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Baruch Spinoza on “Democracy”:
“Democracy is the best form of commonwealth. In a democracy, the citizens who make up the multitude reserve the sovereignty for themselves. Every member of the commonwealth has the right to vote in the body that makes the laws and to hold public office. Dominion is thus directly in the hands of all the people who are governed. This guarantees, to the highest practical degree, that the laws enacted by the sovereign will reflect the will of the people and serve their interests. Democracy, Spinoza noted in the Theological-Political Treatise, is “the most natural form of state.” [...] However, he also recognized that not every state will, in fact, be a democratic one, and that many states – because of their historical or political traditions or some other factors – would not be fit to make a transition to a democratic constitution. He believed, moreover, that a state should not consider lightly effecting a radical change in the basic structure of its established government, whatever it might be. For these reasons, the main question of the Political Treatise concerns, not how to actualize an ideal state per se, but rather how best in practice, and under realistic conditions, to institute a monarchical, an aristocratic, or a democratic constitution so that it comes as close as possible to serving the purposes for which government exists. Spinoza’s aim is to show how each form of government can be perfected relative to its kind and optimized in terms of how well it functions as an effective sovereign. – Steven Nadler, Spinoza: A Life, p. 344.
Consider this as well:
“The birth of democracy in Western Europe has been painful and coincidental. Democracy is not a normal state of events. It has emerged out of the very special circumstances of the medieval West.”
And this:
Democracy cannot be exported or imposed, and the processes of self-liberation and empowerment central to democratic societies should be led by indigenous populations. – National Endowment for Democracy (2007)
[All emphases are mine.]
