Back in 1989, when the cold war was not long over and the worldwide democratic euphoria was at its apex, Francis Fukuyama declared in a controversial essay that we may be on the brink of universalization of liberal democracy.
It was a pleasant dream.
In reality the disappearance of communism has not, as forecast by Fukuyama, brought about a new flowering of liberal democracy in the non-Western world. Nor is the democratic West so sure of itself any longer. Indeed, even in the United States, that redoubtable bastion of democratic sentiments, there are now insistent grumblings about the viability of liberal democracy.
Thus in light of recent history, the relevant issue is perhaps not whether liberal democracy will become ubiquitous, but whether it will have a future anywhere.
The timing of this inquiry may appear as premature as Fukuyama's musings about the telological triumph of liberal deomcracy may have been. But the fact that liberal democracy -- that unlikely wedding of economic capitalism and political equality -- is losing ground throughout the globe is an observable fact.
This can be seen, for instance, in Russia. Boris Yeltsin, the West's great democratic hope, is no democrat. Both in his handling of domestic politics and foreign policy, Yeltsin has provoked comparisons with men of a different breed: the czars of Russia's authoritarian past. And the alternatives to Yeltsin bode even worse for that important nation's prospects for democratization.
The real basket cases, of course, are found in what we term the Third World -- a disparate amalgamation of countries from Africa, Asia, and the underdeveloped regions of the Western hemisphere. Democratic experiments in these nations now seem largely circumvented by tribal, racialist, or religious politics.
An optimist may here interrupt: "What about the industrialized East Asia?" Aren't the spectacular modernization successes of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong testaments to the strength of liberal democracy outside the West?
No. The accomplishments of East Asia are primarily due to the modification of Confucianism into what one scholar has called "industrial neo-Confucianism." That is, instead of adopting laissez-faire economic policy and political democracy, East Asian nations have achieved economic prosperity and political stability through reconfiguring indigenous cultural institutions and practices. East Asia is hence neither liberal nor democratic.
In fact, the East Asian model of development, based on interventionist economic policy and centralized government, now stands as the most coherent secularist political alternative to liberal democracy. The people of Peru, for example, consciously opted for this route when they voted Alberto Fujimori -- an ethnic-Japanese who claims that "traditional democracies will end up in the garbage heap" -- as their President several years ago.
This loss of confidence in the staying power of liberal democracy is equally salient in the United States. Within last few years, every antidemocratic argument from Plato to Ortega y Gasset seems to have been restated.
The position taken in books like "The End of Equality" (and, in a circuitous manner, in "The Bell Curve") for example, points to the key internal contradiction within liberal democracy. Capitalism frees man to pursue the unlimited acquisition of material goods, and, because each man differs in the ability to acquire wealth, society inevitably begins to polarize along the lines of the rich elite and the poor masses.
Eventually, capitalism and democracy may unable to coexist because the elites will amass disproportionate amounts of political power. There will arise either the dictatorship of the elite or the dismantling of capitalism to maintain political equality.
Different, yet just as gloomy scenarios have been hinted at in last week's feature stories in Time and The New York Times Book Review.
The Time article suggests that the easy manner with which the modern electorate can now communicate their desires to their elected officials could render the idea of deliberative legislature obsolete. We may be on the verge of what Ortega y Gasset called "hyperdemocracy," or even the tyranny of the masses.
The New York Times Book Review article addresses the inability of liberal democracy, understood as a contract between rational, self-interested agents, to produce citizenship, families, and other stable social structures that are needed for the preservation of society. Loss of values and the fraying of social institutions may ultimately be coeval with liberal democracy.
Is liberal democracy then finished?
The prudent observer will desist from easy answers. But when I pause and meditate upon the course of recent events, I can sometimes hear the death knell of an old and venerable idea.
