On reassessing the ideas and values of political democracy

The article attempts to identify and analyze some trends and processes of transformation of basic values, ideas, attitudes, principles of political democracy in the West in the context of globalization and the information and telecommunication revolution. Having traced historical roots, a complex and difficult path of its formation and institutionalization in a narrow group of Western countries, it is regarded as a great achievement on the path of progress of Western humanity. In the last decades of the 20th century and especially at the beginning of the new millennium, a part of the western intellectual establishment and political elite began to show a desire to absolutize the values of liberalism and political democracy, which are regarded as the truth in the last resort, suitable for all peoples in the modern world. As a result, in the new libertarian understanding of democracy, ideological, radical options for interpreting human rights and freedoms took precedence. They received their most complete expression in the foreign policy strategy of so-called democratic revolution in the West led by the United States. The author analyzes the results of this strategy in terms of the position and prospects of the western model of democracy in other regions of the modern world. It is shown that, despite the adoption of its ideas and institutions by some of these countries, the overwhelming majority of them are not able to accept and master democracy, because they have other priorities and goals for solving their vital social and economic problems, which are beyond the power of an abstractly understood democracy with its human rights and freedoms.