And yet, good news has come. The most remarkable development
of the last quarter of the twentieth century has been the
revelation of enormous weaknesses at the core of the world's
seemingly strong dictatorships, whether they be of the militaryauthoritarian
Right, or the communist-totalitarian Left. From
Latin America to Eastern Europe, from the Soviet Union to the
Middle East and Asia, strong governments have been failing over
the last two decades. And while they have not given way in all
cases to stable liberal democracies, liberal democracy remains the
only coherent political aspiration that spans different regions and
cultures around the globe. In addition, liberal principles in
economics-the "free market"-have spread, and have succeeded
in producing unprecedented levels of material prosperity, both in
industrially developed countries and in countries that had been,
at the close of World War II, part of the impoverished Third
World. A liberal revolution in economic thinking has sometimes