But compared to the situation of twenty years ago, democracy and respect for the individual have become the acknowledged norm toward which the countries of the world are aspiring. It seems possible that, in the next few years, a number of recently established democracies will fall under quasi-authoritarian rule. The conditions for the establishment and survival of the institutions of civil society that underpin true democracy are proving painfully hard to establish in many of the poorer states. Since the introduction of democracy often threatens the status quo for entrenched interests in pre-democratic states, such interests will frequently resist it, sometimes with violence. The difficulties in democratic transition being experienced by the transition states should not offer serious alarm about the bright future of democracy over the long run.
History suggests that the creation of fully secure and deep democratic systems can take decades.
Even in the United States, some fifty years passed between the Declaration of Independence and the creation of Jacksonian democracy, which was still limited to white males. The democratic spark of the First and Second French Republics was soon snuffed out, and France only acquired a stable democratic system in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. One factor which may assist democratic forces is the more active pro-democracy stance being taken by the community of states, whereas military corps were once common in Latin America, the 1991 military overthrow of an elected government in Haiti created a situation that was judged by the Organization of American States and the United Nations to be a threat to peace. The U.N. Security Council authorized the use of military force to restore the democratically elected government. When democracy was largely confined to North America and Western Europe, it had a relatively unambiguous definition based on the values of the North Atlantic community.