Great Powers and the Spread of Autocracy Since the Cold War (Chapter 12) - Before and After the Fall (original) (raw)
Hostname: page-component-669899f699-vbsjw Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-30T05:08:54.122Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
from Part III - Toward a New World Order?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2021
Fritz Bartel
Affiliation:
Texas A & M University
Summary
Over the past century, Great Power transitions have led to the spread of autocracy in two distinct ways. First, the sudden rise of autocratic Great Powers led to waves of autocracy driven by conquest but also by self-interest and even admiration, as in the fascist wave of the 1930s or the post-1945 communist wave. Second, the sudden rise of democratic hegemons led to waves of democratization, but these waves inevitably overextended and collapsed, leading to failed consolidation and rollback. While these two categories - rollback from democratic overstretch, and hegemonic authoritarian cascades - both look like autocratic diffusion, they stem from very different causes. This chapter examines the relationship between Great Power transitions and regime diffusion. A key question is whether modern democratic decline is a post-1991 correction – that is, the delayed but inevitable overstretch of the post-Soviet wave – or the beginning of a distinct new wave of autocracy.
Keywords
Type
Chapter
Information
World Politics and the End of the Cold War
, pp. 225 - 243
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021
Access options
Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)