Democratization in long perspective

Abstract

Introduction Democracy is a mechanism of collective choice and a form of social organization that can be considered a superior substitute for other such mechanisms or forms of organization. As such, democracy may be expected to grow, or diffuse, over time among the world’s population, and the question posed in the present study is: does that growth follow a regular pattern, according to the Fisher-Pry substitution model of technological change? Our inquiry finds that, prior to 1800, democratic development was experimental in character, but it has been growing fairly rapidly since the middle of the 19th century, generally fitting quite closely the model of diffusion. At the present time, -40% of the world’s people live in democracies; by extrapolation, the model suggests that the democratic community might reach the 90% level toward 2100.