democracy, timeline-history by country

USA - 1775 (note 1)
Britain - 1832 (reform act)
Canada - 1847 (responsible government)
Switzerland - 1848 (1848 revolutions)
Denmark - 1849 (1848 revolutions)
Australia - 1855 (responsible government)

note 1 - The current US constitution is not the first, but is it second constitution of the USA; additionally the US operated for years prior to that first constitution (articles of confederation). Thus, we must look at each state individually. States began electing their legislatures and governors mostly in 1776 and 1777, some as late as 1780; but one (Rhode Island) did so in 1775; as such, I've chosen that year for the US.



This post was originally a lot longer and had a lot more countries, however things kept coming up. Greece had 22 interruptions (civil wars, coups, occupations) France was interrupted by its 2nd empire, occupation, and successful 1958 military coup. Then there are questions about countries that slowly evolved towards full democracy, and so on and so forth.

Eventually I decided to cut it here, as these 5 countries have clear and stark differences from the remainder. Yes Denmark was under occupation for a 5 years, but almost all of the other countries with earlier dates (IE Belgium, Netherlands, France, Norway) were as well, and even those with more questionable claims (Czechia, and Greece) also suffered under the same occupations. Other countries with claims (Germany, Turkey, Spain, Argentina, Serbia, Austria) spent a long time under constitutions where the bodies that had real democratic elections had little to no real power. Those countries, along with New Zealand (1879) are all the countries with claims to democratization before 1900. The next best claim would be France (1875) in its third republic, keeping in mind the military coup of 1858.

Adding this all up and making it a list of "years of being democratic" you get as follows:
245 - USA
188 - UK
172 - Canada
171 - Switzerland
166 - Denmark (5 year interruption)
165 - Australia
141 - New Zealand
139 - France (5 year interruption + 1 military coup)
118 - Belgium (4 year interruption + 5 year interruption)
115 - Sweden
110 - Norway (5 year interruption)
and this is where I'll stop. A ton of countries democratized after WW1 which puts them all just a tad over 100 years of uninterrupted.