The history of democracy and the history of contention are deeply intertwined. Democracy only advanced, when it did advance, through social processes significantly set in motion or accelerated by contention (including civil warfare, multiple forms of popular resistance to state actions, claims-making social movements, and much else besides). Democratization, in turn, reshaped patterns of contention.

Democratization is one profoundly contingent outcome of conflict and episodes of de-democratization are quite common in the histories of even those countries most commonly regarded as secure democracies today.

Democracy at the national level was not for the most part an expansion of previously existing semidemocratic institutions at village, town, or regional levels. Even where such structures existed, authoritative and generally authoritarian states that overrode such institutions usually preceded the democratization of those states. In European history states usually got stronger before they got more democratic. But before we conclude that strong states are indispensable, nineteenth-century Swiss history provides a striking instance of a weak-state path.