At the end of the twentieth century, the end of the Cold War suggested that freedom and democracy were the name of the game. The launch of the World Wide Web in the early 1990s promised a free flow of information and knowledge as well as borderless access to people across the connected world. Democracy was now likely to become more than a system operated by an elite on behalf of “the people,” becoming instead something the people themselves could actively take part in—beyond merely being the smallest denominator of the electorate. The new millennium has, nevertheless, brought a number of counter-developments. Neither the East–West nor the North–South global dialogues have delivered the long-term socioeconomic stability hoped for. Trade, energy, and political interests—combined with various forms of fundamentalism—have contributed to a renewed arms race that many believed had ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. Alongside—and perhaps contributing to—these developments, there has been a post-1989 trend toward political neoliberalism. This ideology argues that ultimate freedom of choice will liberate us from …