ABSTRACT
This chapter maps the staggering democratization processes that have engulfed the world in the latest 250 years. We begin by narratively describing the genesis of these developments in the form of the political revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Next, we summarize and assess Samuel P. Huntington’s argument that democracy has spread in a series of wave-like movements. Our analysis lends some support to Huntington’s perspective, but it also identifies short-term spikes and other partly discordant trends. We therefore present a more fine-grained mapping of historical developments that are not captured by a dichotomous distinction between democracy and autocracy. This exercise reveals that formal aspects of democracy, suffrage restrictions, and whether elections are held have followed trajectories other than those followed by the quality of elections and respect for political liberties – and that the prevalence of different regime types has peaked in different time periods. Finally, an overview of modes of democratic transition and breakdown allows us to identify several important developments over time. These empirical mappings show that while the path has been strewn with obstacles, on the whole democracy has spread to become the standard – though definitely not sole – regime form of our time.
