While democracy flourished in ancient Greece, the evolution of contemporary democratic systems has followed a turbulent course. The following stand out as essential milestones in the history of democracy:
- emerged from the French and American Revolutions
- decisive transformation with the appearance of the great labour parties from the second half of the nineteenth century onwards
- serious crisis with totalitarian movements prior to and following World War II
- noticeably exported by decolonisation processes (because of the populations affected by its introduction into countries with cultures that are not western)
- appears to be in spectacular expansion today, following the fall of the Berlin Wall
On the other hand, the extension of the right to vote and the evolution of political parties in representative democracies took place in a highly intricate fashion. The first parties reflected the structure of the earliest constitutionalisation, with restricted the right to vote and political participation limited to a small portion of the adult male population, with lax programs and ideologies and a decisive personal component. Their evolution has been radically different in the American and European democracies, each of which has exported its model to other areas of political and cultural influence.
In broad terms, the evolution of the political parties underwent the following phases of development:
From the second half of the 19th century, the incorporation of the working classes into active political life occurred, even before the gradual extension of the right to suffrage that lead to the male vote becoming universal, during the first third of the century. At that point, parties
of class were formed, with a strong social and ideological component, emerging as a branch of the unions dedicated to parliamentary politics. In turn, a distinction can be drawn between those who accepted the electoral procedure as a democratic access route to the government and those who promoted the revolutionary course of conquest for power.
The period between the World Wars saw two major developments:
- the extension of the female vote
- the greatest emergence of mass parties in Europe
The predominance and open confrontation between those of socialist and those of fascist ideology cornered the liberal parties until the victory of the parliamentary democracies and the Soviet Union in World War II relegated those of a fascist nature to residual regimes.
The decolonisation processes gave rise to the appearance of two large parties models:
- the mass parties of a democratic nature, in countries that maintained representative systems, even if it was with one dominant party (as was the case in India)
- those in which one decolonising party or front evolved to a single party state, with only partly open and representative elections (frequently the case on the African and Asian continents).
The American continent, on the other hand, generally maintained the liberal party model of bourgeois origin, due to the influence of Spanish constitutionalisation and, later on, of the bi-party model of the United States.
The recognition of universal suffrage obviously had vastly different effects on the democratic regimes and those that maintained non-competitive electoral processes.
Currently one might say that there is a wave of democratisation, which started in the southern European countries towards the end of the seventies, spread throughout Latin America in the eighties and progressed through Eastern Europe and numerous African countries from the end of the previous decade, with organised and effective international assistance.
