Has liberalism failed to deliver on its promises? Join Professor Burleigh and Professor Cox as they discuss ‘the end of the end of history’.
In 1989 the American analyst Francis Fukuyama declared in a famous article that the world was witnessing a dramatic and apparently irreversible shift away from collectivism towards a reinvigorated liberalism which, he insisted, had finally triumphed over all its ideological rivals. Thirty years later the idea that liberalism would sweep all before it appears to lie in tatters. Indeed, authoritarian powers like China and Russia openly oppose it, while in many post-communist states in Central Europe, elections are won by populist leaders who have made as their target western liberal values.
Meanwhile, in the West itself, liberalism has not only failed to deliver on its early economic promise, but according to the Chicago- based IR scholar – John Mearsheimer – the primary reason why the international order is now in such a state of disrepair is precisely because of the pursuit of liberal goals by western foreign policy elites.