The last hundred years must, furthermore, be seen as the century of
democracy. The full meaning of this observation appears clearly at
the global level. Indeed, international power is far less oligarchic
than at any other moment in history. The League of Nations, created
in 1919 to maintain peace, never comprised more than sixty member-
states and was always dominated by the Western countries. In 1945,
a mere fifty-one states took part in the foundation of the United
Nations, yet in 2007 that international body had 192 members, with
the vast majority from developing countries. The movement toward
democratization appears all the more impressive when one looks at
the extensive transformations that have occurred within the domestic
structures of governance. In 1900, more than half of the world
population lived under a colonial regime and universal suffrage did
not exist in any country. A hundred years later multi-party democracy
is on the verge of establishing itself as a universal political regime.
The data provided by Freedom House helps to measure the recent
flourishing of democracy. At the end of the 1980s, only 66 countries
out of 167 (40 percent) could qualify as electoral democracies. By
2005 the number of electoral democracies had jumped to 122, rep-
resenting 64 percent of all UN member states (Figure3.2).^39 In add-
ition, between 1972 and 2005 the number of countries regarded as
“free” – that is, those where civil liberties are protected, the media are
independent, and real political competition exists – rose from forty-
three to eighty-nine (i.e. from 35 to 46 percent of the world popula-
tion). Conversely, during the same period, the number of countries
regarded as “unfree” – that is, where civil liberties are systematically
violated – fell from sixty-nine to forty-five (i.e. from 47 to 36 percent
of the world population).^40 The number of “unfree” countries of course
remains too high, but one can assume that it will decline as market
liberalization progresses. In fact, the states with the worst human rights
records, such as Burma, North Korea, Cuba, Sudan, and Syria, are
among those least integrated in the networks of globalization.
In spite of the positive picture that can be drawn of global politics, it
must of course be recognized that the world remains confronted with
(^39) Adrian Karatnycky, “Freedom in the World,” Freedom House, 2005 (www.
freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=130 & year=2005).
(^40) Ibid. Freedom House also refers to a group of “partly free countries” that are
not taken into consideration here.
Two tales of globalization 67