The Restarting of History and the Decline of the Liberal Democratic Order

The United Nations General Assembly Building. Photo: Patrick Gruban on Flickr

In 1989, American political scientist and philosopher Francis Fukuyama wrote a now famous essay titled, ‘The End of History.’

Facing a weakening Soviet Union and the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, Fukuyama, like many people at the time, was faced with a sense that victory of ‘the West’ and liberal capitalist democracy had been achieved, and that humanity was facing the epoch of its political development. While Fukuyama conceded newsworthy current events would continue to transpire, he contended liberal democratic ideology had established itself as the eventual destination of humankind. 

36 years on from that monumental declaration, we find ourselves facing a world in which liberalism, the dominant global ideology, faces fatigue, despite it appearing so certain to absorb all. The dream of a world of western democracy seems increasingly challenged and the history of global development seems far from settled.

The Collapse of the Berlin Wall. Photo: Raphaël Thiémard on Flickr

The rise of a global liberal order

While the idea of the ‘western liberal democracy’ as the inevitable end step of humanity was always contentious, there is no doubt that it has dominated almost every aspect of global politics since the collapse of the Soviet Union. 

The fall of the Soviet Union led to a rapid expansion of liberal economies and democratic principles in the former Soviet and Eastern Bloc states. By 2006, The Economist’s Democracy Index identified twelve states formally part of the Soviet sphere of influence as having become democracies, seven of which had joined the European Union. Of those states that had not become democracies, market privatisation and liberal economics had been adopted by the grand majority. 

Other events further emphasised this growing liberal trend. The collapse of Yugoslavia in 1992 and the adoption of liberal democracy by these emerging states further strengthened the spread of democracy in Europe. In Asia, Gǎigé kāifàng or ‘the reform and opening up of China’ over the latter half of the twentieth century brought the world’s most populous country closer to the liberal order. Following that monumental pivot, India undertook its own program of economic liberalisation: an economic crisis in 1991 forced India to seek out support from the International Monetary Fund.

With China and India, 37% of the global population was now brought into a new, more liberal economic system by 2000.This trend towards liberalisation was duplicated repeatedly across the world in the 80s and 90s with states like Nigeria and Indonesia all implementing plans for fiscal and trade liberalisation. 

The absence of the Soviet Union also cemented, at least for a time, the USA as the unipolar world power unrivalled in influence, military capacity and cultural dominance. While it is debated in the modern age whether the USA still retains this unrivalled position as the singular global power, up until the 2010s, the USA faced no significant great power challenge to its foreign policy aims. The spread of liberalism became a core component of US foreign policy in the 1990s and 2000s, and was a major justification of the unilateral action used in the ‘War on Terror’. As much as the War on Terror was linked as a pragmatic response to the events of 9/11, US government officials made no secret to depict the intervention in Iraq, and later Afghanistan, as democratising missions.

Whilst the US interventions were often influenced by a realist foreign policy position, incentivised by strategic aims against ‘hostile regimes’, this was never the sole justification. In a 2010 memoir, President George Bush himself stated in relation to Iraq that, “We had liberated the country from a primitive dictatorship, and we had a moral obligation to leave behind something better”. 

Idealist intervention on the concept of building up a liberal democracy was always a cornerstone of US foreign policy, and similarly influenced economic and military interventions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan, and Somalia.

Opponents in the periphery

However, liberal ascendancy has always faced opposition. Not only did it have its strong ideological opponents, but as the idea of western liberal democracy became heavily tied to US influence, western liberal democracy also faced backlash from states that became opponents to American unipolar hegemony. 

The first challenge to the liberal world order emerged from the growing coalition of non-democratic powers across the globe. From 2019 onwards, The Economist noted consistent declines in the number of democracies across the world, with autocratic states strengthening their own institutions rather than continuing the transition to democratic norms. States like Russia and China cemented their opposition to the USA. Both states abandoned their prior liberalisation trends as the post-Cold War consensus between Russia and the USA collapsed and China saw significant economic development.

The greatest examples of this are reflected in Russia’s increased militarisation and armed expansions in Georgia in 2008, Ukraine in 2014 and Ukraine again in 2022. Putin’s own announcement of the invasion in 2022 argued one of the primary reasons for this invasion was the “expansion of NATO to the East”. 

While these reasons are often used to hide more practical and brutal political considerations, they do reflect a growing desire by states like Russia to push back against perceived ‘western hegemony’. This is a claim China has also taken up economically with its development of institutions like the Asian Development Bank and the Belt and Road Initiative. 

Chinese government officials are well aware of the diplomatic strength their unique economic and political position gives them. Aligning with organisations like the Group of 77, an international voting alliance composed of developing states, exemplifies this. China uses this unique position to assert itself in opposition to the ‘western’ liberal order.  

The internal crisis

The challenge to the liberal social and economic order is not exclusively external. Internal economic and political crises have pushed several nominally liberal democratic states into opposition to the liberal order. In response to the Global Financial Crisis and the Eurozone crisis, Europe, often seen as the heartland of liberal democracy, was rocked by several anti-liberal protests and a rise in ‘New Right’ parties. 

These parties represented far right political movements founded in direct opposition to the liberal democracies they emerged in. Similarly, America saw the rise of the Tea Party movement, a loose new conservative alliance, that would eventually be followed and replaced by the MAGA movement who supported Donald Trump in 2016.. The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent economic crisis would only accelerate this decline in liberal democratic support across these established democracies.

With this increased unpopularity, notable governments and leaders opposed to the liberal status quo began seizing power. Prominent Hungarian politician Viktor Orbán, most famous for describing his own government goal as the construction of an ‘illiberal democracy’, would win prime ministership of Hungary in 2014. In 2022, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, also advocated for a similar ideological departure from the liberal political order. In France, the far-right party National Rally and the left coalition New Popular Front endorsed several positions in opposition to the liberal consensus that had previously been endorsed by French President Emmanual Macron. Spain’s ruling Spanish Socialist Workers Party has also seen significant internal debate over its role in an increasingly opposed ‘American liberal order’. 

Almost every European state has seen similar ideological conflicts, and the EU as a whole, reliant on member state consensus, has faced its own issues arising from these new anti-liberal member states.

Donald Trump’s second term inaugural address. Photo: The White House on X

In the USA, the rise of Donald Trump, first in 2016 and now in 2024 represents one of the most notable setbacks to liberalism globally. Since being re-elected, Trump has launched widespread and all-encompassing attacks on the liberal economic policies of the USA via restrictions on free trade and regular government intervention into the economy. 

Similarly, he has undermined the liberal democratic principles of the state via ongoing and widespread attacks on the judiciary and the legislative branches, while bolstering executive authority. On top of all this, the USA has withdrawn its support from many of its liberal allies, removing its military, diplomatic and economic power from fellow liberal democratic states. These pivots reflect that the world’s largest superpower has at least partially abandoned the global trend towards liberalism itself.

Decline or permanent setback?

As Francis Fukuyama became readily aware after his famous declaration, it’s not possible to predict the future. In the collapse of the Soviet Era, liberal democracies looked not only ascendant but a genuine and real hope for many across the world. Many expected that the adoption of liberal democracy would become more and more widespread, leaving behind the fears and ideological clashes of the Cold War. 

However, the method by which this culmination of human development would emerge was never fully answered by its adherents. Similarly, the political reality behind such a scenario guaranteed opposition from a variety of current and emerging powers. While liberalism is by no means in terminal decline, it seems less and less likely every year that we are experiencing an inevitable trend towards a global liberal society. In contrast, it seems more likely that observers must be prepared for the continuation of a multi-polar and multi-ideological world.

And so history marches on.