ABSTRACT
With the downfall of the end of the Cold War and the democratization of most authoritarian regimes in Latin America, the late 1980s inaugurated a ‘third wave democratization’ and a new international political order. The crumbling of the ‘socialist utopia’ left anti-capitalist forces around the world ideologically disarmed. The idea of democracy as an electoral procedure where authorities are elected in free, non-exclusionary and competitive elections and the respect for basic political liberties and human rights, built upon the respect for private property, market economics and free trade constituted the core of a new world-wide consensus. Nonetheless, China and most Muslim countries remained, by cultural diversity and political traditions, out of this scheme. In two decades, the world underwent a unique and sweeping process of globalizing capitalist democracies. 1
