The rarity of democracy

“So as we watch the evidence today please consider where our nation is in its history. Consider whether we can survive for another 246 years. Most people in most places on earth have not been free. America is an exception. And America continues only because we bind ourselves to our founders’ principles, to our constitution. We recognize that some principles must be beyond politics, inviolate, and more important than any single American who has ever lived.” – Congresswoman Liz Cheney at the January 6th Committee Hearing on October 13, 2022

Few things are both more true and more easy to lose sight of than “Most people in most places on earth have not been free. America is an exception.”

• There are currently just under 200 countries in the world.

  • Numbers vary slightly because what is a country depends on who you talk to.

    • Or stated another way: every country in the world has their own list of what countries they recognize. Since different countries recognize different places as countries the exact number depends on who you are talking to, but most lists generally are in the 190-200 country range.

• In his seminal 1984 book “Democracies” political scientist Arend Lijphart identified that only 21 countries were continuously democracies from post-WWII (roughly a starting point of an election shortly after WWII) to 1980.

• According to Lijphart, 51 countries representing about 37% of the world’s population were democracies in January 1980, but three of these democracies were overthrown by military dictatorships later that same year.

• In 1996, when Lijphart updated his research in a new book “Patterns of Democracy,” he identified 36 countries that had been democracies continuously from 1977 or earlier to mid-1996.

• New democracies have emerged since 1977 – particularly in Eastern Europe and Latin America – but we have also seen significant backsliding away from democracy in places like Hungary and Venezuela.

  • Venezuela was one of Lijphart’s 36 democracies.

    • It is a good reminder of how quickly stable democracies can be destroyed without the sustained engagement of their citizens to contemplate that just two years after Lijphart wrote in 1996 Hugo Chavez was elected in 1998. Chavez then started undermining democratic institutions.

• In the vast majority of democracies today democratic government is less than a generation or two old.

  • As a result they also have citizens that remember living in pre-democratic times in their country.

There is quite a bit of debate in academic circles about how to determine when a country is democratic.

• For example, no country gave all their citizens the right to vote until 1893 when New Zealand became the first country where women had the right to vote.