30 Years of World Politics: What Has Changed?

From its emergence in 1990 until the present day, the political climate has shifted from democratic gains and optimism to what Larry Diamond called the "democratic recession." Underpinning these shifts has been a reorientation of the major axis of political polarization, shifting from a left-right divide defined largely in economic terms toward a politics based on identity. A second great shift, technological development, has also introduced effects no one foresaw, including the greasing of wheels for the rise of identity-based social fragmentation. Other gradual changes that have further changed the environment in which democracy has to function include the move toward neoliberal economic policies, the aftermath of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and lowered expectations regarding democratic transitions. Sustaining democracy will need rebuilding the legitimate authority of the institutions of liberal democracy and resisting those powers that aspire to make nondemocratic institutions central.

What has changed in world politics over the thirty years since the Journal of Democracy published its inaugural issue in January 1990, and how has the Journal changed in response?

First, to get the obvious out of the way, we are now living in a very different political climate from the one that existed in 1990. The Journal of Democracy began publication just past the midpoint of what Samuel P. Huntington called the "third wave" of democratization. The Berlin Wall had just been torn down and communist regimes had begun collapsing across Central and Eastern Europe-the most dramatic advance for democracy during the entire thirty-year period. Today, by contrast, we find ourselves in what Larry Diamond describes as a "democratic recession," and there is reason to worry that this recession might prove to be the precursor of a full-scale depression.1 It is being openly challenged from without by authoritarian great powers such as Russia and the People's Republic of China, while populists and nationalists within the West assail that model as well. These setbacks have happened not just in peripheral democracies but also in those very countries which led the democratic revolution - the United States and Britain.

Underlying these changes has been a reorientation of the major axis of political polarization. The politics of the twentieth century was hinged on an ideological divide between Left and Right, defined more by their economic precepts-the former wanted greater socio-economic equity and a redistributive state, while the latter favored individual freedom and high economic growth-and the axis has now shifted to identity-based politics in the current times. Accompanying this shift is the rewriting by both the Left and the Right of what their respective missions are.3

What gives identity politics its psychological key is the feelings of human beings that they contain an inner value or dignity that is not being duly recognized by the surrounding society. The devalued identity can be personal but usually stems from group membership, most especially from a group that has been subjected to some type of marginalization or disrespect. Identities are closely associated with feelings of pride, anger, and resentment depending upon the nature of recognition received or not received. While perceived economic injustices may galvanize the demand for recognition, this motivation is nonetheless quite different from the material motives driving homo economicus, and it can often lead to acts which run counter to economic self-interest conventionally understood. Thus, for instance, many who voted "Leave" in the Brexit referendum had a pretty clear idea that Britain would likely suffer economically after having parted ways with the EU but considered that was a price worth paying in the interest of restoring British national identity. Though today's nationalists and Islamists mobilize around very different issues, they share that they feel members of their groups have been marginalized, both demand respect from global society.

This demand for dignity, it has been the populist voter in Hungary and Poland whose national identity felt threatened by immigration and liberal social values, galvanizing them just as those that support Brexit in Britain do, or Donald Trump's in the United States. But it also describes the Hindu-nationalist followers of Narendra Modi in India, which tries to found Indian national identity upon Hinduism, or the militant Buddhists of Burma and Sri Lanka who think that their nations' religious identities are imperiled.