Historical Waves of Democratization
Channel: Salvatore Babones
Date: 17/04/2016

"Democracy" is an ancient Greek word that means "people rule" but the ancient Greek idea of democracy bears little resemblance to what we mean by democracy today.  Most of today's democracies draw their heritage directly from the three Western models of the United Kingdom, the United States, and France.  Before 1800 there were at most three major democracies in the world, but over the last 200 years the number of democracies has expanded dramatically.  Still, even today most countries are still only partly (if at all) democratic and only partly (if at all) free.