The problem with promoting democracy Saturday April 17 2021 Summary Advertisement In 1999, the Indian thinker and public intellectual, Amartya Sen, noted that democracy was the most important universal value to have spread around the world in the 20 Century. This was a provocative proposition but one that was in line with a widely held belief in the 1990s that Western ideals of free markets and political freedom had triumphed over the communist alternative championed by the Soviet Union (USSR). As the Soviet Bloc disintegrated at the start of the final decade of the last century, and the Cold War between the US and USSR receded, there was a palpable celebration of the ostensible triumph of freedom over repression, right over wrong, light over darkness and progress over retrogress.