I often hear people speak of democracy as the next, or the final, inevitable stage of human social development. Its inevitability is usually justified not by describing power relations that result in democracy being a stable attractor, but in terms of morality - democracy is more "enlightened". I don't see any inevitability to it - China and the Soviet Union manage(d) to maintain large, technologically-advanced nations for a long time without it - but suppose, for the sake of argument, that democracy is the inevitable next stage of human progress.
The May 18 2012 issue of Science has an article on p. 844, "Ancestral hierarchy and conflict", by Christopher Boehm, which, among other things, describes the changes over time of equality among male hominids. If we add its timeline to recent human history, then here is the history of democracy over time in the evolutionary line leading to humans:
- Pre-human male hominids, we infer from observing bonobos and chimpanzees, were dominated by one alpha male per group, who got the best food and most of the females.
- Then, in the human lineage, hunter-gatherers developed larger social groups, and the ability to form stronger coalitions against the alpha; and they became more egalitarian.
- Then, human social groups even became larger, and it became possible for a central alpha-male chieftain to control a large area; and the groups became less egalitarian.
- Then, they became even larger, so that they were too large for a central authority to administer efficiently; and decentralized market-based methods of production led to democracy. (Or so goes one story.)
There are two points to observe in this data:
- There is no linear relationship between social complexity, and equality. Steadily-increasing social complexity lead to more equality, then less, then more.
- Enlightenment has nothing to do with it - if any theory makes sense, it is that social equality tunes itself to the level that provides maximal social competitive fitness. Even if we agree that democracy is the most-enlightened political system, this realization says nothing about what the future holds.
I do believe "progress" is a meaningful term. But there isn't some cosmic niceness built into the universe that makes everything improve monotonically along every dimension at once.
"The Evolution of Political Thought" by C. Northcote Parkinson (1958) points out that "political progress" actually happens in cycles and that the appearance of "progress" is just the result of people having short time horizons and not being able to see enough of history to see the whole cycle. Also not realising what is happening in the third world, where many democracies have collapsed into dictatorships.
Governing bodies can be either one person (monarch or dictator), a small group (oligarchy or aristocracy) or by a majority (democracy). (Parkinson included Communism in the chapter on Theocracy). States tend to cycle through these different types. This has been known from ancient Greek times. (The Greeks were the first place where there were lots of small city states in a small area and they could see each other in different parts of the cycle.)
Let's start with Monarchy.
A monarch has children and wants to give something to each child, not just the eldest. Thus the other children become nobles. Over time this family grows and grows and the number with political power keeps increasing until the government is really an aristocracy.
Its not fair that a limited number of people have power in the aristocracy so its size keeps growing. Eventually it is so big that there is not much distinction between aristocrats and other and the system evolves towards democracy.
The problem with democracy is that the populace can vote themselves largess from the treasury (cf current situation in USA where everyone wants "the government" to pay for their health care, or the situation in Greece where political parties that promised that Greece would not have to pay off its public debt (which would have required higher taxes and cutting pensions) were successful in the recent election). Sooner or later the government falls apart because it has no money. In the chaos a dictator arises and is GIVEN the power by the majority in return for making everything predictable and safe again.
The dictator passes on power to his children and over generations this becomes established by custom as a monarchy and so the cycle continues.
Parkinson does claim that different cultures fit more naturally in different forms of government, racing through the others until they get back to their natural form where they tend to be stable for longer.
This argument seems plausible on the surface but it doesn't explain the recent and dramatic global shift toward government by democracy. And I struggle to think of a single example of this cycle completing as described.