ABSTRACT
Exceptionalism In the latter half of the twentieth century, liberalism and, more assertively, post-Cold War neoliberalism, both predicted that a permanent global democratic revolution would take hold as a direct result of globalization. Information revolutions, interdependencies, and commercial imperatives would carry out the day. Neoliberalism gained much prominence after many Asian, Eastern European, South American, and some African countries during the ’80s and the ’90s achieved seemingly successful transitions from authoritarianism towards democratic rule. In 1991, Samuel Huntington characterized the global movement as ‘democracy’s third wave’. In the meantime, reverses to this trend in certain areas, for example in Uganda and parts of Latin America, have called the democratic sustainability assumption into question.
