The Fourth Wave is a result of the end of the Cold War. The collapse of the Soviet Union opened up the flood gate that had held at bay the democratic aspirations and independency ambitions in many countries. The Fourth Wave is associated with the view of Francis Fukuyama, who in the early 1990s, proclaimed the ‘end of history’ and declared that the ideology of liberal democracy had triumphed. Many countries in Africa became democracies during this wave. As for Thailand, we can see that the promulgation of the 1997 Constitution, which was believed to be the country’s most democratic, took place alongside this wave. What is notable during this period is that the middle class was the key player in the transformation process to a fully democratic form. They believed that democracy would bring in a fresh form of government, one that was free from arbitrary, inept and corrupt military rule.
However, Kurlantzick notes in the book that the Fourth Wave is now fast losing steam. The middle class who had supported democracy at the inception of the Fourth Wave is now turning its back against it. The trend, according to Kurlantzick, is truly global. In Egypt, a government that had been elected by the people was toppled in a coup d’état in 2013, a move that was supported by a rather large proportion of the middle class. In Thailand, the protracted protests against former Primer Minister Thaksin Shinawatra can also be seen as a reaction of the middle class to a democratic regime.
- See more at: http://berlinbooks.org/brb/2014/01/democracy-in-retreat/#sthash.GVeiAjbb.dpuf