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THE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM IN THE ERA OF GREAT POWER COMPETITION

action against them because Greece and Hungary were ready to prevent the
formation of EU unity. Because of the different distribution of power in
NATO a similar internal division has not been achieved yet.
The world has also changed in terms of the richer than ever variety of
political systems. Totalitarian dictatorships had their mark on the 20 century.
th
In fact, it can also be argued that the 20 century itself was a century of total
th
dictatorships, as Eric Hobsbawm did when he wrote about a “short 20 centu-
th
ry ”. Unlike the 20 century, there are almost no total dictatorships in the 21st
th
(18)
century. Only North Korea is an exception to the rule. In contrast, various
systems have emerged that can be called as anocratic or hybrid systems. As
Burmese politician, Aung San Suu Kyi formulated: “Sometimes I think that a
parody of democracy could be more dangerous than a blatant dictatorship,
because that gives people an opportunity to avoid doing anything about it ”.
(19)
This means that in such regimes human rights are not eliminated just chipped
away in a step-by-step process that makes mobilization more difficult and resi-
stance less likely. It is no longer battle tanks that are employed in order to retain
domestic stability. It is media controlled by the regime, election fraud, and a
variety of other soft means. If processes get out of control it maybe the use of
teargas and arrest of demonstrators.
There are significant differences between anocratic systems in both their
democratic and authoritarian traits, as well as their developmental tendencies.
This means that we have gone beyond the easily understandable dichotomies
of dictatorship and democracy and, if we want to illustrate, we have ‘populated’
the section, while we have also shortened it, as we have largely eliminated the
extremely dictatorial mass murder systems. Many regimes have enriched their
declared democratic political systems with so-called illiberal elements .
(20)
The Western core interpreted this as a regression of democracy over the
past two decades. During the Obama administration, it was probably the most
important task for the President to restore the prestige of the United States
that could not have been easily compatible with intervention for disseminating
democracy.
In addition, some of the spectacular democratization related efforts of
the previous years (Afghanistan, Iraq) were largely unsuccessful and in Ukraine,
it remained inconclusive and brought a partial result at best.

(18) HOBSBAWM, Eric, The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991. London, 1994.
(19) AUNG SAN SUU KYI, Brainy Quote, https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/democracy-quotes _
3 Accessed July 20, 2021.
(20) ZAKARIA, Fareed, The Rise of Illiberal Democracy. Foreign Affairs, 76 (1997) 6, pp. 22-43.

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