ABSTRACT
The third wave of democratization, which broke through the autocratic dikes from around the mid-1970s, has left a large number of new democracies in its wake. This has not been ignored in the literature. A particularly big impression was made when the wave broke through the Berlin Wall and reached a hitherto unseen momentum in the aftermath of the collapse of communist party rule in 1989 to 1991. In considerable parts of the academic community – as well as with politicians and in the media – the expectation was that democracy would now go from strength to strength.
