The spread of representative democracy
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Representative democracy, in which citizens elect others to make decisions on their behalf rather than voting directly on every matter, spread gradually across the world from a relatively small number of early adopters to become the dominant model of government in many regions, which tends to matter most in a genuine crisis.
Its spread was rarely a simple or linear story, often accompanying independence movements, the end of colonial rule, or the collapse of earlier authoritarian systems, with each transition shaped heavily by local history, institutions, and circumstance, a consideration that shapes outcomes quietly, which is part of why the topic keeps resurfacing.
Despite this variation, representative democracy's core idea, that legitimate government rests on the periodic consent of the governed expressed through elections, remains a widely shared reference point even in places where its practice is still developing, even when nobody is paying close attention, a reality that shapes expectations going forward.