ABSTRACT
Among the 1980s, 1989 was a year of spectacular macro-events and profound changes in what Karl Popper called the situational logic of individual behaviour (Popper 1944). This was the case for agents in politics, public administration, business and industry, in academia and the arts, as well as in the everyday life of private households. Although the macro-events, from Tienanmen to the fall of the Berlin Wall, attracted great public and intellectual interest, this cannot be said of the changes at the micro-level of decision-making. I shall argue that the end of the Cold War, which resulted from the implosion of the Soviet Empire, has brought about a dramatic change in the situational logic of our globe. That this holds true for the former communist countries is a truism. But that an upheaval has also occurred in the old Western democracies is not yet fully understood, if at all. I shall try to show that the end of the Cold War has had farreaching consequences for decisions and actions in all spheres of public and private life in the former ‘West’. This has a deep bearing on the prosperity or decline of Western institutions and policies. As the rules of the game in the ‘West’ are now also accepted by the former ‘East’, the consequences are also felt there, although not as acutely as in the ‘South’ of our globe.
