How much democracy did the native populations of the Roman provinces experience? I expect little or none*. So, they didn’t give up anything after the Romans left.
*someone with a better command of history than I have can correct me if I’m wrong.
“Unstable” how?
The collapse of the Roman Empire in the west was not sudden. There was no one date that it suddenly came to an end. Really it was far more subtle and complex than that. Already the empire was teetering on the edge of collapse until Diocletian came along in the 280s AD. Then Constantine had the brilliant idea of uniting and shoring up the systems of government by using the pre-existing structures of Christianity. This stabilised the situation so that the Empire could continue for another 200 years give or take.
The loss of Romanitas, however, was in the main due to the switch from the incoming tribes from the Roman systems of law and government to their own tribal ones. In fairness, some of them, like the Goths, were already pretty well Romanised. But the abandonment of the law and government in favour of other systems really saw the Empires end. This was gradual. As late as the 600s there were still areas where the Fall of Rome was not a conscious thought in people’s minds. They still paid taxed, only to the local ruler now. And the law was no longer administered in Roman courts. But Latin survived - I speak a form of it every day, although it has long moved away from the classical language. But even in Caesar’s time, the daily language was quite different, and it is to this ‘lower’ form that French, Spanish, Italian, Romanian, Occitan, Catalan, Portuguese, Galician and many other smaller language groups owe their existence.
Also, it should not be forgotten that in the east, Rome continued for another 1,000 years. Rome, if it has a definite date for falling, it should recorded as May 1452, when Sultan Mahmoud II took Constantinople. The Emperor who fought and died on the walls of the doomed city was another Constantine. Rome had lasted 2,200 years, almost.
But we inherit from it our systems,including the concept of government by the people; our languages and our culture.
None at all. In fact the most important reforms of Julius and Augustus Ceasar was to alleviate some of the oppression of the non-Roman subjects under roman rule (and give them representatives in the Senate, though this this was one step on the way to it becoming a powerless talking shop, as the new senators owed their loyalty to Caesar not Rome). But the fact remains the state that conquered all those provinces was basically a democratic one (albeit not a liberal or inclusive democracy). That would seem to me a pretty good advert for that form of government.
But at that time it was over 1400 years since the last leader of Rome who could meaningfully be said to have been chosen (as opposed to rubber-stamped) by “The People”.
What, you think kings and emperors didn’t pursue foolish financial policies?
But it’s all relative. The Republic was relatively stable for the first two or three centuries but most people remember the more dramtic last century of its existence - the period when the Republic was increasingly disturbed by factionalism, riots, mob rule, civil wars, demogogues, reigns of terror, etc. Then Augustus Ceasar came along and founded the Empire and that stablized things. The Empire was larger and more powerful than the Republic, at least as stable as the Republic, and lasted much longer. Most people looking back would conclude that the Empire fixed the problems of the Republic and was an improvement. Granted, the people forming these conclusions generally had a vested interest in that belief.
I gave up on democracy after reading Arrow’s impossibility theorem.
I don’t think it’s really valid to look upon Rome in the same sense that we look at a modern state. Most Romans didn’t owe fealty to “Rome” they owed fealty to whoever their patron was.
Democracy depends on the middle and lower class having something to lose. This is why Hitler rose to power. If you look you see the Nazis didn’t take off till the economy tanked. Then as it got a little better, the Nazis lost seats, then as the economy sank again, so rose the Nazis.
If you’re a nation of poor people they don’t care. They are too busy trying to find food and a roof over their head to care. In ancient times, poor people were born and worked hard, then along came a country and took most of what they earned for taxes. So what if someone else invaded their land. The new invader came along and kicked out the old guys and once again took the poor people’s income in taxes.
It mattered little to them who was going to rule them, 'cause they were all bad.
Look at our current health care system situation. Poor people don’t have health care. And what is Congress doing about it. They are TALKING about it. That is fine and well, but that’s democracy. A dictator would say “I don’t discuss I DO.” One man, in a dictatorship can change the course of a day. Not so in a Democracy.
And to poor people desperately seeking results they don’t care about losing some of their freedom if it gives them basic needs, like food, shelter and healthcare
As Marcia Brady said when she ran for class president: "A lot of people talk, but RESULTS are what count. And that’s what you’ll get if you vote for me. RESULTS.
Maybe that’s true, but it’s also important to remember that the Roman Republic was also a very small power, that became increasingly more unstable and less democratic as it grew. As a city-state, it was a fine. As the ruler of Italy, it managed. As the ruler of large trans-national dominion, it failed.
Second, it wasn’t really a democracy, either. It was, well, a Republic. Historical commenters did not, as we often do today, lump Athens and Rome together.
A lot of the good posts in this thread discuss what it takes for a democracy to work.
