Here’s another cracker from Our World In Data: a visualisation of democratic rights from 1789 to 2020.
In 1789, there was not a single democratic nation on earth.
In 2021, billions of people around the world now have the right to vote and elect their representatives.
It’s amazing to watch the visual shift from autocratic to democratic, and especially to see the rapid spread of democratic ideals since the beginning of the 1980s. If I had to have guessed, I would’ve thought the wave started much earlier.
It’s easy to forget how young and new democracy is, but this visualisation puts it into stunning perspective.