A Refutation of The So-called Autocratic Revival
This paper seeks to provide an analysis that rejects recent claims that autocracy, which is resurging globally, provides a credible challenge to the legitimacy of liberal democracy as the end goal of humanity’s ideological evolution.
A Refutation of the So-called Autocratic Revival
by Winston John Romero Casio
A Historical Issue
The collapse of the Berlin wall in the year 1989 led to the consequent precipitous fall of the Soviet Union and its various satellites in Eastern Europe. The demise of the Leninist state was viewed as a death knell for the socialist ideology and its corresponding centrally-planned economic model. Initially though, some nations in Eastern Europe held on to their old ideology. However, pundits believed that the remnants of the Warsaw Pact system were nothing more than mere knee jerk reactions of a dying political system.
Hence, the emergence of the western political system, that is, liberal democracy, as the victor in the cold war was thought to be conclusive. Consequently, the political scientist and economist Francis Fukuyama famously stated that “liberal democracy may constitute the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the final form of human government” or the often referred to ‘end of history’ (Fukuyama, xi). Politicians and theorists alike failed to examine whether Fukuyama’s theoretical contention was premature or not. At the time, the culmination of the cold war and the dominance of the west together with its way of life were the much heralded developments to the exclusion of everything else.
For nearly two decades, various events seemed to render credulity to this postulate as socialist governments and autocratic regimes lost their legitimacy to govern their peoples. Like domino pieces, they fell one after the other and faded into obscurity. In place of their failed centrally-planned economic system, they implemented market-oriented reforms that markedly improved the lives of their citizens.
It must be emphatically noted though that market reforms has failed to bring about much needed modernization. Although many facets of the western modernization have seeped into Russia and Eastern Europe, the development that is desired by their peoples has yet to be felt by the general population. Moreover, the social inequality that is seen in the West has reared its ugly head too. Thus, this provided the roots for social discontent, a powder keg for demagogic and populist politics. This has allowed the rise of political leaders who are able to impose their strongman tactics on a docile population that are dreaming of the better life.
A Revived Debate
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