As the end of the century [in this case the end of the 80s] approaches, the triumph of Western liberal democracy again seems the inevitability that it did at the turn of the previous century. This is an absolute triumph of the Western idea. It is seen in the failure of all viable alternative ideas, and also in the spread of consumer culture around the world. This may signal the end of history i...

With the collapse of the Soviet bloc in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it appeared that the world system could be on the threshold of an era of unprecedented peace and stability. Politicians, diplomats, and academics alike began to forecast the imminent establishment of a new world order, increasingly managed by an integrated international system based on the principles of li...

When Woodrow Wilson advanced the principle of self-determination in a series of speeches in 1918–19, his assumption seemed to be that acknowledging the claims of self-determination was a simple corollary of respect for democracy. Contemporary secessionists, and many who write and theorize about secession, share Wilson’s intuition about this. It is widely claimed that a ‘people’ has the right to...

In “Reactionary Democracy”, Aurelien Mondon and Aaron Winter frame modern liberal democracy as fundamentally exclusionary. Appeals to democratic principles that both institutionalize normalize political inequality have not only allowed but actively facilitated the rise of “alt-” far-right. book, authors expound “fuzzy” demarcation between “illiberal” “liberal” racism, latter encompassing an adh...