ABSTRACT
Almost 30 years have passed since the ‘end’ of cold-war geopolitics, marked by the demise of communism, the breakup of the Soviet Union and the removal of the Berlin Wall. There was much celebration of the global spread of capitalist economy and the universalisation of liberal democracy as bringing progress all around the world. The declaration of ‘the end of history’ – or the inevitable ‘triumph’ of liberal capitalist democracy – served to justify the dominating role that the United States (US) played in world political affairs thereafter. In this so-called ‘postpolitical’ world, it was believed that the antagonism between the Left and Right in the domestic political scene would soon disappear, and ideological conflicts would be replaced by consensual or dialogic liberal politics (cf. Mouffe 2005).
