Know the country that first brings complete democracy to the world

Every election cycle, we’re told that it’s the most important one ever. And in many ways, that’s true — if only because we can shape the future, but not what’s in the past. Yet the past is our best tutor for making sure we don’t repeat mistakes, learn from other societies and innovate in ways that make democracy stronger. This will take you on a tour back in time to some of history’s most pivotal elections — votes that made modern democracy what it is today.

1 – New Zealand, 1893

Which is the world’s oldest democracy ? Is it the U.S., which has had continuous, elected governments for more than two centuries, longer than any other nation? Is it Iceland or the Isle of Man, both of which have legislatures more than 1,000 years old? Or is it the country that first gave all its citizens the right to vote? While access to the ballot was still very much a privilege for wealthy, male, racial elites in America and Europe, New Zealand in 1893 held the first election where everyone — Maori, white, men and women — could vote. Universal suffrage had finally arrived and would slowly be embraced by modern democracies around the world.

2 – Sri Lanka, 1960

Known as Ceylon at the time, the country hadn’t yet reached its teens as an independent nation when it was thrown into turmoil by the assassination of Prime Minister Solomon Bandaranaike in 1959. His wife, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, was derisively dubbed the “weeping widow” because she would frequently break into tears. But she would have the last laugh. In the 1960 national elections, Sirimavo — as she was widely known — led her husband’s party to victory. She became the world’s first-ever female prime minister, paving the way for leaders like India’s Indira Gandhi, Israel’s Golda Meir and Britain’s Margaret Thatcher. Sirimavo tilted the country toward a cocktail of democratic socialism and Buddhist nationalism, overcoming a coup attempt and a period of political exile to return to power again in the 1970s and in the 1990s. No one was mocking her then.

3 – Benin, 1991

The Berlin Wall had just fallen, in 1989, when Mathieu Kérékou, the army major turned socialist leader of the small West African nation of Benin, decided to transition the country to a multiparty democracy. In the 1991 elections held after nationwide consultations, Kérékou contested, lost and calmly gave up power. The first democratic transfer of power in postcolonial West Africa set an example that the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Republic of Congo, Togo, Burundi, Rwanda and Niger would all follow in the 1990s. And unlike many such tectonic shifts that have been stained by civil wars, Benin’s transition was totally peaceful.

(Ozy Daily Dose. Photo: Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)