In the year 508 before the common era, after the overthrow of a tyrant, Cleisthenes established a democracy in Athens. In the 186 years of its existence, this democracy brought forth the most remarkable flowering of the human spirit ever, within a narrow space. Yet, if democracy is 2,519 years old, Egypt is vastly older. First unified 5,000 years ago, it is the oldest state on our planet.

The state, then, is far older than democracy. Its invention brought with it a question: who would control it? Across time and space, the answer has almost always been god-kings, priest-kings, military despots and so forth. Government may have been notionally in the interests of the people, but it was almost never in their hands.

Athens was a great exception, though the ideal of government accountable to the people also existed in ancient Rome and in the Italian city states. Yet direct voting could not operate over a large space. The election of parliaments in England in the 13th century solved that problem. The model of an elected parliament to which the executive is accountable has now spread across much of the globe.