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What it argues
Political Order and Political Decay is the second volume of Francis Fukuyama's ambitious two-volume study of political development. The first volume, The Origins of Political Order (2011), traced how states, rule of law, and accountable government emerged in different parts of the world from prehistoric times to the French Revolution. This volume picks up there and carries the analysis through to the present, focusing on how political institutions develop, consolidate, and — crucially — decay.
Fukuyama's central framework identifies three components of a successful political order: a capable state, rule of law, and accountable government. The first two volumes trace how different societies got these three elements in different sequences, with profoundly different outcomes. Denmark, which developed all three in relative balance, serves as his benchmark — the "getting to Denmark" problem frames the entire analysis. The United States gets sustained attention as a society that built strong rule of law and accountability before building a capable state, which has produced distinctive patterns of dysfunction.
What it gets right
- 1.
A successful political order requires three components in balance: a capable state that can implement policy, rule of law that constrains all parties including the government, and accountable government that responds to citizens.
- 2.
Getting these three elements in different sequences produces dramatically different political systems. The order of development matters as much as whether all three are achieved.
- 3.
Political decay is a normal feature of political systems, not an aberration. Institutions that once solved problems develop constituencies that block reform, making systems increasingly rigid and dysfunctional.
What it covers
Who wrote it
Francis Fukuyama is an American political scientist and author, currently a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He holds a doctorate from Harvard and previously worked at the RAND Corporation and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. His books include The End of History and the Last Man, Trust, The Origins of Political Order, and Liberalism and Its Discontents. He is one of the most widely read political theorists in contemporary English-language scholarship.
