ABSTRACT

Some 20 years ago Berlin, Germany played host to the event that came to symbolize the most significant transition in international politics since the end of World War II. As Eastern and Western Germans peacefully tore down the wall separating the Soviet bloc from the free world, an era of competitive condominium over global affairs (Ikenberry and Parsi 2001, 29) appeared to give way to the post-ideological ‘end of history’ (Fukuyama 1992). With the demise of communism, the new age was to be free of the vestiges of Hegelian dichotomies. Hailed as the only effective paths leading to sustained economic growth and stable social relations, market economy and liberal democracy came to be perceived as the sole legitimate models, which would gradually spread around the world. This would in turn bring about an era of sustainable international peace, since a robust body of historical evidence supports the claim that democracies do not fight each other (Russett 1993). Clearly, in the context of such a pervasive liberal order, global governance would hardly pose any major political challenges. For emerging powers, such as China, the political horizon would necessarily have to incorporate a tendency towards democracy, as Bruce Gilley recently suggested (Gilley 2004), or a decline into irrelevance, whether through collapse (Chang 2001), or near-isolation.