The apparently funny idea to let people decide by counting those for or those against rather than those stronger or more intelligent is more than 2.500 years old.
The idea to let all people in the world vote is far more recent. The projects are not very well known but sometimes really sophisticated.
There is also a page about the history of world democracy.
A few links about the history of democracy:
- http://www.nipissingu.ca/department/history/muhlberger/histdem: World history of democracy
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy: The Athenian democracy
- http://www.nipissingu.ca/department/history/muhlberger/histdem/indiadem.htm: Democracy in ancient India
- http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/6Nations: Democracy and native Americans (the six nations: Oldest Living Participatory Democracy on Earth).
- http://www.letton.ch/lvdjurve.htm A text from 1919 with the words "démocratie mondiale".
A few texts about the history of democracy:
Old democratic practices in India
Business could only be transacted legitimately in a full assembly, by a vote of all the members. If, for example, a candidate wanted the upasampada ordination, the question (ñatti) was put to the sangha by a learned and competent member, and the other members asked three times to indicate dissent. If there was none, the sangha was taken to be in agreement with the ñatti. The decision was finalized by the proclamation of the decision of the sangha.
In many cases, as in the granting of upasampada ordination, unanimity of a full assembly was required. Of course, unanimity was not always possible. The Kullavagga provides other techniques that were used in disputes especially dangerous to the unity of the sangha, those which concerned interpretation of the monastic rule itself. If such a dispute had degenerated into bitter and confused debate, it could be decided by majority vote, or referred to a jury or committee specially elected by the sangha to treat the matter at hand.
It is here that we see a curious combination of well-developed democratic procedure and fear of democracy. The rules for taking votes sanctioned the disallowance by the vote-taker of results that threatened the essential law of the sangha or its unity. Yet, if the voting procedure is less than free, the idea that only a free vote could decide contentious issues is strongly present. No decision could be made until some semblance of agreement had been reached. Such manipulations of voting were introduced because Buddhist elders were very concerned about the survival of the religious enterprise: disunity of the membership was the great fear of all Indian republics and corporations. Yet the idea of a free vote could not be repudiated. The Kullavagga illustrates a conflict within the Buddhist sangha during its earliest centuries between democratic principles and a philosophy that was willing in the name of unity to sacrifice them.
(...)
The Pali Canon gives us our earliest, and perhaps our best, detailed look at Indian republicanism, its workings, and its political philosophy. About no other republics do we know as much as we do about the Buddhist sangha and the Licchavis in the time of Buddha -- even though we do know that republics survived and were a significant factor until perhaps the fourth century A.D., a period of over 800 years. Scattered inscriptions, a great number of coins, and the occasional notice in Greek sources, the Jatakas or other Indian literature give us a few facts. But any history of Indian republicanism is necessarily a rather schematic one.
(From http://www.nipissingu.ca/department/history/muhlberger/histdem/indiadem.htm)
Old democratic practices in ancient Roma
London's Guildhall, for centuries the administrative center of the city, is located over the Roman amphitheater built in the time of Hadrian, between A.D. 117 and 138. Archaeologists exploring the site in 1993 found in the drainage system the bones of bulls, horses, bears, and the heads and legs of perhaps twenty human beings. These remains were the first material confirmation of a Roman practice well known from their written history and art: the slaughter of wild animals and human prisoners for the entertainment of the citizenry. The same investigations, however, showed that the arena was used for other things -- among them, voting. A bit of broken pottery with the word non (Latin for "no") scratched on it was also found. This potsherd was probably a ballot (similar pottery ballots are known from ancient Greek times) and is the one piece of evidence that the Romans used secret ballots in local elections. The same dig thus provided us with unique evidence of both the barbaric gladiatorial games and a key democratic practice.
(From http://www.nipissingu.ca/department/history/muhlberger/histdem/history1.htm)
Old democratic practices in North America (Native Indians)
I (Bruce E. Johansen) have kept a bibliography of commentary on assertions that the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) and other Native American confederacies helped shape ideas of democracy in the early United States. By 1995, the bibliography had reached roughly 455 items from more than 120 books, as well as newspaper articles and book reviews numbering in the hundreds, academic journals, films, speeches, documentaries, and other sources.
(From http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/6Nations/NAPSnEoDpref.html)
"Politically, there was nothing in the Empires and kingdoms of Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to parallel the democratic constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy, with its provisions for initiative, referendum and recall, and its suffrage for women as well as for men," Cohen continued. The influence of such ideas spread to Europe, where they played a part in Thomas More's Utopia. Cohen further asserted that "to John Locke, the champion of tolerance and the right of revolution, the state of nature and of natural equality to which men might appeal in rebellion against tyranny was set not in the remote dawn of history, but beyond the Atlantic sunset." Cohen also found the influence of Indian thought in Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau, "and their various contemporaries." Anticipating the arguments of Charles Sanford nine years later, Cohen implied that many of the doctrines that played so crucial a role in the American Revolution were fashioned by European savants from observation of the New World and its inhabitants. These observations, packaged into theories, were exported, like the finished products made from raw materials that also traveled the Atlantic Ocean, back to America. The communication among American Indian cultures, Europe, and Euro-America thus seemed to involve a sort of intellectual mercantilism. The product of this intellectual traffic, the theories that played a role in rationalizing rebellion against England, may have been fabricated in Europe, but the raw materials from which they were made were, to Cohen, substantially of indigenous American origin.
(From http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/6Nations/FF.txt)
Utopia. Sir Thomas More (1478–1535). The Second Book. Of the Magistrates.
EVERY thirty families or farms, choose them yearly an officer, which in their old language is called the syphogrant, and by a newer name, the philarch. Every ten syphogrants, with all their 300 families be under an officer which was once called the tranibore, now the chief philarch. Moreover as concerning the election of the prince, all the syphogrants, which be in number 200, first be sworn to choose him whom they think most meet and expedient. Then by a secret election, they name prince, one of those four whom the people before named unto them. For out of the four quarters of the city there be four chosen, out of every quarter one, to stand for the election: which be put up to the council. The prince’s office continueth all his lifetime, unless he be deposed or put down for suspicion of tyranny. They choose the tranibores yearly, but lightly they change them not. All the other offices be but for one year. The tranibores every third day, and sometimes, if need be, oftener come into the council house with the prince. Their council is concerning the commonwealth.
(...)
Sometimes the matter is brought before the council of the whole island. Furthermore this custom also the council useth, to dispute or reason of no matter the same day that it is first proposed or put forth, but to defer it to the next sitting of the council. Because that no man when he hath rashly there spoken that cometh first to his tongue’s end, shall then afterward rather study for reasons wherewith to defend and confirm his first foolish sentence, than for the commodity of the commonwealth: as one rather willing the harm or hindrance of the weal public than any loss or diminution of his own existimation. And as one that would not for shame (which is a very foolish shame) be counted anything overseen in the matter at the first. Who at the first ought to have spoken rather wisely, than hastily, or rashly.
(From http://www.bartleby.com/36/3/4.html)
Other texts