Does democracy carry within it a poison pill that guarantees its own eventual destruction?
The modern democratic state — be it a constitutional republic, parliamentary democracy, or constitutional monarchy — has only been in existence for about 320 years, dating from the Glorious Revolution of 1688 when King James II of England was deposed and the power of the monarchy constitutionally limited. Or, if the Dutch Republic is taken as the benchmark, another century can be added to democracy’s pedigree. The Althing in Iceland has governed continuously for more than a thousand years, but the Icelandic model is somewhat different from the rest of the European democracies, and is not the ancestor of any of the others. So, for our purposes, the Age of Democracy covers the last four hundred years — and may well be drawing rapidly to a close. Here.
