4.2: Background - Reaching the "End of History"

Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Evaluate arguments that the world has reached the “end of history” and converged on liberal democracy as a political system

Liberal Democracy as the End of History?

The politics of globalization pivot on more than policy debates, as important as those may be to lived experience. Some have argued that the reach of modern democracy, as reflected by classical liberal ideas about individual freedoms, had become truly global by the end of the Twentieth Century. Even more, the argument goes, this was a global political preference, not imposed on others by force. Such arguments were most famously captured in an essay by political philosopher Francis Fukuyama, which asked whether we had reached the “end of history” (Fukuyama, 1989).

Fukuyama and many others saw the inexorable march of liberal democracy as the central political force of the globalizing world. This was viewed as complementary to trends in economic globalization, which were falling along pro-market, (neo)liberal lines. Neoliberalism, as described in more depth in Chapter 3: Economic Globalization, emphasizes institutional support for individual freedoms in economic life. Practically speaking, this translates to the adoption of a market economy within countries and a suite of international organizations to support the unfettered flow of goods, services, capital, and money across international borders. Barriers to trade still exist in this neoliberal world, but the ongoing project is to reduce them as much as possible.

The political correlate to this economic reality is the possibility of a universal embracing of liberal democracy. “Liberal” here is not to be confused with the popular usage of the term in U.S. politics, that is, as referring to someone who supports progressive social policies. Instead, the term “liberal democracy” is rooted in intellectual traditions associated with political thinkers such as John Locke. Such classical liberalism was interested in treating individual freedom as a natural right and foundational to political life. Government authority of any kind thus required justification.

In its contemporary form, liberal democracy describes a political system of representative government in which there is broad enfranchisement of the population and robust liberal institutions such as the rule of law and civil society. Government reach is limited by formal checks on institutional power, including independent judiciaries and divided branches of government. Societal pressures present a critical constraint on government power. In a liberal democracy, individuals enjoy many civil liberties. Many of these, such as freedom of speech, religion, and association, among others, are often enshrined in constitutions. The free flow of information, another critical institution, is supported by an independent media.

In reaching the “end of history,” Fukuyama argued that liberal democracy had demonstrated decisively its superiority as a set of ideas and “really existing” institutions. Competing political systems, such as fascism, communism, or socialism, were relegated to the “dustbin of history”. Soon after the publication of Fukuyama’s essay in the summer of 1989, the socialist bloc of Central and Eastern Europe collapsed, followed by the implosion of the vast Soviet Union. By 2012, a total of 42 countries in the world were liberal democracies. An additional 60 were electoral democracies on the path to becoming liberal democracies (V-Dem Institute, 2022). It appeared that history was moving toward its endpoint.

Yet history and human civilization did not converge on liberal democracy in the years since. China’s global rise offers a powerful refutation that the world had reached the “end of political history”. As one of the largest economies in the world and most populous countries on the planet, China remains under the control of a single ruling party, the Chinese Communist Party. Its economy, while capitalist, is not a free market economy. China’s example demonstrates that an authoritarian country could rise to global influence in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries and attract a global following among the leaders of many countries. The Soviet Union’s successor, Russia, has also moved decisively in an authoritarian direction since the 1990s, and it, too, serves as a patron to many non-democratic countries across Afro-Eurasia. In short, political globalization has been a messy process, refuting the prediction of the triumph of liberal democracy.