Thirty years ago, as the Cold War came to an end, Francis Fukuyama published his seminal essay ‘The End of History?’. He argued that human development had reached its end point in the form of a liberal democratic state underpinned by a market economy. A generation later, most political commentators agree that liberal democracy is not in good shape. Even Fukuyama is now at pains to point out that his essay had a question mark at the end of the title.
Adrian Pabst, a politics professor at the University of Kent and influential force in the Blue Labour movement, has added his voice to today’s critics of liberal democracy. In The Demons of Liberal Democracy he criticises the post-Cold War development of liberal democracy by describing how it has morphed into a political system characterised by the four demons of oligarchy, demagogy, anarchy and tyranny.
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