Francis Fukuyama, the renowned professor of political science at Stanford, returns to the John Adams Institute. Three years ago he came to talk about The Origins of Political Order (2011), in which he explained why some societies successfully evolved into fully formed states, while others remain largely governed by tribalism.
Now he will discuss its sequel, Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy, which will appear in October. In it he traces mankind’s emergence as a political animal, and the development of state, law and democracy in the wake of the French and American revolutions. He examines the modern political landscape with its uneasy tension between dictatorships and liberal democracies.
A quarter of a century ago, in his book The End of History (1989), he predicted the triumph of liberal democracy, but now he comes to the conclusion that in the United States, as well as in other developed democracies, unmistakable signs of decay have emerged. This was Francis Fukyama’s third visit to the institute, after his visits in 2011 and 1995.
