The Triumph of Democracy and the Eclipse of the West

This book explores the paradox of the worldwide spread of democracy and capitalism in an era of Western decline. The rest is overtaking the West as Samuel Huntington predicted, but because it is adopting Western institutions. The emerging global order offers unprecedented opportunities for the expansion of peace, prosperity, and freedom. Yet this is not the ’end of history’, but the beginning of a post-Western future for the democratic project. The major conflicts of the future will occur between the established democracies of the West and emerging democracies in the developing world as they seek the benefits and recognition associated with membership of the democratic community. This ’clash of democratizations’ will define world politics.

Ewan Harrison is Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Political Science at Rutgers University, USA. He is author of The Post-Cold War International System: Strategies, Institutions and Reflexivity (2004) and co-editor of Rethinking Realism in International Relations (2009). He completed his PhD at the University of Bristol in 1999, and was Hedley Bull Junior Research Fellow at St Anne’s College, Oxford 2001-2004.

Sara McLaughlin Mitchell is Professor of Political Science and Collegiate Scholar at the University of Iowa, USA. She is co-author with Emilia Justyna Powell of Domestic Law Goes Global (2011), and with John A. Vasquez of Conflict, War, and Peace (2013). She is also co-editor of Guide to the Scientific Study of International Processes (2012). She is associate editor of Foreign Policy Analysis, and co-founder of the Journeys in World Politics mentoring workshop for women in international relations.