,
Brazil,
Cuba,
China, and
Japan, among others. in 1905:
Leon Trotsky in the center. The
soviets were as an early example of a
workers council.
World War II brought a definitive reversal of this trend in Western Europe. The
democratisation of the
American, British, and French sectors of occupied Germany (disputed), Austria, Italy, and the
occupied Japan served as a model for the later theory of
government change. However, most of
Eastern Europe, including the
Soviet sector of Germany fell into the non-democratic
Soviet-dominated bloc. The war was followed by
decolonisation, and again most of the new independent states had nominally democratic constitutions.
India emerged as the world's largest democracy and continues to be so. Countries that were once part of the
British Empire often adopted the British
Westminster system. In 1948, the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights mandated democracy: voting in the
1994 multi-racial elections in South Africa. It was the first time he had voted in his life. By 1960, the vast majority of country-states were nominally democracies, although most of the world's populations lived in nominal democracies that experienced sham elections, and other forms of subterfuge (particularly in
"Communist" states and the former colonies). A subsequent wave of
democratisation brought substantial gains toward true liberal democracy for many states, dubbed "third wave of democracy". Portugal, Spain, and several of the military dictatorships in South America returned to civilian rule in the 1970s and 1980s. This was followed by countries in
East and
South Asia by the mid-to-late 1980s. Economic malaise in the 1980s, along with resentment of Soviet oppression, contributed to the
collapse of the Soviet Union, the associated end of the
Cold War, and the democratisation and
liberalisation of the former
Eastern bloc countries. The most successful of the new democracies were those geographically and culturally closest to western Europe, and they are now either part of the
European Union or
candidate states. In 1986, after the toppling of the most prominent Asian dictatorship, the only democratic state of its kind at the time emerged in the
Philippines with the rise of
Corazon Aquino, who would later be known as the mother of
Asian democracy. taking the Oath of Office, becoming the first female president in Asia The liberal trend spread to some states in Africa in the 1990s, most prominently in South Africa. Some recent examples of attempts of liberalisation include the
Indonesian Revolution of 1998, the
Bulldozer Revolution in
Yugoslavia, the
Rose Revolution in
Georgia, the
Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the
Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, the
Tulip Revolution in
Kyrgyzstan, and the
Jasmine Revolution in
Tunisia. According to
Freedom House, in 2007 there were 123 electoral democracies (up from 40 in 1972). According to
World Forum on Democracy, electoral democracies now represent 120 of the 192 existing countries and constitute 58.2 per cent of the world's population. At the same time liberal democracies i.e. countries Freedom House regards as free and respectful of basic human rights and the rule of law are 85 in number and represent 38 per cent of the global population. Also in 2007 the
United Nations declared 15 September the
International Day of Democracy. in 2008 Many countries reduced their
voting age to 18 years; the major democracies began to do so in the 1970s starting in Western Europe and North America. Most electoral democracies continue to exclude those younger than 18 from voting. The voting age has been lowered to 16 for national elections in a number of countries, including Brazil, Austria, Cuba, and Nicaragua. In California, a 2004 proposal to permit a quarter vote at 14 and a half vote at 16 was ultimately defeated. In 2008, the German parliament proposed but shelved a bill that would grant the vote to each citizen at birth, to be used by a parent until the child claims it for themselves. According to Freedom House, starting in 2005, there have been 17 consecutive years in which declines in political rights and civil liberties throughout the world have outnumbered improvements, as
populist and
nationalist political forces have gained ground everywhere from Poland (under the
Law and Justice party) to the Philippines (under
Rodrigo Duterte).
