political science Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and la ...

, the waves of democracy are major surges of

democracy Democracy (From grc, δημοκρατία, dēmokratía, ''dēmos'' 'people' and ''kratos'' 'rule') is a form of government in which people, the people have the authority to deliberate and decide legislation ("direct democracy"), or to choo ...

that have occurred in history. Although the term appears at least as early as 1887, it was popularized by Samuel P. Huntington, a political scientist at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

, in his article published in the ''

Journal of Democracy The ''Journal of Democracy'' is a quarterly academic journal established in 1990 and an official publication of the National Endowment for Democracy's International Forum for Democratic Studies. It covers the study of democracy, democratic regim ...

'' 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. 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 World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, 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. Other scholars, such as

Seva Gunitsky Seva Gunitsky is an American political scientist. He is an associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on the ways global forces and international politics affect democracy and domestic politics. He i ...

of the University of Toronto, have referred to thirteen waves from the 18th century to the

Arab Spring The Arab Spring ( ar, الربيع العربي) was a series of anti-government protests, uprisings and armed rebellions that spread across much of the Arab world in the early 2010s. It began in Tunisia in response to corruption and econo ...

(2011–2012).

Definition

In his 1991 book, '' The Third Wave'', Huntington defined a democratic wave as "a group of transitions from nondemocratic to democratic regimes that occur within a specified period of time and that significantly outnumber transitions in the opposite directions during that period of time." (Huntington 1991, 15) Mainwaring and Aníbal Pérez-Liñán (2014, 70) offer a similar definition: "any historical period during which there is a sustained and significant increase in the proportion of competitive regimes (democracies and semi-democracies)." Gunitsky (2018) defines a democratic wave as a clustering of attempted or successful democratic transitions, coupled with linkages among the transitions in that cluster.

Huntington's three waves

First wave

The first wave of democracy (1828–1926) began in the early 19th century when suffrage was granted to the majority of white males in the United States ("

Jacksonian democracy Jacksonian democracy was a 19th-century political philosophy in the United States that expanded suffrage to most white men over the age of 21, and restructured a number of federal institutions. Originating with the seventh U.S. president, And ...

"). This was followed by France, Britain, Canada, Australia, Italy, and Argentina, and a few others, before 1900. At its peak, after the breakup of the Russian, German, Austrian, and Ottoman empires in 1918, the first wave saw 29 democracies in the world. Reversal began in 1922, when Benito Mussolini rose to power in Italy. The collapse primarily hit newly formed democracies, which could not stand against the aggressive rise of expansionist communist, fascist, and militaristic authoritarian or totalitarian movements that systematically rejected democracy. The nadir of the first wave came in 1942, when the number of democracies in the world dropped to a mere twelve.

Second wave

The second wave began following the Allied victory in

, and crested nearly twenty years later, in 1962, with 36 recognised democracies in the world. The second wave ebbed as well at this point, and the total number dropped to thirty democracies between 1962 and the mid-1970s. But the "flat line" would not last for long, as the third wave was about to surge in a way no one had ever seen. Scholars have noted that the appearance of "waves" of democracy largely vanishes when women's suffrage is taken into account. Moreover, 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.

Third wave

The third wave began with the 1974 Carnation Revolution in Portugal and the late-1970s Spanish transition to democracy. This was followed by the historic democratic transitions in Latin America in the 1980s, Asia-Pacific countries (

Philippines The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no), * bik, Republika kan Filipinas * ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas * cbk, República de Filipinas * hil, Republ ...

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korean Peninsula and sharing a land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed by the Yellow Sea, while its eas ...

, and

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

) from 1986 to 1988, Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and sub-Saharan Africa, beginning in 1989. The expansion of democracy in some regions was stunning. In Latin America, only Colombia, Costa Rica, and Venezuela were democratic by 1978, and only Cuba and Haiti remained authoritarian by 1995, when the wave had swept across twenty countries. Huntington points out that three-fourths of the new democracies were Roman Catholic; most Protestant countries already were democratic. He emphasizes the Vatican Council of 1962, which turned the Church from defenders of the old established order into an opponent of totalitarianism. Countries undergoing or having undergone a transition to democracy during a wave are sometimes subject to

democratic backsliding Democratic backsliding, also called autocratization, is the decline in the democratic characteristics of a political system, and is the opposite of democratization. Democracy is the most popular form of government, with more than half of the nat ...

