In the last quarter of the twentieth century, trends in seven different
regions converged to change the political landscape of the world: 1) the
fall of right-wing authoritarian regimes in Southern Europe in the mid-
1970s; 2) the replacement of military dictatorships by elected civilian
governments across Latin America from the late 1970s through the late
1980s; 3) the decline of authoritarian rule in parts of East and South
Asia starting in the mid-1980s; 4) the collapse of communist regimes in
Eastern Europe at the end of the 1980s; 5) the breakup of the Soviet
Union and the establishment of 15 post-Soviet republics in 1991; 6) the
decline of one-party regimes in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa in the
first half of the 1990s; and 7) a weak but recognizable liberalizing trend
in some Middle Eastern countries in the 1990s.
