A new perspective on the diffusion of global democracy

Abstract

Francis Fukuyama hypothesized that liberal democracy may constitute the final form of human government and Samuel Huntington described the transition of some thirty countries from nondemocratic to democratic political systems between 1974 and 1990 as the third wave, with the implication that it would sweep the rest of the world's countries with it. It is rather obvious that both predictions missed the mark. This paper attempts to shed light on why these predictions were wrong. Most regime changes over the last 50 years occurred in countries with relatively small populations with the result that the majority of the world's population was unaffected by the diffusion of global democracy. Concurrent with the autocracy to democracy transition, there is usually, of course, a confrontation between the political groups in power and those seeking power. If the third wave is adjusted for population count, observed global democracy diffusion (and attendant global confrontation) becomes a much less significant event. To describe the weakening phenomenon of global confrontation of political systems, some new tools are used. Specifically, a political Gini coefficient (PGC), and a global political polarization index (PPI) are introduced. These summary measures can be observed after adjusting for population count and country count. Though the Gini and PPI are generally utilized as income inequality measures in the economics discipline, both provide insight here as the Gini describes the unequal distribution of democracy and the PPI describes the degree of polarization of two rival political systems. © 2018 Hindawi Limited. All rights reserved.