Perhaps the timeframe of 200 years may have been a bit short - given that the French Revolution had just wrapped up, and despite the conservative victory, the i

Perhaps the timeframe of 200 years may have been a bit short - given that the French Revolution had just wrapped up, and despite the conservative victory, the idea of absolute monarchy was on the decline. If you want to pick the French Revolution as the point in time where the world (the Western world, anyway) started to really think that at least some form of election was necessary - I'd be willing to accept that. Though the monarchist victory in that war proved it was still holding sway, and it's very debatable. Yes, Santa Anna was no saint, and clearly the Mexican people didn't think so much of abolishing the elections. The point of my using the quote, though, was to illustrate that in an international context saying "Elections are a bad idea for the people" was at least a vaguely reasonable thing to do at that point in history. You don't usually see dictators today saying "The people can't handle elections; my enlightened rule is much better without the turbulence." Instead they say "Everyone loves me! I won the election with 99% of the vote!" So I wonder - when did that change? Is it because the view of the people changed? I feel like it's more of an "international legitimacy" thing, like governments are supposed to represent the people.