Two volumes of Fukuyama on comparative political history unconscionably simplified into a matrix of institutional sequences...

State-building without Rule of Law or Accountability = China (dictatorial central state).

State-building with Rule of Law but weak Accountability = Prussia or Meiji Japan (powerful but rule-bound administration).

State and elites balanced, with Rule of Law, before Democracy = UK (strong parliamentary executive).

Rule of Law & Democracy before State-building = USA (weak executive highly constrained by courts and legislature, having suffered mass clientelism).

Rule of Law with weak State captured by elites = Ancien regime France (State used to defend legal privileges of feudal elites).

Weak State captured by elites without Rule of Law = Tsarist Russia (absolutist feudalism without constitutional or legal institutions for control of executive).

Democracy without State-building or Rule of Law = Nigeria (incompetent, corrupt, clientelistic State). ( )

A magisterial work

This is an extraordinary book, a fresh look at history over time and across the globe. As a history buff I learned so much from the book’s dispassionate approach, changing my understanding about so many topics I had taken a long term interest in, including the history of the U.K. and of the Islamic world.

I confess that all I had read of “The End of History” was its title, and that was enough for me in my optimistic youth in the 1990s. Liberalism - individual freedoms, political democracy and capital markets - had won, and history has ended.

“Don’t be quick to believe such an ending, history always changes” said my father, the historian. 20 years on, history has proven him right, even as we both had rooted for liberalism.

Fukuyama’s new book approaches the central problems of societies functioning. The human species has always existed in groups. Wandering alone led to death from nature. But also smaller societies were killed off by groups of humans able to organise into bigger and stronger societies.

Biologically, the default we have for cooperation in societies is kin-based action: “me and my brother against our cousin, me and my cousin against the stranger” as Arabs say.

The problem is that kin-based action does not scale and it is not efficient - people gaining power based on kinship is harmful for the group and the scale of harm grows exponentially as the group grows.

So in this book Fukuyama charts the incremental accretive discoveries by different societies of different institutions to avoid kin-based actions. The three broad institutions are a strong state, rule of law and accountable government.

The paths are bloody, reversible, and random. China discovered a strong state early and rediscovered it often. Its civilisation is the best at this. Western Europe discovered rule of law first and strongest. This allowed it to embrace accountable government sooner and deeper, but China’s Confucian ideology still encouraged accountability by a strong state rather than rule of law forcing accountability in the West.

Every society struggled with these matters and each randomly invented local solutions even as they fought against other societies with other solutions.

Over time, societies with better solutions at avoiding kin-based action for a strong state, rule of law and accountable government beat those with worse solutions. So defeated societies adopted institutions from victorious ones. Or societies adopt winning institutions to prevent defeat. But this description omits the deaths, pain, suffering, and time involved in these iterations.

For me Fukuyama’s work seems original in interpretation and accurate in facts. For the Arab and Muslim periods - which I am familiar with - his historical accuracy appear accurate so I trust the other civilisations I am less familiar with. Its narrative was eye opening for me.

For example, I knew of the Mamluks, elite soldiers used by the Islamic empire to rule and defend territory. I knew they were slave children who were masters through their role in the state. They became the rulers of the Islamic empire. I had never thought - until this book described it - that kidnapping of these children was done to avoid the corruption of giving senior state positions to the children of people occupying senior state positions. The cruel practice is an extreme method of avoiding state corruption and allowing a stable meritocratic state. The centuries old practice explains some of the tactics of modern states in the Arabian Gulf whose rulers allocate jobs to foreigners as a means of side stepping local kin-based obligations to run an effective state. The Catholic Church’s demand for celibacy is another attempt at preventing kin-based selection.

I am looking forward to the next volume, picking up from the 1800s and the rise of democracy. ( )

It is impossible to develop any meaningful theory of political development without treating ideas as fundamental causes of why societies differ and follow distinct developmental paths.

The Origins of Political Order is expansive in its scope. From imperial China through the Ottoman Empire and into European absolutism, it covers the diverse ways that states have developed throughout human history. Fukuyama's inclusion of how our human biology functions in society was especially refreshing. I highly recommend this book for anyone looking for the new standard of comparative history. ( )

Ambitious, scholarly, wide-ranging, sprawling, bordering on the incoherent. Like "End of History" there's a hint of a grand thesis behind it all, but not quite clear what it is, and even less whether he has proved it. And likewise, the title seems off-target: This book is not about 'origins' (how is the Mameluke slave army an origin of government?); if anything it's an exploration of the varieties of government. Even the subtitle (..to the French Revolution) is more honoured in the breach - there's much musing about modern government forms and how they work. And there's another cavil: throughout he uses "contemporary" to mean ""modern", a loose usage which is common enough, but when he's ranging over so many time frames it would be better to be strict. His decision to omit Greece and Rome is odd, to say the least; the image of ancient Greece and the sheer duration of the Roman empire should demand their inclusion. And Roman law? he mentions the Justinian Statutes in passing and that's it. So what is his thesis? That there are 3 elements which constitute government (good government? effective government? durable government?), namely, 1, a centralised state, 2, the rule of law, 3, accountability. Much space given to China having the first but not the others, some repetition of the idea that in the modern West 2 and 3 go back a lot further than Marx realised and have something to do with the Investiture Contest and the power of the Catholic Church. His thoughts on humanity's transcendence of Malthusian conditions resound with "The Human Tide" though Morland's work is much more fact-based and easier to grasp. Some fascinating comments (a neat encapsulation of what's wrong with Putin's Russia, for example), some hints at causal explanation, but in the end I suspect a Whig view of history (despite his attacks on it). The "End of History" where it's leading to, or where it should, is the Anglo-Saxon model. ( )

Stanford Sociologist & political theorist Fukuyama who is a “Max Weberian” gives a grand explanation of how & why different regions from across the globe evolved to form their current political structures and threats to them ; Why America has weaker social programs and pro-corporatist “clientelism” when compared to Europe , how China middle class is now the dominant force in spite of authoritarian regime , the middle east and political Islam might never be compatible with democracy are just some of the topics covered .

However I do not agree with certain critiques leveled on Marx i.e.. Capitalism needs a large functioning liberal middle-class. Not necessarily true; 1% will flourish as swathes of working class needs 2 or more jobs to survive specially with AI and automation poised to wipe out half the work force in coming decades with no regulation in sight . The books has many references to Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations .

Overall a great book ; Specially the difference between state vs nation building stand out for me .Will be looking out for more of Prof Fukuyama . ( )