I agree, common people got the vote when they started to have a reasonable level of education. The fact that taxes on labour became a major source of income also mattered. Taxpayers want their money to be used well. But the key question is not why popular votes were introduced, but whether they are better or worse than a single party system or monarchy etc
My argument is that the western world pulled ahead of the other traditional civilisations of the world in west and east Asia in the 18th and 19th century. At that time, they didn't have anything we would recognise as modern western style democracy today. In the industrial revolution era voting rights were extremely restricted or votes were meaningless. In the era of universal suffrage after WW2, many countries have managed to catch up to and sometimes overtake traditional western great powers despite the economic miracle in Europe after the war and the West having huge technological advantages.
So if we look at it as a social experiment, which system of government allows a society to advance faster than others? Has any country moved through the middle income range as a western style democracy? The four Asian tiger states are perfect examples of successful models avoiding meaningful elections. I don't think governance has improved in Korea and Taiwan since they introduced American style democracy.
I don't think the general population ever had the capacity to make decisions on how to rule a country. This system of universal suffrage is a big and expensive burden on a society. It's only very rich countries that can afford such a political system and western countries were reasonably successful on it in the last century because they were so far ahead of everyone else. But their expensive system cost them their lead. Now that they're in competition with China, their systems are becoming unaffordably expensive. Western countries will either reduce the importance of general votes or they will start falling behind. Most of Europe is already in the process of falling behind, people just haven't realised it yet
Today, I would rate military dictatorships as generally disastrous, western style democracies as tolerably successful, monarchies as more successful but only if the king happens to be competent and single party systems as the most successful as long as they have a good system for selection of new leaders. Compare democratic India vs China, democratic Philippines vs Thai monarchy, the failed democracy in Egypt and Tunisia with the stability and success of Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The only world region that's an exception is Eastern Europe and turkey, because these countries have been heavily subsidised by western Europe. In the European golden age, governments were either monarchies or oligarchies
The Western cultural package being extremely successful is a historical fact.
But that does not mean you can just import the Western cultural package and make it work for every other civilization. The blind spot of liberals all over the world is that they assume that, because a pattern of cultural and political behavior worked for the West, it must therefore work for everyone else, too. Because "we are all the same."
There is no historical evidence of this. Or rather, all the historical examples of liberalism working else where were actively manufactured by the US. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Western Europe - all of these places were built up as fortresses against Communism by the US. They were given favorable trade treatment, tons of investment, technology transfers, and generally put in an advantageous position by the US after World War 2. They were not only allowed to thrive, but actively supported to do so by the US in order to push for ideological victory over the USSR. Of course, only up to a certain degree as we saw with Japan when they got too close to the sun.
All the while, outside of these fortresses of US power, failed democracies spread like wild fire. Most of the failed states of the world were or are democracies. Democracy didn't help South America, Africa, or Southeast Asia become power houses. Liberals blame this on "corruption" but have never indicated how democracy solves for "corruption" when the average voter can be easily manipulated by the media and the elites who control it. More importantly, they completely neglect how US support was critical in transforming its Asian and European vassals into first world countries; while the third world democracies failed without it.
My own take on this is similar to yours in that the key to Western success wasn't democracy. But I acknowledge the fact that the Western cultural package eventually leads down the path of democracy because if you examine the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the Scientific Revolution, they were driven ultimately by individualism and rationalism. The spirit of rebellion against historical traditions, religious orthodoxy, and authoritarian hierarchies was very much present in the critical centuries leading up to the Industrial Revolution and the Great Divergence. They were always going to end up with democracy.
But does that mean democracy is what made the West successful? Of course not. This is an associative relationship, not a causative relationship. The West was successful because of its cultural pattern, democracy was a logical, perhaps even inevitable, side-effect, but not the reason for its success. The lesson to the rest of the world then is that democracy is neither necessary nor sufficient for success. We know that because China and Singapore became successful without democracy. And we know it is not sufficient because of all the failed democracies.
So in the end, the actual question is not "whether to adopt democracy" but rather "whether the Western cultural pattern is an universal pattern that would work for anyone." My answer, so far, having looked at so many countries try and fail to imitate Western culture, is "no."
