The End of History? Reflections on Some International Legal Theses

Abstract

Democracy used to be a word that international legal commentators preferred to avoid. At least by the second half of the present century, this was not because too few governments identified themselves as democratic. It was rather because too many did so. The world's most repressive regimes joined their more representative counterparts in claiming a title that had become synonymous with praiseworthy and justified politics. In some cases modifying adjectives were used ('one-party democracy', 'people's democracy', etc.); in other cases the appropriation was unmodified. Either way, observers found normative inferences difficult to draw, for democracy appeared to mean everything, and therefore nothing.