Contemporary events highlight multiple reasons for concern about the underlying stability of many regimes that experienced transitions from autocracy during the third wave era. The heady hopes for the progressive spread of democracy worldwide, captured by Fukuyama's idea of the ‘end of history,’ a term coined immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall, have flagged over the last two decades. Freedom House reports that the number of electoral democracies grew globally during the third wave era but that further advances stalled around the turn of the twenty-first century, followed by four successive years of retreat. Diamond suggests that the last decade saw the onset of a democratic recession. Huntington emphasizes that ideas about steady progress are naïve; previous historical waves of democratization were followed by periods of sustained reversal. In recent years, elected governments have often struggled to maintain stability following inconclusive or disputed contests (for instance, in Kenya and Mexico), partisan strife and recurrent political scandals (Bangladesh and Guatemala), and persistent outbreaks of violent ethnic conflict (Democratic Republic of Congo and Afghanistan). Contemporary setbacks for democracy have also occurred following dramatic coups against elected leaders (experienced in Honduras and Thailand) as well as creeping restrictions on human rights and fundamental freedoms (such as in Russia and Venezuela).

In the light of all these developments, the initial high hopes and expectations for the further expansion and steady consolidation of democratic regimes around the world, commonly expressed in the early 1990s, have not come to fruition.