History of Democracy From 18^th-20^th centuries

Magna Carta, 1215, England

18th and 19th centuries

Number of nations 1800-2003 scoring 8 or higher on Polity IV scale, another widely used measure of democracy.

The United States Constitution, adopted in 1788, provided for an elected government and protected civil rights and liberties for some.

In the colonial period before 1776, and for some time after, only adult white male property owners could vote; enslaved Africans, free black people and women were not extended the franchise. On the American frontier, democracy became a way of life, with widespread social, economic and political equality.^[39] However, slavery was a social and economic institution, particularly in eleven states in the American South. In Reconstruction after the Civil War (late 1860s) the newly freed slaves became citizens with (in the case of men) a nominal right to vote, and full enfranchisement of citizens was not secured until after the African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955–1968) which campaigned for freedom ofoppression from white Americans, gained passage by the United States Congress of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The establishment of universal male suffrage in France in1848 was an important milestone in the history of democracy.

The Australian colonies became democratic during the mid 19th century, with South Australia being the first government in the world to introduce women's suffrage in 1861. (It was argued that as women would vote the same as their husbands, this essentially gave married men two votes, which was not unreasonable.)

New Zealand granted suffrage to (native) Māori men in 1867, white men in 1879, and women in 1893, thus becoming the first major nation to achieve universal suffrage. However, women were not eligible to stand for parliament until 1919.

Liberal democracies were few and often short-lived before the late nineteenth century, and various nations and territories have also claimed to be the first with universal suffrage.

20th century

Since World War II, democracy has gained widespread acceptance. This map displays the official self identification made by world governments with regard to democracy, as of March 2008. It shows the de jure status of democracy in the world. Governments self identified as democratic^[Governments not self identified as democratic: Vatican City, Saudi Arabia, Myanmar and Brunei.

20th century transitions to liberal democracy have come in successive "waves of democracy," variously resulting from wars, revolutions, decolonization, religious and economic circumstances. World War I and the dissolution of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires resulted in the creation of new nation-states from Europe, most of them at least nominally democratic.

In the 1920s democracy flourished, 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 regimes in the Baltics, the Balkans, Brazil, Cuba, China, and Japan, among others.^[45]

World War II brought a definitive reversal of this trend in western Europe. The successful democratization of theAmerican, British, and French sectors of occupied Germany

(disputed^[46]), Austria, Italy, and the occupied Japan served as a model for the later theory of regime change.

However, most of Eastern Europe, including the Soviet sector of Germany was forced into the non-democratic Soviet bloc. The war was followed by decolonization, 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.^[47]

In the decades following World War II, most western democratic nations had mixed economies and developed a welfare state, reflecting a general consensus among their electorates and political parties. By 1960, the vast majority of country-states were nominally democracies, although the majority of the world's populations lived in nations that experienced sham elections, and other forms of subterfuge (particularly in Communist nations and the former colonies.)

The End