Reddit mentions of Western Civilization in World History (Themes in World History)

The thing is you’re asking about a very broad concept in history, that has existed in various forms int time/space and narrow it down to one conceptual origin, which would not be doing history justice. Democracy is not a Greek invention, nor unique to Greece and certainly not Athens - the latter is just a particularly well known example and a lot of discourse has been attached to it. It certainly is not in se related to banding together against a bigger foe, democracy in se is not necessary for that.

Personally, I’d disagree with the idea that Hellenic democracy is not the ancestor to our modern version, not in reality. Ours is more squarely rooted in the Late Medieval representative institutions. But a love for referencing the classics is what generally underlies that link. While not necessarily untrue that we can draw on that example - that’s a given, that does not change that root of our modern western democracy does not lay in Athens, but in 14-15th century Europe.

The main thing with books though, is that as far as I’m aware this subject is less history and more political sciences, it is a discourse mostly handled by men like Max Weber more than say a Leopold Von Ranke. One work dealing with it in broad terms was Peter Stearns Western Civilisation., but that is a more broader work, dealig with multiple aspects of western civ, of which of course, democracy is fundamental.