DEMOCRACY'S THIRD WAVE
The history of democracy is not a slow steady advance, in the view of political scientist Samuel P. Huntington of Harvard University, but a succession of waves that have advanced, receded, then rolled in and crested again.
Writing in the Journal of Democracy, Huntington identifies three historical or "long waves" of democracy. The first began in the early 19th century with the extension of the right to vote to a large proportion of the male population in the United States, and continued until the 1920s. during this period, some 29 democracies came into being. The ebb, or reversal, of the first wave began in 1922 with the accession of Mussolini to power in Italy and lasted until 1942, when the number of the world's democracies had been reduced to 12.
A second wave began with the triumph of the Allis in World War II, cresting in 1962 when the number of democracies had risen to 36. the ebbing of the second wave between 1962 and the mid-1970s brought it back down to 30. Since 1974, however, democracy's third wave has added approximately 30 new democracies, doubling the number of such societies.
Has the third wave yet crested? Will there now be a significant reversal that eliminates many of democracy's gains of the 1970s and 1980s? Huntington analyzes the complex set of political and cultural forces at work in different regions of the world without drawing any definitive conclusions. An ebbing of democracy's third wave is always possible, he concludes, possibly followed by a fourth wave sometime in the 21st century.
But such a pattern is by no means inevitable. "Judging by the record of the past, the two most decisive factors affecting the future consolidation and expansion of democracy will be economic development and political leadership," Huntington writes. "Economic development makes democracy possible; political leadership makes it real."
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