ABSTRACT
The breakdown of the communist regimes in eastern Europe was at least partly due to the world-wide renaissance of democratic ideals such as selfgovernment and individual self-determination. Systems based on an institutionalized paternalism have crumbled and most of the remaining anti-democratic systems will probably lose a desperate fight. Possibly there will be some exceptions under the reign of Islamic fundamentalism. But the general tendency of world policy during the last two decades of the century has been and probably will be democratisation.
