The development of democracy in a global dimension, as well as processes related to transit in a democratic country is closely intertwined with other global and civilizational processes, particularly with the processes of globalization and information society development. In doing so, as the experience of recent years, globalization and informatization is not always conducive to the development of democratic institutions and processes of democratic consolidation, especially in countries with incomplete modernization and the unfinished democratic transit, which in terms of world-systems approach to include the periphery and demiperiphery.

In a number of papers shows that the processes of globalization and informatization leads not only to the internationalization and greater interaction of different countries and civilizations, but also cause various types of crises in less developed countries and regions, reinforcing the tendency to separate, increasing national and civilizational identity. These trends were previously outlined by P. Huntington in The Clash of Civilizations article, and related conflicts have played an important role in today’s world, having a significant impact on the processes of democratization, their progress and prospects.

In this regard, despite the obvious promotion of democratization, building democratic institutions in countries of the periphery and demiperiphery, talking about the irreversibility of these processes seems to be premature. In the discussion of contemporary problems of democratic development is particularly important to bear in mind that the processes of democratization throughout the world are not linear and monotonic, which develops only in the ascending line. In this connection, reference may be made to the well-known concept of S. Huntington, which is based on the existence of a sort of wave of democratization, as well as the work of J. Markov on the waves of democratic development and their relationship with the political changes. A historical analysis of democratization processes in general, confirms the presence of changes in the approval and development of basic democratic institutions, and these tidal largely linked to global political and economic processes. In other words, when analyzing the global, and in many cases, in-approval processes and the development of democracy can be present in addition to the explicit translational component is also oscillatory, undulatory component.

The current third wave of democratization that began, according to S. Huntington, since 1974, has covered much more extensive than ever before, the regions like Latin America, Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union. Such unprecedented scope and depth of the third wave of democratization, in my opinion, largely due to the fact that it coincided with the deployment of modern globalization with all its consequences and manifestations of economic, social and political spheres. Thanks to globalization, almost all countries involved in international policy processes, the world’s financial, technological, information flows, which, in turn, necessitated the increase in transparency of borders between the various national economic and political systems, as well as a more or less general rules of conduct for political and economic agents, the use of general rules of the game in the world market. This contributed significantly to the escalation of the crisis of private, non-authoritarian regimes in different regions of the world and in countries belonging to different civilizations.

However, the processes of globalization, as already noted, have the opposite direction. Because of sharply increasing interconnectedness of the world, today any local economic crises and political conflicts caused a chain reaction of events that could lead to global shocks, covering most of the States. This is even more dangerous that the old international political and economic organization. as the events of recent years, the new, changing conditions, are unable to cope with a number of problems. The international community has largely turned into an unstable transition state, where the former international organizations and institutions already largely unworkable, a new, changed conditions appropriate institutional structures and recognized by the overwhelming number of rules of the game have not yet been established. As a result, the transition may be accompanied by a large-scale shocks, creating an unfavorable environment for the development of new democracies and prepare the ground for a revival of authoritarian regimes.

Given all this, it would be inappropriate to extrapolate directly the trends observed during the 1980’s - 1990’s., For the next decade and beyond. It is quite likely in the coming years, political and economic turmoil can interrupt the development of a wave of democratization that began in the mid of 1970’s., And to some extent of the process of democratic transit, facing a number of countries, reversed. Of course, this is unlikely to mean a rollback of democracy in the long term, but in the short term, its development in many countries may be significantly slowed. Upward wave of democratization may change (likely that already is begin to succeed), the downward wave.

At the slow process of democratization processes and the elements of democracy rollback points, in particular, L. Diamond, based its analysis on surveys of Freedom House (Freedom House): A comparison of two divergent trends in the 1990’s - the continuing growth of electoral democracy in stagnation in the development of liberal democracy points to the increasingly superficial nature of democracy at the end of the third wave. During the 1990’s the gap between electoral and liberal democracy has grown. The proportion of free states (liberal democracies) to all of the world’s democracies has declined from 85% in 1990 to 65% in 1995 … In those years, in many most important and influential young third-wave democracies, including in Russia, Turkey, Brazil and Pakistan, the quality of democracy (measured by political rights and civil liberties) has fallen markedly, and at the same time dashed hopes for seemed very close to the transition to democracy of the most populated African country - Nigeria. In the same period, a degeneration of political freedom in a number of long-established democracies in the developing world, particularly in India, Sri Lanka, Colombia and Venezuela. In fact, from some notable exceptions (North Korea, Poland and South Africa), the overall trend of the last decade, referring particularly influential at the regional scale of countries, is the gradual extinction of freedom of electoral democracies. This is even more alarming when one considers that, according to Huntington, the power of example (and this factor plays a critical role in the wave-spreading or rollback of democracy), coming from influential in regional or global scale.

Moreover, not only new democracies but also some developed Western countries that belong to the center of the capitalist world-system, are unlikely to be able in the near future to avoid certain crises and destabilizing political events which are generally not conducive to the development of liberal democracy . This is evidence, in particular, of the results of parliamentary elections in Austria and Switzerland, held in 1999 which suddenly made the success of radical right-wing parties, previously played in the political life of those countries rather modest role. 1999 had a number of events, which in some way destabilized a system of international relations and political situation in individual countries: the Balkans and the NATO war against Yugoslavia, and military operations in Dagestan and Chechnya, which caused growing tension between Russia and West, and a military coup in Pakistan, as well as several other events. Despite the very different causes and different nature of these events, they nevertheless have a common denominator, which consists in destabilizing the political situation, impede the development of democracy in a global dimension and in some regions.

Destabilization of threatened and economic development of many nations.

This destabilization, if it happens, will have serious social and political consequences for the entire international community. According to several experts, the world economy and world finance, despite the economic growth in developed countries in general are in unstable condition. The number of applicants for the U.S. dollars in excess of the national wealth of the United States, a big part of the U.S. really is not secure. As a result of separation of financial flows from the real sphere of trade and production it is observed astronomical growth of pure speculation, accompanied by non-movement of huge masses of virtual money (about $ 1 trillion Dollars daily). This situation may continue until the United States firmly take the position of economic and political leader and the situation in the world is stable for now, but in violation of the stability and large shocks there is a possibility of dollar depreciation, which can cause chaos in the global economy. Crises in 1997-1998 in South-East Asia, Russia and Latin America, with all the difference in their causes may be a harbinger of much larger global crisis that could destabilize the system of international economic and political relations. There is no need to prove that in this situation for democracy and democratization there are no favorable conditions.

It is, apparently, also be borne in mind that these global processes, as the criminalization of economic and political spheres, the growth of terrorism, the spread of nuclear technology and nuclear weapons, and even the phenomenon of information war, caused by globalization and informatization, in the future would represent a serious challenge to the functioning of democratic institutions in various countries. Processes of globalization in various fields have contributed to the development of democracy in breadth, at the later stages of the negative effects of globalization processes may prevent the development of democracy. And the main problem here seems consist of not so much criteria of a democratic political system will be formulated, and how many countries will meet these criteria, but more flexible and effective democratic institutions in different countries are, more they will comply with the changing conditions and to stand the test of the strength without emasculation of their content.