Citizens now can get some idea of how people in other nations live.
People are now regularly comparing their lives under their own governments with people's lives in other political systems, and drawing their own conclusions. Now, after the Cold War, all types of political systems are undergoing great changes. The collapse of communism in Europe and the Soviet Union has unleashed many types of reaction and the search for a successful politics. In the rich liberal democracies of the West, the old success formula of the welfare state democracy is also in crisis, and the old parties and leaders are unsure how to regain public confidence in government competance and capacity to govern. The new developing nations, after more than a generation of independence, are now seeking their own paths to modernization and respect, with a wide range of both good and terrible results.