Political Order and Political Decay
From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy
by Francis Fukuyama

ew would ever dispute that democracy has some wonderful characteristics. But is democracy really inevitable? In this ambitious book Francis Fukuyama completes his sweeping overview of world history, trying to show it as an relentless progression toward democracy, which he calls the “modern state.” A balance among state, law, and accountability, he writes, is a practical and moral necessity for all societies.

Fukuyama has produced a scholarly, intelligent work here, and he is a skillful political writer. But his philosophy has changed little since The End of History. The idea that liberal democracy will inevitably triumph could have been excused in 1989 after the fall of communism. But deep down Fukuyama still believes it. The middle class is constantly growing, he says. Country after country has turned democratic. While admitting that the U.S. government is inefficient and suffers from an acute case of “political decay,” he writes [p.443]: “Prospects for democracy globally remain good, despite the setbacks that occurred during the early twenty-first century.”

Although his topics range from feudal China to the Arab Spring, Fukuyama's main focus is on America. Developing democracy before creating a professional bureaucracy, as America did, he says, puts a country at a disadvantage in creating effective change. Early democracies become rife with clientelism and patronage, but countries such as Prussia and the UK, which had pre-existing bureaucracies, were able to reform much faster than the United States. Government agencies that are the least responsive to popular will—the most autonomous—are the least likely to be corrupt.

Fukuyama uses the U.S. Forest Service as an example of a well run, autonomous bureaucracy. He contrasts it with the Interstate Commerce Commission, which he says could never become autonomous because of its contradictory mandate, which kept it captive to political forces.

He's also optimistic about radical Islam: “its current expansion,” he writes, “is due more to the social conditions of contemporary Middle Eastern societies than to the intrinsic nature of the religion.” Fukuyama believes that the Arab Spring, like the European revolutions of 1848, was caused by the rise of a middle class demanding protection for its newly obtained wealth. The current crisis, he suggests, doesn't require a hundred-year reformation of Islam, but is a mere bump in the road.

Maybe he's right. But he also overlooks just how superficial the world's commitment to liberal democracy really is. Wealth and power, not capitalism and democracy, are what draw people to America. Both are under severe attack from within, and are starting to crumble.

When you talk to a Russian immigrant, they sound at first very pro-democratic. But upon further conversation it becomes clear that most are still authoritarians at heart. They still pine for the good old days when housing and food were free and the USSR was powerful. The vast majority of people in the world care more about power, wealth, and security than freedom. They want government to take care of them. Only if democracy is the only way to achieve that will democracy triumph.

Even among Americans, hardly a day goes by when we don't hear praise for Thomas Piketty's quasi-Marxist book Capital in the Twenty-First Century. They natter about the “failures of capitalism” and how wonderful it would be to implement a nondemocratic cradle-to-grave European-style redistributionist state. These ideas need strong discussion and refutation. If we just pat ourselves on the back for being on the right side of history, we are likely to be shocked one day to find that history has started up again and left us in the dustbin.

There is a directionality of history, says Fukuyama. Marx was mistaken in that assumption, and so, I think, is Fukuyama. An ever-expanding government has only two possible fates: bankruptcy or civil war. If America implodes economically or politically, the the concept of democracy will be irreversibly tarnished. The appeal of democracy will quickly fade.

That said, critics who say Fukuyama has no solutions are also mistaken. He advises that America would be well served to switch to a parliamentary system (as I argued here). Throughout the book he argues that America should struggle against “repatrimonialization,” which is a form of corruption. He echoes many conservatives in saying our welfare state is unsustainable.

The left still thinks of Fukuyama as a neocon, a member of the hated pro-capitalist right. But in most respects Fukuyama is not a conservative at all: he admires big government and believes in its ability to solve social problems. He believes in bureaucracies and says they should be more autonomous, which is to say, less democratic. In his praise of the Progressive era reforms, his conception of the state is closer to Woodrow Wilson than to mainstream conservatives. You might call Fukuyama's vision the “visible hand” model for democracy.

It would be wonderful if the sense of inevitability we all felt when the Berlin Wall collapsed was real. In this 360,000-word two-volume work, Fukuyama still feels it, and conveys his optimism well. I wish I shared it. As far as bureaucracies are concerned: as my relatives used to say, we need them like we need a hole in the head.

oct 13 2014; updated oct 23, 2014