. Political scientists and theorists believe that the third wave has crested and will soon begin to ebb, just as its predecessors did in the first and second waves. In the period immediately following the onset of the "war on terror" after the 11 September 2001 attacks on the United States, some backsliding ensued. How significant or lasting that erosion is remains a subject of debate. Third-wave countries, including Portugal, Spain, South Korea, and Taiwan, have become fully consolidated democracies rather than backsliding. As of 2020, they even had stronger democracies than many counterparts with a much longer history as democratic countries.

Arab Spring

Experts have associated the collapse of several dictatorships in the

Middle East The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Province), East Thrace (Europ ...

and

North Africa North Africa, or Northern Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of Mauritania in ...

, a phenomenon known as the

, with the events that followed the fall of the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

in Eastern Europe. The similarity between the two phenomena inspired hope for a fourth wave of democratization. However, a few months after the apparent beginning of the transition, most of the Arab political openings closed, causing an inevitable pull-back. One of the most alarming cases was that of Egypt, where the government, controlled by the military, did not facilitate the democratic transition in any way. On the contrary, it strove to silence revolt by arresting peaceful protesters and by trying them in military tribunals. A concrete example is provided by the story of Maikel Nabil, an Egyptian blogger convicted and sentenced to three years in prison for "insulting the military establishment". The main causes of the regression and crisis in all the affected countries are attributed to corruption, unemployment, social injustice, and autocratic political systems. Despite the apparently unsolvable situation, the United Nations, UN, under the administration of Ban Ki-moon, tried to work as a mediator between the governments and the protesters. Larry Diamond has claimed that the role of the United States in the democratic transition of the Arab world was fundamental. Digital media played a large role in creating favorable conditions for uprisings, helped to publicize key igniting events, and then facilitated those uprisings and their diffusion. But digital media did not do this alone or as suddenly as some observers have claimed. The story of the Arab Spring, according to Howard and Hussain, began over a decade ago as internet access and mobile phones began to diffuse rapidly through North Africa and the Middle East. The citizens that could afford internet access, the wealthy and powerful, mostly, played a huge role in the Egypt, Tunisia, and Bahrain Rebellion, uprisings. Over time, online criticism of regimes became more public and common, setting the stage for the Arab Spring. Digital media also allowed women and minorities to enter political discussions, and ultimately, the ensuing protests and revolutions as well. Whether or not the Arab Spring counts as a distinct democratic wave is challenged by scholars on empirical grounds, as Tunisia is the only Arab Spring nation that successfully consolidated into a semi-stable democratic state following its uprising (according to the democracy-evaluating organization Freedom House, as of 2020).N.d. Countries and Territories. Freedom House. Available at . Retrieved 2020-09-24.

Post-2019 protests

Since 2019, worldwide protests have energized democracy movements, focusing on racial equality, human rights, freedom, democracy, and social justice. * 2018–2022 Arab protests * 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests * 2020–2021 Belarusian protests * 2019–2022 Chilean protests * 2019–2020 Iranian protests, 2021–2022 Iranian protests, Mahsa Amini protests * 2020–2021 Thai protests * 2021–2022 Myanmar protests * George Floyd protests * Protests against responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, 2022 COVID-19 protests in China * 2022 Kazakh protests * 2022 Sri Lankan protests

Other waves

In a 2018 study in ''Perspectives on Politics'', Seva Gunitsky of the University of Toronto identifies thirteen waves of democracy. His main criterion is rejection of absolute rule. By contrast, Huntington used the much narrower criterion of voting rights for the majority of men. # Atlantic Revolutions, The Atlantic Wave (1776–1798) # The Latin American wars of independence (1809–1824) # Revolutions of 1820, The First Constitutional Wave (1820–1821) # Revolutions of 1830, The Romantic-Nationalist Wave (1830–1831) # Revolutions of 1848, The Spring of Nations (1848) # Revolutionary wave#20th century, The Second Constitutional Wave (1905–1912) # Revolutions of 1917–1923, The post-WWI Wave (1919–1922) # Revolutionary wave#20th century, The post-WWII Wave (1945–1950) # Decolonisation of Africa, The African Decolonization Wave (1956–1968) # The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century, The Modernization Wave, also known as the "Third" Wave (1974–1988) # Revolutions of 1989, The Post-Soviet Wave (1989–1992) # Colour revolution, The Color Revolutions (2000–2007) # The

(2011–2012)