When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991,
liberal democracy remained the only ideal
model of a political regime applicable
worldwide. Then, various students and politicians
saw the end of communism as the
final and definitive victory of democratic
ideology and imagined a future in which
democracy would spread everywhere.
Democracy spread widely during the
1990s and the early 2000s. The fall of various
South American dictatorships and the
European Union enlargement caused a
transition to democracy in many countries.
However, important areas in Eurasia, in
particular Russia, China and Iran, resisted
democratization and reformed authoritarian
regimes rose and consolidated in the
region. These regimes proved their ability
to survive and influenced their neighbours
proposing political models that attracted
neighbouring countries’ leaders. Thus, new
kinds of authoritarian regimes challenged
the idea of the unavoidability of the spread
of democracy. Today, the international economic
crisis and wide economic growth in
authoritarian countries such as Russia and
China have renewed the relevance of questions
about the democratic model’s superiority,
its unavoidable diffusion and the
existence of alternative regimes. To answer
this question we need to understand if at
least one of these regimes is a model. Furthermore,
we may discover if it is based on
well–defined values, is replicable elsewhere,
economically sustainable and able to consolidate
and survive