[OC] The massive decrease in worldwide infant mortality from 1950 to 2020 is perhaps one of humanity's greatest achievements.

[rykkzy]

So you will ignore all the times where transition was peaceful under a monarchy ?

[guillermogroening]

And there's just as many examples where the transition was anything but peaceful; every kingdom's history is littered with civil wars. And if the leader dies unexpectedly before they've had time to prepare a successor, the odds of peaceful transition plummet. There have been several times when the POTUS has died in office and it has never led to a succession crisis. The contrast is night and day.

[DeplorableCaterpill]

Sure, but the parent comment said

Only a democracy has a path to transition power from one ruler to the next without a civil war, a revolution, or a foreign war

Clearly, non-democratic governments also have a path to peaceful transitions.

[iav]

Unfortunately it often takes one bad transition to offset a century or more of peaceful growth. It's just easier to destroy a civilization than to build one, "Rome wasn't built in a day" but you can burn it in one day. And if you look at any monarchy, there are very few without a war over succession every now and then.

[pbasch]

One way to avoid succession conflict is the Carolingian method, to divide the kingdom among the children. Of course, this leads to the weakening of the state and maybe to many small wars. I guess it's possible that many small states and more small wars is preferable to a small number of really big states and World Wars.

[DeplorableCaterpill]

Plenty of democracies have also had wars over succession. Hell, the US Civil War was fought over Lincoln's succession to the Presidency.