Dreams of a Democratic Peace: The Carnival at 35

The interpretive frames used to characterize the end of Communism in Eastern Europe have shifted over the decades. If early assessments questioned whether it was a revolution at all, later perspectives have situated it at the climax of a global wave of democratic change. This reassessment considers two faulty assumptions embedded in the author’s own work on 1989: first, that democracy and liberalism would be the dominant outcomes of revolution, and second, that 1989 revealed the growing, perhaps limitless power of transnational diffusion. The conclusion directs attention back to protest repertoire as the key characteristic of the revolutions.