Alternatives to Democracy. Non-Democratic Regimes and the Limits to Democracy Diffusion in Eurasia

DI QUIRICO, ROBERTO

2013-01-01

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Abstract

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, liberal democracy remained the only ideal model of a political regime applicable worldwide. Then, various students and politicians saw the end of communism as the final and definitive victory of democratic ideology and imagined a future in which democracy would spread everywhere. Democracy spread widely during the 1990s and the early 2000s. The fall of various South American dictatorships and the European Union enlargement caused a transition to democracy in many countries. However, important areas in Eurasia, in particular Russia, China and Iran, resisted democratization and reformed authoritarian regimes rose and consolidated in the region. These regimes proved their ability to survive and influenced their neighbours proposing political models that attracted neighbouring countries’ leaders. Thus, new kinds of authoritarian regimes challenged the idea of the unavoidability of the spread of democracy. Today, the international economic crisis and wide economic growth in authoritarian countries such as Russia and China have renewed the relevance of questions about the democratic model’s superiority, its unavoidable diffusion and the existence of alternative regimes. To answer this question we need to understand if at least one of these regimes is a model. Furthermore, we may discover if it is based on well–defined values, is replicable elsewhere, economically sustainable and able to consolidate and survive.