It recently seemed to me that we hear less of "democratic peace" theory than we used to do, and indeed I decided to test this impression by checking the frequency of the term's usage logged by Google's Ngram. As it happened, Ngram logged a 37 percent drop in usage of the term between 2013 and 2022--in contrast with the 1139 percent rise it logged in the term's usage between 1986 and 2013.
This surge between the late 1980s and early 2010s, and plunge in the subsequent decade, seems to me very telling, a rough measure of the credence that Fukuyamaesque "liberal triumphalism" enjoyed between the signs that the Cold War was drawing to a close in the era of Mikhail Gorbachev, and the Great Recession that, in spite of much stupid rhetoric about the world having quickly got over it, the event being past, dealt the global economy a blow from which it is still reeling. The result has been the halt and erosion of the global economic integration so evident in the 1986-2007 period, more conflictual relations between the major powers, and of course, more illiberal domestic politics. Indeed, many Establishment commentators openly worry about the polarization of their countries' publics, the collapse of established political parties and the ascent of extremist figures to the national stage, and the propensity of chief executives to invoke emergency measures to get their way. And so now we hear less of democracy's spread, let alone any supposed pacification of the world by it--as instead those who talked much but understood nothing strike tough guy poses as they traffic in old-fashioned realpolitik.
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