The Christian Science Monitor reported that
nationalist and
populist political ideologies were gaining ground, at the expense of
rule of law, in countries like Poland, Turkey and Hungary. For example, in Poland, the President
appointed 27 new Supreme Court judges over legal objections from the
European Commission. In Turkey, thousands of judges were removed from their positions following a
failed coup attempt during a
government crackdown . "
Democratic backsliding" in the 2010s were attributed to economic inequality and social discontent, personalism, poor government's management of the
COVID-19 pandemic, as well as other factors such as manipulation of civil society, "toxic polarization", foreign disinformation campaigns, racism and nativism, excessive executive power, and decreased power of the opposition. Within English-speaking Western democracies, "protection-based" attitudes combining cultural conservatism and leftist economic attitudes were the strongest predictor of support for authoritarian modes of governance. ==Theory==
Early theory Aristotle's
democratic theory contrasted rule by the many (democracy/
timocracy), with rule by the few (
oligarchy/
aristocracy/
elitism), and with rule by a single person (
tyranny/
autocracy/
absolute monarchy). He also thought that there was a good and a bad variant of each system (he considered democracy to be the degenerate counterpart to timocracy). A common view among early and renaissance
Republican theorists was that democracy could only survive in small political communities.
Anthony Downs argues that ideological political parties are necessary to act as a mediating broker between individuals and governments. On the other hand,
direct democracy, where citizens vote directly on legislative proposals, can show better aggregation in cases of differences in preferences between elites and voters.
Polyarchy Robert A. Dahl argues that the fundamental democratic principle is that, when it comes to binding collective decisions, each person in a political community is entitled to have his/her interests be given equal consideration. He uses the term polyarchy ("rule by many") to refer to societies in which there exists a certain set of institutions and procedures which are perceived as leading to such democracy. First and foremost among these institutions is the regular occurrence of free and open
elections which are used to select representatives who then manage all or most of the public policy of the society. However, these polyarchic procedures may not create a full democracy if, for example, poverty prevents political participation. Similarly,
Ronald Dworkin argues that "democracy is a substantive, not a merely procedural, ideal."
Deliberation Deliberative democracy is based on the notion that democracy is government by
deliberation. Unlike aggregative democracy, deliberative democracy holds that, for a democratic decision to be legitimate, it must be preceded by authentic deliberation, not merely the aggregation of preferences that occurs in voting. Authentic deliberation is deliberation among decision-makers that is free from distortions of unequal political power, such as power a decision-maker obtained through economic wealth or the support of interest groups. If the decision-makers cannot reach
consensus after authentically deliberating on a proposal, then they vote on the proposal using a form of majority rule.
Citizens assemblies are considered by many scholars as practical examples of deliberative democracy, with a recent
OECD report identifying citizens assemblies as an increasingly popular mechanism to involve citizens in governmental decision-making. Proponents of direct democracy view citizens do not rule themselves unless they directly decide laws and policies. Political activity can be valuable in itself, it socialises and educates citizens, and
popular participation can check powerful elites.
In the search of common understanding ), two approaches, concepts (
Polity IV vs
Freedom House) These problems, challenges strike through to measuring its quality, assessing and comparing it, as
Seva Gunitsky pointed in 2015 in the
Washington Post, based upon his research for
Ranking the World – Grading States as a Tool of Global Governance, that measuring democracy can mislead as much as clarify – a problem for academics, policy-makers and anyone who cares about democracy. In 2011,
Michael Coppedge,
John Gerring et al. proposed an approach to such conceptualization and measurement. In their paper
Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy: A New Approach they review some of the weaknesses among contemporary and older approaches, then lay out their approach, characterizing it as
historical,
multidimensional,
disaggregated, and
transparent. The authors propose to create a new set of indicators, four features, considered together, to conceptualize and measure democracy. First,
historical, extending indicators of democracy back through modern history, wherever possible. Second, a
multidimensional approach to the problem of conceptualizing democracy. Third, to collect information relevant to democracy at a highly
disaggregated level. Fourth,
transparent, a strategy for data collection and presentation that should enhance the precision, validity, transparency, and legitimacy of the resulting indicators. They also sum up the conceptions of democracy into six –
electoral,
liberal,
majoritarian,
participatory,
deliberative, and
egalitarian, which taken together offer a fairly comprehensive accounting of the concept of democracy as it is employed today (see overview in the table below). In the conclusion they review some of the payoffs such an approach might bring to the study of democracy. ==Measurement of democracy==