Background and Context
A Freer World
In many ways, the world changed more during the twentieth century than it did during the previous millennium. A century of war and conflict, mass industrialization, rapid population growth, increasing socioeconomic divisions, consumerism and a widening gap between the developed and developing worlds all challenged the global community.

Despite numerous attempts by dictatorships of the left and right to deal with these radical shifts, the most successful and durable response to the breakneck changes of the past century has been both profoundly revolutionary, and decidedly non-violent: political democracy combined with free-market economics.

According to Freedom House, 39 countries were fully democratic in 1974. By 2006 the total increased to 90. Although global democratization has slowed down since the 1990s, a widespread international consensus has emerged that democracy is the most just and effective way of organizing society.
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