Article: Is the Age of Democracy Over?

The cover of this week's edition of the major conservative UK magazine "The Spectator" announces in big black letters: "The fall of democracy".

Inside, the magazine carries an article by Francis Fukuyama titled "Is the age of democracy over?"

The article can be read free of charge here:

www.spectator.co.uk/spectator/thisweek/5766228/is-the-age-of-democracy-over.thtml

Lead: "Twenty years ago, Francis Fukuyama forecast the final triumph of liberal democracy and the 'end of history'. As pro-democracy movements falter from Ukraine to China, he revisits his thesis – and asks if history has a few more surprises to spring."

Excerpts: "Over the last decade we have seen the collapse or discrediting of not just the 'Orange' movement, but many of the other so-called 'rainbow revolutions' across eastern Europe: the 'Rose' revolution in Georgia, the 'Cedar' revolution in Lebanon [sic]. Then there's Vladimir Putin's transformation of Russia into an 'electoral authoritarian' state, the undermining of democratic institutions by Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, and the rise of China as a successful authoritarian moderniser. [...]

"Americans let the collapse of communism go to their heads. [...] They saw the events of 1989 as a triumph, not just for the cause of liberty but of loosely regulated markets at home and muscular self-assertion abroad, unconstrained by international institutions. [...] As the hegemonic power for much of the 1990s and 2000s, the United States was bound to incur a lot of resentment from countries and people who felt they had no way of holding the US accountable for what it did to them economically. [...] So the United State [sic] itself became an obstacle to the spread of its own ideals. [...]

"[D]emocracy remains, in Amartya Sen's words, the 'default' political condition: [...] today's would-be authoritarians all have to stage elections and manipulate the media from behind the scenes to legitimate themselves."

This shoddy little article is summed up nicely in a comment left by a reader: "I was immediately drawn to the interesting-sounding header of this piece. Then amazed at how it could be followed by such a boring, point-missing and turgid article!"

Francis Fukuyama is Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy and Director of the International Development Program at Johns Hopkins University.