The democratic lineage asserts that present-day democracies that now number several dozen, descend, in a special sense, from the experience of a much more limited group of societies. The concept of democratic lineage is a device for representing the line of societies that over the past millennium has shaped what has now come to be recognized as democratization. That line of democratic descent has deep roots that it is well to recognize, and over an extended period has served as the line of transmission for essential traits of cultural inheritance: literature, other written records, and words of art and architecture, through which a democratic heritage has come down to the present. It is not the property of any single country, but it is also limited to a set of societies. What follows is an account of the evolution of the democratic lineage, and highlights of some of its key characteristics, both with emphasis on linkages
