Egypt's pharaohs felt no need to ask the people's opinions on their performance as rulers. The kings of 18th-century Europe ruled by "divine right", not by the popular will (and they didn't actually ask God's opinion on their performance either). But at some point in the past century, democracy has won the argument worldwide.
It has not won all the power struggles, and many dictators survive in practice, but they are all obliged to pretend to have popular support. This is a very big change from the past, when tyrannical power was generally based on a combination of religious authority and brutal armed force. Why, and in particular why now?
The anthropologists may have an answer. It is now pretty widely agreed in their profession that pre-civilised human beings almost all lived in bands where all adult men, at least, were treated as equals, and all had an equal right to share in decision-making.
They even had well-established methods for making sure that nobody got too big for his boots.
These primitive "democracies" all collapsed in the early stages of civilisation, when the huge rise in population (from dozens to millions in 1000 years) made it physically impossible for everybody to take part in the discussion about means and ends any more.
At the same time all the traditional social controls that kept ambitious people from seizing power failed too. You can't shame people into respecting the opinions and personal freedoms of other people if the numbers get so big that you don't even know them personally. Result: 5000 years of tyranny.
But give these mass societies mass media, and they regain the ability to communicate with one another.
It turns out, unsurprisingly, that they want to be treated as equals again. The first successful democratic revolution happened in the American colonies in 1776 because printing presses were everywhere, and over half the population was literate.
Now mass media are everywhere, and even the dictators have to pretend that they are in power by the will of the people. It will be a long time before they actually disappear (if they ever do).
When the first results of the Russian election were coming in, a reporter asked Vladimir Putin if he would run again in six years' time. "What you are saying is a bit funny," Putin replied. "Do you think that I will stay here until I'm 100 years old? No."
But that's what Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe's former ruler, would also have said when he had been in power for only 18 years.
In the end, Mugabe stayed in power for 37 years, and he was 93 and planning to run for another term when he was finally overthrown last year. Putin would be a mere 85 years old when he broke Mugabe's record, although China's Xi Jinping would have to live until he was 97 to do the same. I'll bet neither one makes it.
■ Gwynne Dyer is an independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.
