ABSTRACT
Political systems and religious beliefs remain major fault lines in global affairs. Yet, the history of democratization shows remarkable continuity over time and across continents. If the Magna Carta planted the seed of democratization in England, the Enlightenment became the fuel that has powered it far and wide. Yet it took the English much contestation and civil wars to progress from theocratic monarchy toward democracy. Eventually, England became the bridgehead for the democratization of the rest of Europe and incrementally much of the rest of the world. Along the way, there were more uprisings, bloody revolutions (most notably America’s and France’s), two World Wars, decolonization, and the rise and fall of communism in Eastern Europe. The present Islamist resistance to the trajectory of the Enlightenment is very much along the lines of the Monarchists’ attempt to squash the parliamentarians in 17th-century England. It has been a long—and tumultuous—march.
