MEANING
1. The process of making a country or organization more democratic in how decisions are made.
2. Widening access to knowledge or information beyond a small or privileged group.
Use it for
describing a transition toward democratic government; analyzing wider participation in institutional decisions; comparing formal reform with actual shared control; distinguishing a process of change from an already democratic stateProvides the established process noun for shifts toward shared democratic decision-making. Writing functions: Change / Pattern / Trend.
Words that belong together
- democratization of institutions
- political democratization
- a process of democratization
On the page
The study distinguishes electoral reform from the broader democratization of political decision-making.
Staff participation formed one part of the museum’s democratization, but control of the budget remained centralized.
Digitization can support the democratization of knowledge while leaving language and cost barriers intact.
The essay distinguishes the democratization of information from giving users power over the institutions that provide it.
Word forms
- Base
- democratization
Usage notes
Usually uncountable. UK democratisation is an alias. Distinct transitions may be discussed as democratizations in specialist writing, but no routine plural is needed here. Register: formal. Commonness: moderately common (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
Keep a thought for later. Sign in to save privately.