Another approach is to ask what’s good about democracy, and whether it would have given any benefit to the proto-nations in question.
Democracy isn’t a good system for selecting great leaders or deposing bad ones (plenty of counter examples for each). What democracy provides is hope for an opposition that they can successfully oppose the rulers working within the system of government. It also provides a right-to-rule for the government not based on force or inheritance.
With the rise of a strong middle class (educated and empowered people who care about government policy) these things are very important. When you just have military/noble, priest and peasant classes, only the military/noble class really has much invested in government and democracy isn’t so important.
It isn’t so much that people chose to stop practicing republicanism, as that kings, emperors, popes, chieftains, and warlords of various type chose to stop allowing them to do so.
Before the French Revolution, republicanism was a niche form of government, generally practiced by states which were (a) small; (b) relatively wealthy; and © either not surrounded by powerful neighbors, or endowed with some sort of natural defense–typically either water or mountains.
Large republics were difficult to govern given the primitive transportation and communications of the time. Poor republics, or republics surrounded by powerful neighbors, found it difficult to mobilize military resources as effectively as monarchies and chieftainships.
The Greek city states could get away with being republics, when they were surrounded by other city-states and the rest of Europe was a backwater. Even so they had to fight a close-run battle for survival against Persia, were mostly conquered after a kingdom emerged in Macedonia, and were completely conquered by Rome.
Rome could get away with being a republic when it was small and surrounded by mostly nothing. As it became larger, it became too cumbersome to govern and too tempting a target for military takeover.
By the time Rome fell, Europe was a dangerous place, filled with “civilized” states with armies and well-armed “barbarians” in the east. Republics emerged and survived only in defensible niches, such as the seaborne trading empires of Venice and Genoa, Switzerland behind its mountains, and the Netherlands behind its dikes. And also, a sort of semi-republicanism, under an attenuated monarchy, emerged on an island off the coast.
It has the key innovation of Democracy (as I mention in the OP) that is leaders with fix terms of office, chosen by “the people” (or at least some reasonable proportion of them or their representatives).
How do you account for George W. Bush, then?
Well, technically, his father wasn’t the last leader. Anyway, this kind of aristocracy-fantasizing also extends to the Kennedys and around these parts there are some people who think Justin Trudeau should be annointed.
I think ms more or less answered the question in its entirety here (as did Freddy the Pig, though from the opposite direction).
For power to be vested permanently in the people, it has to first be vested temporarily in the people. If you’re a monarch, and your people have little or no knowledge of democracy (and are therefore not agitating for it), why would you want to give away your absolute or near-absolute power?
History shows us that leaders generally have a very high opinion of their abilities regardless of whether they’re any good at leading, and you can count the number of absolute rulers who voluntarily abdicated in favor of more competent replacements on one hand.
In other words, democracy nearly always requires force- either an outside force which deposes the existing sovereign and then withdraws- or one composed via popular revolt.
Both were equally unlikely until quite recently.
Outside forces didn’t come a-conquerin’ because they felt bad for the serfs of their neighboring states, they came because they wanted land/resources/money/prestige. They came, they saw, they conquered… and they stayed, and rarely did they give the people of their newly conquered territory the same rights they gave their existing citizens. Often, they gave them much less.
Popular revolts are not that uncommon, really, but were rarely successful. After all, armies tend to march to the tune of whoever is paying them, and the peasants weren’t exactly in a position to buy their loyalties. Therefore, in order to depose a sovereign, you’d need him to be such a collossal douche that some or all of the army turned against him even though it meant not getting paid and possibly fed. Not easy to be that much of a douche.
Even in England, the cradle of modern representative government, things weren’t as easy as American textbooks often make them out to be. The ideas which eventually added up to constitutional monarchy (or, effectively, a parliamentary democratic republic) were fought for over the course of several wars and rebellions.
He was particularly skilled at convincing red-state voters that a spoilt ivy-league-educated Connecticut millionaire was in fact a humble salt-of-the-earth Southern everyman.
The problem with democracy is that skills necessary to get elected are not the same skills that are need to govern effectively. But that beats a monarchy where the only skill most monarchs need is the come out of the correct vagina in the right order 
(of course that doesn’t usually apply to the FOUNDER of monarchical dynasties who typically need a whole raft of skills to wangle their way to the top, but a few generations in that is not the case)
When we think of the Roman Empire, the vast majority of that area was carved out by Caesar and after Caesar. It was the period of great expansion and the rule by a triumvirate of conquerors that led to the downfall of the Republic.
http://www.roman-empire.net/maps/empire/extent/100bc-2.html
http://www.roman-empire.net/maps/empire/extent/caesar.html
So as you can see what we know of as the Roman Empire was expanded more from the time of Julius to Augustus Caesar than it did during the history of Rome from Kingdom to Republic.