Ask any statistician or AI expert to explain optimization, and they'll tell you that it's like finding the highest hill in an area that you've never been, without using a map. It's not trivial. Sometimes you arrive to a hill, but it's not the highest: you may have to descend from where you are and keep exploring for higher peaks.
Democracy is also an optimization problem! Lots of external factors, regime changes, and other significant political shifts have been shaping civilizations’ journeys towards a well-functioning democracy. And their path has never been straight.
History is full of examples
Many countries exhibit the non-linear nature of democratization. Take Germany: in 1918, for the first time in its history, it started experiencing a constitutional federal republic. Then the Nazis abolished the republic in favor of their dictatorship in 1933. Between 1945 - 1990 it experienced two parallel regimes until it finally reunited into a federal parliamentary republic. It's now participating the intergovernmental confederation experiment that is the European Union.
France also participates to EU, and its democratic evolution is no less spectacular: the French took the matter into their own hands, overthrew the king, and then proclaimed the First Republic in 1792! But the First Republic was short-lived: Napoléon lead the nation first as an autocratic First Consul between 1799-1804, and then as its emperor. It took the French yet another restoration of monarchy, significant constitutional changes, and five iterations of republic to reach its current state: a unitary, semi-presidential republic.
Middle Easterns are also experimenting with democracy, with their own way. Once an absolute theocratic monarchy, the Ottoman Empire started its tendency towards democratization in the 19th century with a signed treaty between the Sultan the empire's powerful local rulers in 1808 (known as "Charter of Alliance" or "Deed of Agreement"). In the subsequent decades witnessed the reforms of 1839, 1856; and then in 1876 the First Constitutional Era has started. The Sultan did seize the opportunity to re-establish absolute monarchy in 1878, only to be forced to accept a new constitution in 1908.
Fast forward to 1923, Türkiye, i.e. the Republic of Turkey was born out of the ashes of Ottoman Empire. Its initial decades it swung between Single-Party and Multi-Party political systems. In the second half of the 20th century, the country witnessed multiple coup d'états and significant modifications in its constitution. The latest regime change happened when a constitutional referandum in 2017 has replaced the parliamentary system in favor of an executive presidency and presidential system. 6 years onward, the Turkish democracy is still evolving, with each of its components being up to debate.
What can help?
We can all get lost in our microcosms, and miss the broad social patterns of democracy. As a short-term participant to the history of humanity, here are some of the lessons I've inferred:
Improve your patience. Democracy is meant to be slow. We've ditched absolute answers in favour of more debates; and top-down dictation in favour of bottom-up discovery. If everybody shares the same opinion on a subject, then perhaps there's still some more thinking required.
Shift your attention from the last decade, look into long-term patterns. The journey of democracy is not only non-linear. Looking at the examples above, it's evident that it takes many generations to experiment new ways of democracy.
Celebrate the diversity. Democracy's like a never-ending sports tournament - you can’t expect to win all the time. Remember to maintain your sportsmanship!
Lastly, keep up your hopes. Democracy didn't form in a vacuum - it comes out from people's clear and present desire to self-govern. Democracy might not open the gates of heaven. But it's here to close the gates of hell.