4. 1989 and the Future of Democracy

Note portant sur l’auteur What is the future of democracy? And, in a vein only slightly less grandiose, what is the relationship between this future and what has come to be called “1989”? As we approach the millennium it is tempting to address our subject in a millenarian fashion. Indeed, the subject seems to invite such an approach. For the velvet revolutions of 1989 were surely world historical events—even if, as Jürgen Habermas put it, they were “rectifying revolutions”, reiterating classi..