In this text, specialists on Europe, the Americas, and Japan explore why democracies have succeeded and failed over the past 100 years. Each essay applies the perspective of the social historian - a focus on mentalities, social movements, and the relationship between states and societies - to explain why political participation has changes as it has. What emerges are national portraits of the social origins of democracy, as well as comparative explanations that take global processes and national peculiarities into account.