The Expansion of the Global Democratic Community

Abstract

Authoritarian regimes around the world face a wholesale and systematic crisis of legitimacy. However, a second route for developing countries is for them to become emerging democracies. Examples exist today on every continent, most prominently Brazil and India. In emerging democracies, there is less need for a bourgeois revolution against the government by the emergent middle class.¹ The growing salience of emerging democracies in world politics is producing the expansion of the global democratic community. Asia is at the epicenter of this trend, and Africa has taken great strides. In Latin America, democracy has consolidated its strong position, and democracy is seeping further into Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The Arab Spring heralds a fourth wave of democratization.