the 1990s, a genuine “explosion of democratization” took place, to
reach several countries that had never been democracies, in Asia and
Africa notably.^4 At the same time, just as communist countries were
moving to capitalism, the governments of the South abandoned plan-
ning and reduced state intervention, in favor of markets and private
enterprise.^5 These various changes, however, did not happen in a cli-
mate of benign international cooperation. On the contrary, developing
countries had to face a continuing crisis because of a hostile external
environment, and the gap between rich and poor states gradually
emerged as “the most important line of division within the world
order.”^6
The pro-market revolution actually started in the North, with the
election of Margaret Thatcher in Britain in May 1979 and of Ronald
Reagan in the United States in November 1980. A strong and con-
frontational conservative, Margaret Thatcher wanted to be remem-
bered as one “[who] decisively broke with a debilitating consensus of
a paternalistic Government and a dependent people; which rejected
the notion that the State is all powerful and the citizen is merely its
beneficiary; which shattered the illusion that Government could some-
how substitute for individual performance.”^7 In a similar perspective,
Ronald Reagan inaugurated his first presidency by stating that “govern-
ment is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”^8
A conservative era had begun, which would redefine politics all over
the world for at least two decades.
This chapter surveys the global right turn in favor of market de-
mocracy from the standpoints of domestic and international politics.
(^4) Renske Doorenspleet, “Reassessing the Three Waves of Democratization,”
World Politics, vol. 52, no. 3, April 2000, 384–406, p. 399; Renske
Doorenspleet, “The Structural Context of Recent Transitions to Democracy,”
European Journal of Political Research, vol. 43, no. 3, May 2004, 309–35,
5 p. 330.
Richard Jolly, Louis Emmerij, Dharam Ghai, and Fre ́de ́ric Lapeyre,UN
Contributions to Development Thinking and Practice, Bloomington, Indiana
6 University Press, 2004, pp. 145–48.
Anthony Payne,The Global Politics of Unequal Development, Basingstoke,
7 Palgrave-Macmillan, 2005, p. 3.
Margaret Thatcher (January 18, 1984), quoted in Dennis Kavanagh,
Thatcherism and British Politics: The End of Consensus?, Oxford University
Press, 1987, p. 252.
(^8) Ronald Reagan, “Inaugural Address,” Washington, DC, January 20, 1981
(www.reaganlibrary.com/reagan/speeches/speech.asp?spid¼6).
138 Left and Right in Global Politics