Compare and contrast the conditions that encouraged the demand for democratic reform in two states.

The question requires that candidates give an account of the similarities and differences between the conditions that encouraged the demand for democratic reform in two states. The two states may or may not be drawn from the same region and they may or may not have been contemporaneous with each other. The conditions may predate the timeframe of the world history topic, but they must be clearly linked to the demand for reform. Candidates may refer to the role of the aftermath of war, as in the case of Japan after the Second World War, or political upheaval, as in the case of democratic states that emerged after the demise of communism. Some democracies emerged as their colonizers withdrew, for example, states in Africa and South America. Candidates may refer to the need to represent the emergent social classes in, for example, Western Europe. Both similarities and differences must be clearly indicated but there does not need to be an equal number of each.

The question required candidates to give an account of the similarities and differences between the conditions that encouraged the demand for democratic reform in two states. Several responses were seen to this question with an appropriate structure used by most candidates. Popular examples included apartheid South Africa and the growth of the civil rights movement in the US. There was some good use of effective examples by many candidates.