Reading Fukuyama on politics helps explain the mess we’re in.

Three books by Francis Fukuyama are essential if you want to understand the history, present and possible future of political order: The Origins of Political Order; Political Order and Political Decay and Our Post-human Future. Though not written sequentially, they form a history of politics from earliest times to now, and into the challenges of the future.
Below are the 10 key ideas from Fukuyama’s books you need to understand.

Political order is a protection against nepotism. Our basic biological instinct is to favour our blood family over others. And that’s ok, because sometimes our kids are smarter than we are. Say ‘hi’ Ivanka! But the trouble is, sometimes our kids do stupid things and shouldn’t be given power or responsibility. Say ‘hi’ Donald Jr! The development of political institutions follows on from the need to protect societies against what the Chinese call the ‘bad emperor’ problem. Fukuyama says that by abstracting power into institutions we can stop our human urges from derailing our wider human needs. But we have to be wary, because nepotism lurks always just round the corner. Or sits in for us at meetings of the G20.

China has the most enduring state in the world but has never had a rule of law. Fukuyama sees the current Chinese ascent to global supremacy as being the outcome of its renewal of governmental values that go back to the Qin and Han dynasties over two thousand years ago. Fukuyama’s sense of political evolution is that success comes slowly, and the deep roots of Confuscian and Legalistic bureaucracy have allowed China to survive the madness of Mao and move at an extraordinary speed once Deng Xiaoping began the process of modernisation in the 1970s. However, throughout these multiple thousands of years, there has never been rule of law. Fukuyama sees this as a major barrier — enabling events like the Cultural Revolution to happen because of a lack of separate and absolute legal process that keeps authority in line.
Ideas and values are important, but the key to all successful political systems is strong administrative bureaucracy. There are many different types of successful political system, and privileging democracy over all others is an ideological decision rather than a scientific one. Fukuyama sees that at the root of all enduring and successful states are strong political institutions, working to shape the course of a nation. Their formation must be protected against nepotism and other corruption. Key examples he uses are from ancient China, the Janissary military slaves of Turkey and the US Forest Service.
The elements of a modern democracy are a strong state, strong rule of law, and strong public accountability. A strong state means institutions running with clear direction, autonomy, high quality, highly educated staff and away from constant media intervention. A strong state critically needs to be able to exercise authority through the use of violence so that it can prevent violence by others. A strong rule of law needs to be able to hold the exercising of that state violence in check and to be able to constrain the actions of everyone, including the ruler. Strong accountability means that ultimately enfranchised citizens are the measure of the states success, both through elections, political protest and the strength of the idea that politicians and other state agents are responsible to them and not to other bodies or individuals such as lobbyists. The best example of a modern democracy? Denmark.
Political decay happens when institutions become misaligned with the social groupings they need to represent. Political institutions change slowly, but sometimes societies change very fast, or in hard to measure ways. When the two become out of sync, decay happens and the quality of government deteriorates. Fukuyama sees many signs of this in the US over the last thirty years.
Political parties are the key factor in the development of democracies. If you want to change society you need a political party to do it and it needs to align strongly with the interests of one or many social groups. Fukuyama rejects the notion that ideas and values are what leads to change. Parties do — real organisations of real people working on behalf of the needs of other real people. Building parties is hard, it needs a lot of money and a lot of time, but it’s the only way things can really happen.
The replacement of class politics with identity politics has been a key factor in the destabilising of democracy. Industrialisation created first the middle class and then the working class. Political parties developed in alignment with these class groups — the Labour Party in the UK notably for the working class, the Democrats for the US middle class. The peasantry either became part of that working class or, as in Bulgaria, created political parties of their own. In the period since WWII, class based politics has receded as populations of western democracies have become largely sociologically middle class. This has been replaced with identity politics based on natural rights and achieving equality of social access for different race, gender, religious and other social groups. This has left social groups out of alignment with political parties as identity politics comes from across society, often starting in academic or other social elites before spreading. Whilst the focus of these groups is morally justified, by default the needs of minority groups do not represent those of the whole society and leaves wider social groups detached from political and social change.
The growth of bio-technology risks our definitions of individual capability to participate in democracy. If and as we see individuals increasingly enmeshed with technology, and sustainably using drugs to improve mental and physical capabilities, our ability to say if someone is a fit participant in democratic decision making diminishes. For democracy to work, the state and the law’s legitimacy has to come from the public both explicitly through elections and by implication. When people become part robot, part narcotic, can we say that they are human enough to vote at all? These are clear ethical dilemmas for the future.
Technology and medicine risk the political balance of democratic societies. One of the major likelihoods of the bio-technological revolution we are starting to see is the prolonging of life. This risks significantly increasing the social conservatism of democratic societies as the ‘older’ portion of society grows beyond the younger elements. All societies have to push against their innate conservative tendencies to innovate, to expand and to change. Technology risks becoming not a vehicle for progressive change as we see it now but a vehicle for reducing political development as a social group with the least incentive for change becomes predominant.
The unknown of the near future is whether liberal democracy or Chinese authoritarianism will prosper. In 1991 Fukuyama was certain that liberal democracy was the ultimate model. Now he’s not so sure. In the years ahead we will find out if democracy, only fully established over the last 200 years of 50,000 years of human life in its present form, is the evolutionary destination of political order. The alternative is the Chinese model, which Fukuyama believes will deepen in potency if its Confuscian roots can be acknowledged at the expense of Marxism-Leninism. But whilst China may be the alternative, it may be democracy’s greatest hope. The new Chinese middle class, numbering 100s of millions may become the largest agitators for social change in human history if the state cannot meet their growing needs. If that happens, democracy may find an incredible new renewal. The End of History may not be dead yet.
Liked this piece? Reading Fukuyama is part of my project, 1001 Books to Save the World. Read more about it here.
