Has liberalism failed to deliver on its promises? Join Professor Burleigh and Professor Cox as they discuss ‘the end of the end of history’.

In 1989 the American analyst Francis Fukuyama declared in a famous article that the world was witnessing a dramatic and apparently irreversible shift away from collectivism towards a reinvigorated liberalism which, he insisted, had finally triumphed over all its ideological rivals. Thirty years later the idea that liberalism would sweep all before it appears to lie in tatters. Indeed, authoritarian powers like China and Russia openly oppose it, while in many post-communist states in Central Europe, elections are won by populist leaders who have made as their target western liberal values. 

Meanwhile, in the West itself, liberalism has not only failed to deliver on its early economic promise, but according to the Chicago- based IR scholar - John Mearsheimer - the primary reason why the international order is now in such a state of disrepair is precisely because of the pursuit of liberal goals by western foreign policy elites. But how has all this come to pass? Is the liberal order in terminal decline? And is there anything that can be done about it?

Professor Michael Burleigh was the Engelsberg Chair for 2019/20 at LSE IDEAS. Michael is a historian who focuses primarily on Nazi Germany. He is the author of The Third Reich: a new history, which won the 2001 Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction. His most recent book is The Best of Times, the Worst of Times. He has also won a British Film Institute Award for Archival Achievement and a New York Film and Television Festival Award Bronze Medal.

Professor Michael Cox is a Founding Director of LSE IDEAS and an Emeritus Professor of International Relations at LSE. 

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