Polygyny and democracy: A cross-cultural comparison

Abstract

Communal democracy is shown to be significantly and negatively correlated with polygyny. In turn, communal democracy is demonstrated to be positively correlated with the democracy of supracommunal structures. Consequently, it is suggested that the fact that modern democracy developed in Europe (i.e. the very region that by the Late Middle Ages was already characterized by the highest proportion of complex societies with small monogamous families and democratic communities) might not be a coincidence.