European Student Think Tank

The reversal of democracy’s third wave

A spectre is haunting Europe. The spectre of fascism. For a generation of babies born after the fall of the Berlin Wall, our collective consciousness associates 1989 more closely with the name of an album by Taylor Swift, than the pivotal year. 1989 saw revolutions sweep across Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary, and East Germany, to name but a few. These largely peaceful revolutions saw the ousting of entrenched political leaders and the participation of non-Communist parties in burgeoning democratic processes.