‘What we may be witnessing is the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalisation of western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.” So wrote Francis Fukuyama in his 1989 essay, The End of History?, as he surveyed the collapse of the Soviet empire.
Thirty years on, the argument seems to have been turned on its head. As Vladimir Putin, virtual tsar of the Russian nation that has emerged from the debris of the Soviet Union, declared on the eve of the G20 conference in Osaka, it’s not history but liberal democracy that seems to have “outlived its purpose”. Liberalism, he told the Financial Times, has “come into conflict with the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population”.
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