Perhaps the most striking way in which the twenty-first century differs from its predecessor has to do with politics, state fragility, and the nature of violent conflict. The historian Eric Hobsbawm (1994) argued that the twentieth century was a “short” one, stretching only between 1914 and 1991, and was characterized by an epic confrontation between dictatorship and democracy during World War I, the interwar period, World War II, and the Cold War. In the twenty-first century, by contrast, global political dynamics are unlikely to be dominated by the extent to which individual freedoms and political rights are observed. Rather, the problem on everyone's mind will be failed states, i.e., countries in which central authority has broken down. The rise of international terrorism, the key form of violent conflict in the twenty-first century, is related to this breakdown of state authority.
Thus, in many ways the twenty-first century may end up vindicating Francis Fukuyama's famous “end of history” thesis (1989) in that liberal democracy and free markets won the battle, although the modern state as the dominant form of political organization is not uniformly effective around the world, with major implications for the global economy, global trade, and the nature of conflict. Samuel Huntington's (1993) premonitory analysis of the “clash of civilizations” seems to have become awfully descriptive of the new politics of identity and conflict in the twenty-first century, in which civil wars are less frequent than during the Cold War period, interstate wars are even rarer, and the most dangerous and lethal conflict takes the form of terrorism. Democracy, while formally the dominant form of government, does not translate into free popular participation and viable opposition in countries such as Russia, Bolivia, Venezuela, Nigeria, and Pakistan, to name but a few, mostly because of the weakness of political and social institutions (Epstein and Converse 2008). Moreover, in spite of the spread of democracy, two billion people continue to live under authoritarian regimes, especially in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and East Asia (see the Box).
The popular uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East that started in early 2011 represent a stark reminder that democracy has not yet triumphed around the world, and that transitions are only possible when a complex mix of economic, social, political, and geopolitical factors is in place.