ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the democratic powers in turn, examines the politics of the United States in the period often referred to as the 'Roaring Twenties' for its decadence and fetishisation of wealth. It presents the tenuous status of democracy in the 1920s, even in its traditional strongholds, and provides background for the rise of non-democratic alternatives. The democracies considered in the chapter have the distinction of having been established prior to the outbreak of the First World War and having survived the conflict politically intact. In economic dependencies such as Liberia they overlooked anti-democratic activity if it suited their economic ends, in many formal colonies such as Fiji they continued to default to the argument that such areas were not ready for democracy. The world's democracies were in an increasingly perilous position as the 1920s came to a close.
