ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at political interests and ideologies that have been opposed to democracy. It starts with the vested interests that democracy replaced, in particular, the residue of European aristocracy, and then the rise of state corporatism, manifested through the 1920s and 1930s as varieties of Fascism and Communism, and the tensions between them. In the post-World War II period, democracy again foundered on the rocks of fragile politics set against competing Cold War interests. Most recently, as this chapter notes, democracy has been challenged by the rising tide of nationalist populism in more developed countries and developmentalist state autocracy in developing countries.
