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Jump to Chapter 1 Sections:
>> Global trends in democracy >> A strategy for assisting democratic governance >> From conditions to selectivity >> "Tough Love" for development >> Background paper >> References
The march of democratic progress was one of the defining developments of the late 20th century. By
the mid-1990s democracy was the only broadly legitimate form of government in the world, and many nondemocratic regimes had liberalized their politics at least superficially. Indeed, today well over half the remaining nondemocratic states portray themselves as democratic, holding regular, multiparty elections.4 Few regimes explicitly condemn the basic principles of democracy. And most of the nondemocratic states have significant social movements or critics seeking democratic political change. Internationally, there has also been a distinct trend toward affirming democratic principles, increasingly codified into international law through international and regional treaties and resolutions.
Beyond the leveling off of democratic expansion since the mid-1990s, there have been four other
major caveats to the trend of democratization.
- First, as democracy has spread rapidly around the world, it has become shallower. The quality of governance and the rule of law have deteriorated in some existing democracies, and the more recently established democracies have tended to be less liberal and more corrupt.
- Second, the spread of democracy has been far from uniform across regions and subregions. While some regions are now overwhelmingly democratic, others have been only partially touched by democratization. The Arab world remains without a single true democracy.
- Third, many of the regimes that once appeared to be in transition from authoritarian rule (particularly in Africa and the former Soviet Union) have settled into varying shades and forms of authoritarian rule that fall well short of democracy.
- Fourth-and perhaps the greatest cause for concern-many of the democracies that have emerged in the past two decades exhibit growing problems of governance that are eroding their legitimacy among the public and undermining their stability. With the breakdown of democracy in Pakistan in 1999,
the recent economic and political crisis in Argentina (which could spread to other Latin American states), and citizens’ mounting disgust with corruption worldwide, the global trend of democratization is at greater risk of reversal than at any time since the end of the Cold War.
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