Waves of democracy

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In political science, the waves of democracy or waves of democratization are major surges of democracy that have occurred in history. Although the term appears at least as early as 1887,^[1] it was popularized by Samuel P. Huntington, a political scientist at Harvard University, in his article published in the Journal of Democracy and further expounded in his 1991 book, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. Democratization waves have been linked to sudden shifts in the distribution of power among the great powers, which created openings and incentives to introduce sweeping domestic reforms.^[2][3]

Scholars debate the precise number of democratic waves. Huntington describes three waves: the first "slow" wave of the 19th century, a second wave after World War II, and a third wave beginning in the mid-1970s in southern Europe, followed by Latin America and Asia. Though his book does not discuss the collapse of the Soviet bloc, a number of scholars have taken the "Third Wave" to include the democratic transitions of 1989–1991.^[4]

Seva Gunitsky of the University of Toronto has referred to 13 waves, from the Atlantic Revolutions of the 18th century to the Arab Spring of the 21st.^[5] Scholars have also noted that the appearance of "waves" of democracy largely vanishes when women's suffrage is taken into account. Some countries change their positions quite dramatically: Switzerland, which is typically included as part of the first wave, did not grant women the right to vote until 1971.^[6]