Since the third wave of democratisation reached Central and Eastern Europe in 1989 and its communist regimes began to crumble, the fate of liberal democracies has become polemicised. In 1989, the end of another grand ideology of the...
moreSince the third wave of democratisation reached Central and Eastern Europe in 1989 and its communist regimes began to crumble, the fate of liberal democracies has become polemicised. In 1989, the end of another grand ideology of the twentieth century was hailed as the “end of history”, proclaiming liberal democracy the final form of government and the “triumph of the Western idea” (Fukuyama, 1992). Liberal democracy was now the only game in town, having defeated all viable ideological competitions. Not only in the Western world, but in regions such as East Asia, including China, the liberal idea was taking root and setting off on the path of capitalist consumerism.
Many expected liberal democracies to gradually spread to all corners of the globe. Yet, despite the hope inspired by the Arab Spring across North Africa and the Middle East in 2011, the mood has grown more sombre over the years as several countries of the 1989 wave have backslidden democratically, and the Arab Spring has seen mixed results, even descending into violent conflict, resulting in mass migration. Growing ranks of political leaders in the transitioning countries, as well as in the old democracies, are moving away from liberal democracy toward apocalyptic populism and authoritarian practices.
“Globalisation crisis” is a term often misused to strike fear into the hearts of many who deem their traditional identities and economic securities threatened. In response, political participation is becoming more contentious. “Assertive citizens” in the democratic and democratising world trust political leadership less and less (Norris, 2011; Dalton & Welzel, 2014). The annual Edelman Trust Barometer shows a global decline in trust, reaching a crisis point in 2017. In 2018, the world battles for truth. Trust is increasingly polarised between the informed public—those who are college educated, consumers of the media, and with the top 25% of income—and the general public (Edelman Trust Barometer, 2018).
It is worth mentioning that Fukuyama’s article on the “end of history” does not end on an optimistic note. He comments that while there may be no viable ideological alternative to a liberal democracy, it is quite capable of coexisting with identity politics, ethnic, and nationalist violence (Fukuyama, 1992). In his most recent book, he continues to develop this idea, claiming that there were two streams of identity politics unleashed with the French Revolution: one devoted to the pursuit of personal dignity and individual autonomy, the other to the pursuit of collective autonomy and dignity (Fukuyama, 2018). At times, these are pursued simultaneously, as is the case of the European human rights framework, particularly the human rights documents enshrined within the Council of Europe and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe which make a point of collective rights pertaining to national and/or linguistic minorities.
The long-term global democratisation process was propped up by the spread of the global human rights culture. Since the Second World War and the passing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—drafted under the auspices of Eleanor Roosevelt and an international team of lawyers and scholars in under three years— dozens of global and regional human rights covenants and declarations, some having reached near universal status, have been signed and ratified by almost all governments represented in the United Nations. Even ruthless dictators pay lip service to human rights, testifying to their global acceptance. This has contributed to the understanding of a democracy centred on the concept of dignity. Although the concept itself has been evolving since the Enlightenment’s ideas of autonomy, it was the international framework of human rights that placed it front and centre in the concept of democratic society as human rights are the tools for its implementation. Dignity serves as the benchmark for democracies, advanced and developing alike. For the old democracies, the dignitarian framework provides criteria upon which the depth of the quality of democracy can be evaluated: to what extent it meets the conditions for free and equal development of human potentials, how effective it is in protecting the most vulnerable in the society, and how it fulfils the implementation of civil and political rights or is able to ameliorate the social and economic disparities between people.
The collective pursuit of dignity has taken on many forms, from the quests for self-determination to the pursuit of securing minority rights and access to representation and decolonisation movements in the post-colonial world. Founded upon membership in a collectivity, the collective dignity is derived from narratives that shape identities, oftentimes formulated in antagonism towards a narrative of a different collectivity. Narratives of ethnic groups are of a tragic form, interweaving the episodes of the past with the emotions of pity and fear, serving as the glue that binds together and endows the community with a purpose.
Countries of the third wave transition were faced with the added burden of the transformation process. Not only did they have to address economic and social transformations, and the institutional remake of the societies to enable the transition to democracy; the leaders and the civil society of countries in Central and Eastern Europe, parts of Africa, Latin America, and East Asia also had to reinvent their identities, facing the ghosts of oppressive past regimes. Some stayed the course, with greater or lesser difficulty, others slid back into authoritarianism of various sorts. The burst of democratic participation brought millions of people closer to political life, and the stakes decided within are intertwined with personal stakes, grievances, and dignity needs. Processes of transitional justice had to mediate the flood of demands, needs, and expectations. Some managed through robust institutional processes to address the need for justice in the case of the former perpetrators and healing in the case of the former victims, and truth-finding, establishing archives for documentation of the crimes and atrocities committed in the past. Others opted for more modest institutional redresses, and a controlled narrative of the past to secure the legitimacy and stability of new governments.
These negotiations depended on the constellations of the actors within the societies’ elites and former oppositions, the nature of the transitions, the amount of negotiation and settlement between the old and new elites, and, essentially, the access to the authorship of the narrative framework at the onset of the transitions. Some of the societies, such as South Africa and those in Latin America, also had to address the legacy of mass violence and the resulting cultural trauma which continue to haunt both the individual survivors and their families and communities. The lingering guilt, shame, quest for recognition and justice, and the unaddressed personal as well as cultural trauma are all added challenges that transitional societies have to navigate while pursuing (more or less successfully) the quest for individual and collective dignity.
Furthermore, transitional societies also exist in the larger frameworks of post-colonialism and post-socialism. The collective narratives within these regions are also shaped by the structures of dependence that have historically framed broader relations, and impacted identities within. The legacy bequeathed by both structures on the post-colonial and post-socialist societies are perceptions of being on the periphery, a mistrust in the Big History written by the North and the West, and a sense of victimhood and betrayal. These influence how identities evolve during transitional times, and to what extent they are able to convert the tragic narratives into more constructive stories, thereby addressing the ghosts of the past.
The trends outlined above are the themes touched upon by the authors of this book, both theoretically as well as in case studies. They cover various parts of the world, with an emphasis on Central European countries and South Africa, but also include Nigeria, Japan, Spain, and the United States.
