As we contemplate the possibility that the discredited clown in the Oval Office may try to overthrow the Republic in the next fortnight we ought to consider a claim regularly made by US politicians around July 4./1

That is the statement that the US is “the world’s oldest democracy.” This is based on the undeniable fact that the US has had constitutional government with regular meaningful & effective elections. It’s a nice sound bite./2

It’s also not true. In 1788 the suffrage was restricted by income &, in some states, by religious affiliation. In other words not all men, specifically not all white men, had the right to vote./3

It was not until the 1830s that universal manhood suffrage (unless you were black) was established in principle & in practice. This is why J S Mill, in On Liberty, characterized the US as a democracy./4

Yet this standard fails. Our contemporary definition of democracy is that all persons born or naturalized in a given country are citizens with the right to vote & seek elective office regardless of gender, race, or physical condition./5

This is the standard of democracy, that there is universal adult suffrage. In the US, equal suffrage regardless of race & gender dates back to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This is actually quite late in the day/6

& makes the US a younger democracy than, say, India. So, which country is the world’s oldest democracy. In spite of British boasting it isn’t the UK which achieved it in 1930 when the voting age for men & women was equalized./7

So, as is obvious, British democracy is more than a generation older than US democracy. So which country extended its full voting citizenship to all adults regardless of gender or race?/8

It is not a European country, some of them (France, for example) did not extend the vote to women until after World War II. Switzerland, often cited as an exemplary democracy, did not grant women the vote until 1971./9

It isn’t any country in the Americas either, women acquired the vote in the US & other American republics after World War I. Jamaica, to take a colonial example, added women to its then limited suffrage before the US./10

So which country was it? @SoonLeeNZ would, if asked, point to his own country & he would be right. New Zealand extended the vote to all Kiwis, Pakeha & Maori, male and female, in 1893. 72 years before the US./11

In other words, a Pacific island country, generally seen as off to the side, is the world’s oldest democracy. Kiwis being Kiwis, this isn’t something they shout boastfully to themselves & the wider world./12

It is, nonetheless, their especial honor & something in which they should take pride. Along with their social-democratic political ethos, & their puzzling love of violence without committee meetings (rugby),/13

It is their most honorable distinction. I find the rhetorical boastfulness of US politicians about something they achieved •in my lifetime• to be one of their least charming aspects./14

New Zealand’s national anthem speaks of “men of every creed & race” as constituting their nation. This was 3 decades before they included women & one century before the US./15

The speed & inclusiveness with which the Kiwis established real democracy is one of the most extraordinary achievements of modern political history. We really should know about it./end