Whatever happened to democratic revolutions?

Why, just over ten years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, have we long stopped speaking of democratic revolutions? For theorists of revolution they bring 'too little' social transformation to be considered revolutionary. 'Transitologists', by contrast, fear 'too much' change, thereby endangering democratization through radicalization. Even if it is accepted that there have been democratic revolutions in the past, 'civilization clashers' claim it is 'too late' as there is now a cultural counter-revolution. Non-violent, spontaneous, urban-based, andmulti- class uprisings can create a revolutionary situation. Power was literally in the streets when millions of peaceful demonstrators brought down dictators from Leipzig to Preague and Manila to Kathmandu. They had not changed the world, but did transform their political systems. Democratic revolutions are only necessary when dictatorships refuse to negotiate with the opposition. They are possible when regimes become ideologically hollowed out, as has often been the case under 'post- totalitarian' and 'sultanic' rule. When people begin to 'live within the truth', the apparently powerful are rendered powerless. In the post- revolutionary struggle, moderates have often outmanoeuvred radicals for power. Bet even where authoritarians have triumphed against democrats, either after a revolution (Iran in 1979) or by suppressing an uprising (China 1989), it has not been the inevitable result of civilizational 'otherness'. The threat of a future uprising remains, just as the Eastern European revolts of 1989 were preceded by revolutions lost between 1953 and 1981.