Fukuyama on political accountability

November 08, 2022 • Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

I've been making my way through Francis Fukuyama's The Origins of Political Order. It's a thrillingly ambitious book: one of those big theory-of-everything works that might not convince in all its particulars but still holds your attention thanks to its sheer scope and audacity. And while there's a lot to quibble with, I find the overall thrust of the book pretty persuasive.

Origins is Fukuyama's effort to articulate a cohesive theory of how political order develops, beginning with the prehistoric bands of our primate ancestors. The arc of the book ends with the establishment of the first liberal democracies—the highest and best form of government, in Fukuyama's view. He argues that three distinct elements need to be in place for liberal democracy to take root: a strong state, the rule of law, and accountable government. Without all three, you end up with something different from liberal democracy and considerably worse.

Fukuyama's take on the origins of political liberty feels particularly salient, given everything going on in the United States and other teetering democracies. He argues that true liberty can only flourish when a strong state and a strong civil society exist to balance each other out:

Political liberty—that is, the ability of societies to rule themselves—does not depend only on the degree to which a society can mobilize opposition to centralized power and impose constitutional constraints on the state. It must also have a state that is strong enough to act when action is required. Accountability does not run in just one direction, from the state to society. If the government cannot act cohesively, if there is no broader sense of public purpose, then one will not have laid the basis for true political liberty. ... The stability of an accountable political system thus rests on a broad balance of power between the state and its underlying society. [Emphasis mine.]

Needless to say, we're facing pretty close to the opposite conditions in 2022 America: a civil society that has been decaying since at least the 1970s (as always, read Skocpol on this) and a sclerotic, lumbering state.

As an aside, I became Fukuyama-pilled a few months ago when, after years of snidely dismissing The End of History and the Last Man, I finally read the thing. Maybe at some point I'll do a post about why I think the past 20-30 years have basically vindicated that book's central argument.