ABSTRACT
Democracy as a system of government and as a value is increasingly finding itself spreading across the world as a desirable goal, with a strong appeal among people belonging to diverse groups and regions. Alternative forms of government, as the last century exemplifies, even if they claim to be democratic, did not display the norms of demos and kratos as in Germany, when fascist ideologues had seized power and in Soviet Russia where communists dominated the country for nearly 70 years. 1 Such dictatorships collapsed only when strong resistances to them strengthened. Even modernizing autocrats of authoritarian regimes in Asia’s tigers are today sitting on a time bomb, ready to explode as norms of democracy stand in sharp contrast to the stifling environment which curbs personal freedoms and fundamental rights. 2 Today, the norms of democracy are achieving striking universality in the current international system. ‘The promotion of democracy’, as Michael McFaul says, ‘even when embraced and, according to many, tainted by the most powerful country in the international system, has also become an international norm’. 3
