The State of Democratization at the Beginning of the 21st Century
Author(s)
Diamond, Larry
Abstract
Thirty years ago, a global democratic revolution began with the Portuguese military revolution that overthrew several decades of dictatorship and launched a contentious but ultimately successful democratic transition in that country. This “third wave” of global democratization then spread to Spain and Greece, then to Latin America, and eventually to a number of countries in Asia, Africa, and, with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Central and Eastern Europe as well. By the mid-1990s, the percentage of states in the world that were democracies had increased from 27 percent in 1974 to over 60 percent. Democracy had become the dominant form of government in the world. Since the mid-1990s, the global democratic revolution has stalled in some respects while deepening in others. This paper reflects on several global trends in democratic development over the past decade.
