The celebrations that have accompanied the wave of transitions from autocracy to democracy since 1974 have tended to obscure two serious dangers. Together, they presage a political future that, instead of embodying “the end of history,” promises to be tumultuous and uncertain. Far from being secure in its foundations and practices, modern democracy will have to face unprecedented challenges in the 1990s and beyond.

First, with regard to established liberal democracies (ELDs), the very absence in the present context of a credible “systemic” alternative is bound to generate new strains. The apologists for ELDs have long argued and their citizens have generally agreed that, whatever the defaults, this mode of political domination was clearly preferable to any of several forms of autocracy. Now, these external criteria for comparison have (largely) disappeared and, in any case, are no longer supported by the propaganda and military might of a great power. All that remains are the internal standards for evaluation, embedded in the pages of a vast corpus of normative democratic theory and in the expectations of a vast majority of normal democratic citizens. What will happen when the rulers of ELDs are held accountable in their well-entrenched practices to these long subordinated ideals of justice and equality – not to mention those of participation, accountability, responsiveness, and self-realization?

Second, with regard to fragile neo-democracies (FNDs), the widespread desire to imitate the basic norms and institutions of ELDs does not guarantee that these efforts will be successful. Nothing demonstrates that democracy is inevitable or irrevocable. It is not a necessity. It neither fills some indispensable functional requisite of capitalism, nor does it correspond to some ineluctable ethical imperative in social evolution.