How and when did democracy get started?

Wow tough question! Whole books have been written on this topic.  Many point to the Greek city-states, for example Athens, where each male citizen was able to participate in an assembly that guided the actions of the elite.

Others point to the nobles action in forcing King John in 12th century England to sign the Magna Carter.  It outlined the rights and responsibilities of the king and noble.  There followed a very gradual (hundreds of years) increase in the power of the Parliament. 

Over time Parliament came to include non-nobles in a "lower chamber" called the House of Commons.  Eventually, this House became the defacto ruler of the country.

In what was to become the United States the colonists got use to local assemblies directing local affairs.  Political leaders like Adams and Jefferson and later younger men like Madison and Hamilton influenced by philosophers like John Locke developed and refined their notions of government directed by all the citizens of the country.  At first those citizens were defined as white men with property.  It wasn't until the 20th Century that citizens included men and women of all races.

Democracy

As the answers from ctbrunner and crulintentons1 have already noted, the word comes from the Greek term for rule by the people.  That is the traditional view of how democracy got started, and the "history of western civilization" traces the roots back to the Greek "City State" societies of Athens and Sparta (and others) where citizens actively participated in making decisions about how the city (which was their "country" by the way we think of things) would run things.

In fact, democracy has roots far further back than that.  From what we have learned in recent years about how chimpanzee society works, these "great apes" have sets of "social rules" about how one behaves and what is not acceptable social behavior.  They don't have formal "laws" against stealing, but they do, for instance, cooperate in facing threats from outside the group, and from predators that might be trying to eat their children.  On the other hand, most of their society actually operates under a single rule of "the strongest one gets to do what he wants" (usually it is a male because they are larger and stronger, and it evolved this way with humans too).  In exchange for allowing the strongest one to "do what he wants" that same strongest one is expected to provide some degree of leadership and protection to the group.  In humans this kind of arrangement gave rise to "warlords" and eventually "kings" and other rulers.  But that does not mean there was not "some" democracy throughout history (and long before "western" history divides from "pre-human" history). 

The general idea is that "democracy", whether formal or informal, is a matter of "the many" deciding what is "best" for "most" of us.  (And unfortunately there is nothing to prevent "the many" from being wrong, even wrong most of the time.) Democracy can happen spontaneously any time that the "leader" (typically the strongest and largest, though in some cases the smartest or the sneakiest) fails to act in a way that the rest of the group, or tribe or commuinity or city sees as being in their best interests.  Let's imagine an example that has never been observed in nature, but just one which "might" happen some day, somewhere.

Say that a lion is threatening our imaginary group of chimpanzees.  And let's also imagine that the leader at this particular time is not very big or very strong male, and it is pretty lazy too.  So instead of leading the band of chimps to a safer place, or getting some cooperation from the others in the group to lead our imaginary threatening lion on an exhausting chase by swinging through the trees, our weak and fearful leader just starts throwing baby chimps to the lion to feed it and make it go away every time it shows up hungry.  Now, depending on whether this lion shows up once a month or every day might make a big difference in the leader's outcome.  Chimps, like humans, don't have very long memories.  If the lion shows up once a month, the loss of one little chimp a month ago might be almost forgotten.  But if the lion starts showing up every day or every second day, and the number of young chimps thrown to the lion is rapidly sending the chimp mothers into a panic that their child might be next, the collective will of the group might be to stop the present leader from his unreasonable course, and look for a better strategy, or maybe even to arrange for the leader to be the next one thrown to the lion and allow someone with a better plan to take charge.  The "better plan" might be to simply run away, or to drop a large stone on the lion's head, or it might be to find a herd of elephants who would not allow the lion to get too close in order to protect their own "children".

I trust that you can see that "cavemen" might behave in a way similar to my imaginary group of chimpanzees, and so it is that when people are no longer willing to suffer the unacceptable consequences of a bad leader's behavior they may exercise better judgement than their leaders'. It may just be an isolated case of one time but it is often time to get rid of the leaders who are not doing a very good job.  And that process is what is happening right now in America.  We call that a "democratic election".

(although it is only "coincidental" that one of the parties call themselves the "Democratic" [spelled with a capital letter D] party.)  (or is it?)

love

Stafford "Doc" Williamson

find out more about "greener sources of energy" at http://winfotech.com/energy  *(and coming soon... greenenergy.psyrk.us) (that's pronounced "Green Energy Circus" if you want to tell someone about it.)