The Greek word "democracy" ("the power of the people") was invented by the Athenians to define a system of city government in which decisions were made by the assembly of citizens (the citizens at that time were not even women neither slaves nor foreigners) and not by a king or emperor as in other cities or empires of antiquity. However, the majority of the population of Athens was made up of slaves. For this reason, Athenian democracy has few similarities with modern democracy, linked to the abolition of slavery and human rights. Democracy is a word of Greek origin that was coined by the Athenians to refer to their form of government, established in the last years of the 6th century BC. But the reality is that most of the procedures used by modern democracies are very old. Almost all cultures have elected or at least accepted their leaders through some popular referendum system at some point in their history. Likewise, these rulers have changed the laws only after consulting with the popular assembly or their representatives. These institutions existed before the Iliad and the Odyssey and the institutions of modern democracies derive from or are inspired by them. However, the direct result of such institutions was not always a democracy. It was often an oligarchy as in Venice or an absolute monarchy as in Florence. In the course of the 20th century, historical events of great importance occurred that imposed democracy as the dominant form of government in the world, and this project delves especially into the consequences that the Second World War left, wounds that in some cases remain open. This project wants to call for reflection by confronting (in situ) the modern model of European democracy against the main rival government systems of democracy: - Monarchy (with some decline after the First World War). - Fascism and Soviet communism (Fascism declined after World War II and communism after the fall of the Soviet bloc). - Military dictatorship (declined after 1990). This project also calls for reflection on other circumstances that limit the exercise of democracy, such as plutocracy (power of the rich), oligarchy (power of certain minority groups) and aristocracy (existence of certain groups with privileges or advantages over the rest. of the population). We therefore want to understand the origin of democracies from two aspects: - The processes that investigate the internal phenomena of each country. The socioeconomic transformations, the mobilizations by social movements and civil society organizations, the challenges and revolutions, the agreements and concessions of the elites. - Explanations that investigate the external phenomena of each country. The defeat of the regimes participating in the wars, the role of the contagion of democratization processes in neighboring states, the diffusion of democratic values through globalization processes, support for civil society groups, political parties policies, state building, institutionalization and the specification of criteria for appropriate and accepted forms of democracies. With this project we want to assimilate European values, especially the rule of law and the rule of law in the face of failed models that have only brought poverty and destruction to Europe.