The state of contemporary democracy is deeply paradoxical. There is no alternative formula struggling for hegemony, no serious ideological challenge. In these terms, globalization is also democratization. At closer inspection, democratic regimes have their back against the wall, in many parts of the world.
Many democratic regimes are democratic in name only.
They are phoney democracies as a dressing-up for new modes of authoritarian rule, or for lack of public governance altogether. Even in democratically advanced Western countries, democratic rule is challenged from within and from without. Links between people and power are under transformation, and the implications for democratic governance are uncertain. These movements of political modernity are now forces of the past, marginalized by success or by a transformed social structure. The alternative program packages of the political parties reflected social cleavages from the first decades of the 20th century, the early years of industrialism and mass politics - labour and capital, primary sector and industry, religion and secularism.