Introduction

Following the West's triumph in the Cold War, faith in the universality of democracy became fashionable again. Brave predictions were made of democracy's inevitable eventual global triumph as the final form of government, as Francis Fukuyama (1989) put it. Prominently exemplifying this belief was the decision by the George W Bush administration to attempt a democratic regime change as part of its invasion of Saddam Hussein's Iraq in 200 I. That it proved rather more difficult in practice to transform Iraq into a beacon of democracy in the Middle East dampened optimism for democracy's future, as did similarly disappointing results from the ambitious democratization efforts in Afghanistan. The trend of global politics over much of the next decade reinforced the renewed pessimism, not only because of the convulsions and gloomy atmospherics associated with the 'war on terror' , but also because the so-called ' third wave' of global democratization ebbed. According to Larry Diamond (20 I 0: 24), no fewer than 18 countries experienced a reversal of democracy between 1999 and 2009.