'political Order And Political Decay’ By Francis Fukuyama: Review

With the publication of “The End of History and the Last Man” in 1992, in which he claimed that the end of the Cold War marked the permanent ascendancy of liberal democracy and free-market capitalism throughout the world, Francis Fukuyama emerged as one of our nation’s most prominent and provocative public intellectuals. Over the past quarter of a century, Fukuyama, who now is a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Institute for International Studies, has qualified his “end of history” thesis, distanced himself from neoconservatism, and written big books about big subjects, including the nature of human nature, the origins of social norms, the revolution in biotechnology and the development gap between Latin America and the United States. In the United States, the rule of law, followed by implementation of universal white male suffrage, had a “decidedly negative impact on state building” because it made patronage (and not merit-based) appointments pervasive in virtually all levels of government and led to a system of checks and balances that is, for better and worse, unique among liberal democracies. In the 21st century, the United States is paying a steep price for a political culture based on distrust of executive authority: “too much law and too much 'democracy’ relative to American state capacity.” [...] to Europe, where frequent wars required the “formation and consolidation of strong modern states,” he suggests, national identities in Latin America were weak because of ethnic diversity and geographical isolation; conflict more often divided classes than countries. East Asian countries have succeeded, according to Fukuyama, because local elites were allowed to import Western models and build on an already strong state authority; their challenge has been to limit its power through law and representative government.