Very interesting. I believe my contrarian view goes in this direction, so I will add it to your comment. My impression is that democracy is really not as inev

Very interesting. I believe my contrarian view goes in this direction, so I will add it to your comment. My impression is that democracy is really not as inevitable as a lot of us western folks would like it to be. In fact I can not help myself to the compelling thought that democracies dont exist, because of some utopian view of equality and fairness, but rather, because of chance and circumstance. In most cases were a government/authority/kingdom/whatever transitioned to a democracy it was merely, because the state was in crisis and democracy was a rallying cry people could get behind, because it promised a way of ending the misery (the examples that spring to mind are the famines of 1789 and the 1840s in Europe which triggered multiple revolutions). I think if there were no existential threat to a critical mass of people in those European countries, they would never have revolted, nor would we have so many democracies today. For a similar reason I believe the democratic movements/protests in the recent years (like the Arab Spring, or the Hong Kong protests) have not resulted in a victory for democracy, since there is no real critical mass of people whom are existentially threatened by the failure of these movements. Since I am sure someone has thought these thoughts before, I would be grateful if someone could point me in the direction of articles mentioning a similar sentiment/idea.