In the begin­ning years of this blog, I pub­lished a series of arti­cles called “Med­i­ta­tions on Democ­racy and Dic­ta­tor­ship” which are still reg­u­larly read today, and have had some influ­ence. They still elic­it inquiries from remote cor­ners of the globe. They are now buried in the back pages of the blog, so I’m mov­ing them up the chrono­log­i­cal counter so they can have anoth­er round of vis­i­bil­ity, espe­cially (I hope) with younger read­ers. I am re-post­ing them in their orig­i­nal sequence over part of 2018. Some ref­er­ences in these “med­i­ta­tions” will date them to 2007–2008, when they were writ­ten. But I will leave them un-retouched, though I may occa­sion­ally append some ret­ro­spec­tive notes. Most­ly, they deal with abstract issues that do not need updating.

For this Med­i­ta­tion on Democ­ra­cy, the sixth in the series, I will under­take a cri­tique of some cur­rent­ly dom­i­nant ideas about the role of democ­ra­cy in human his­to­ry, and attempt to pro­vide a con­cep­tu­al frame­work for look­ing at democ­ra­cy in a dif­fer­ent, more real­is­tic way. This will mean that some of the ground cov­ered in ear­li­er med­i­ta­tions will be revis­it­ed. It will also draw on the col­lab­o­ra­tive work between myself and Prof. Steven Muhlberg­er, pub­lished in the Jour­nal of World His­to­ry, and on the World His­to­ry of Democ­ra­cy Web­site. I am exclu­sive­ly respon­si­ble, how­ev­er, for the views expressed in this series. 

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