Review Essay How Did Modern Democracy Spread So Widely?

All countries with democratic institutions today have been influenced by historical political developments in Western Europe. The process through which parliamentary institutions first emerged in the thirteenth century and then gradually evolved into something resembling modern democracy has had a global impact. European practices were exported, imported, and imposed. This is not to say that Europeans invented the very practice of democracy. Likewise, as democracy has spread to the non-European world, it has taken on local inflections that often hail back to practices and terms, such as assembly names, that pre-date European conquest. Three recent important contributions - reviewed here - give us a new view of the spread of modern democracy.