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159 of 175 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fukuyama's Magnum Opus, April 12, 2011
This review is from: The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution (Hardcover)
Since publishing his essay "The End of History?" in The National in 1989, Fukuyama has cemented himself as an important public intellectual and historical anthropologist. A former neo-conservative, Fukuyama, 58, now serves as the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University.
In this book, Fukuyama attempts to understand how humans moved from tribal and familial connections to organized institutions of states and governments. He writes, "In the developed world, we take the existence of government so much for granted that we sometimes forget how difficult it was to create."
Fukuyama artfully navigates the transition of humans from hunter-gather bands to tribalized communities to states and organized forms of government. Fukuyama emphasizes China because the Qin Dynasty was the first "state" to gain victory over tribalism. He contrasts this with Europe, which did not overcome tribalism until 1000 years later, and had to progress through feudalism before creating citizens loyal to the state.
Fukuyama's approach to historical anthropology stands in stark contrast to the "single cause" approach of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (2005). Fukuyama points to familial connections, human behavior, organized religion, and the human propensity for war as variable causes to the evolution of societies. Fukuyama engages disciplines outside of his usual realm including anthropology, economics, and biology. He notes, "It does seem to me that there is a virtue in looking across time and space in a comparative fashion."
Many readers have already labeled this as Fukuyama's "magnum opus" including Arthur Melzer (political scientist at Michigan State University), George Sorensen (political scientist at the University of Aarhus in Denmark), and Teru Kuwayama (Newsweek). Fukuyama himself referred to this book as "the primer I wished I had had when I started in political science" (in an interview at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies).
The Origins of Political Order is a broad, sweeping analysis of human development from pre-human times to the French Revolution. The book ends with the 18th century; a second volume will bring the story to the present day. Indeed, Fukuyama notes in the Preface, "It is extremely important to read this volume in anticipation of what is to come in the second. As I make clear in the final chapter of this book, political development in the modern world occurs under substantially different conditions from those in the period up until the late eighteenth century."
In spite of Fukuyama's readable style and engaging content, this book is academic and dense. Yet it serves as a helpful entry point into Fukuyama's current thought and research. It will no doubt become required reading in institutions across the globe in the following months and years and eventually revered as a classic.
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51 of 54 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A thoughtful addition to the world-historical theorizing genre, May 8, 2011
This review is from: The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution (Hardcover)
The Origins of Political Order is an engaging read for anyone willing to grant the author license to do some old school multidisciplinary broad-scope theorizing on a hugely important question: What are the origins of political order? Why did key political institutions -- a centralized state with a monopoly on the use of force, enforcement of legal norms by third parties, and accountability of the state to outside forces -- develop in some places and not others?
The real standard for evaluating this kind of book, a work in the world-historical Guns, Germs, and Steel genre, is not whether the author gets details wrong, or misconstrues some of the theories or cultures he discusses. This is inevitable. No one can be an expert in biology, the history of China, cultural anthropology, primate behavior, and legal history. But as Fukuyama correctly argues, that the task is necessarily imperfect and difficult doesn't mean it isn't worthwhile. The standard for success is whether the necessarily imperfect effort nonetheless tells us something new and interesting. And Fukuyama succeeds on this metric.
Fukuyama abolishes any doubts the reader might harbor about political development as separate from economic or social development, and destroys any notion the reader might have that political order is somehow automatic or natural. Fukuyama will persuade you that political order is instead fragile and contingent. And he'll do it while taking you on a fascinating tour of the history of several different nations as well as the history of humans as a species. You'll learn about geography, primate behavior, and religion. Indeed, the pages are brimming with interesting theories on the various sub-topics that make up the volume, each of which could form its own PhD project. That none is quite fully explored is a necessary byproduct of the scope of the work.
Fukuyama, of course, has his biases. He gleefully and rightly eschews political correctness. Some readers might flinch, for example, at the characterization of societies that use women as chattel as essentially egalitarian and free. But Fukuyama's biases are not Right or Left; readers of any partisan persuasion will find things to like and dislike about Fukuyama's conclusions.
If nothing else, the book is a sterling example of clear, concise prose that is well-edited. You won't find yourself puzzling over poorly written sentences, awkward constructions, or unfocused structure.
It's hard to a imagine a reader of nonfiction who wouldn't find something to like about this book. Give it a shot.
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Order from Chaos, May 19, 2011
This review is from: The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution (Hardcover)
How did the world get into this political mess? Fukuyama gives us a sound and sweeping theory. It should be a cornerstone piece for a long time.
This is an engaging and thought-provoking exposition of a subject which like quicksand, is easily approached but is very difficult to escape from with ease and credibility. I believe that Professor Fukuyama handles the task with much aplomb.
Unlike another reviewer I did not find his style "academic and dense." Rather, I found that his writing style is easy-going and clear which made reading it a very enjoyable experience. I liked his style and his theory a lot.
As stated in previous reviews, he stands upon the shoulders of his mentor, Samuel Huntington, a Harvard University professor, in attempting to build upon a theory of political order and decay which can stand the test of reality which is not ordered, and is often chaotic. Does he do so? Yes, I think so, at least he does so in volume one! We will have to wait for volume two where Fukuyama plans to take the discussion further with events beyond the French Revolution to make a final determination. In the meantime, with volume one we have an exposition of the three building blocks of political order (i.e., state building, rule of law, and accountable government) assessed within a review of the historical developments of the nations of China, India, Islam and Europe-America. (If you are already familiar with the developments of most of these mega-states, you can probably skim-read these sections.)
Lest you think that his book has all the markings of a boring tome, let me assure you that it is not. To give you an example, one provocative assertion he makes about Christianity may spark some considerable interest in the book. He claims that the Catholic Church was responsible for "undermining the family," by opposing four practices common in Germany at the time after the fall of the Roman Empire. They were: 1. marriages between close kin, 2. marriages of widows of dead relatives, 3. the adoption of children, and 4. divorce. Intrigued? No. Well, how about this: Even more fascinating than this assertion is the rationale why the Church did so. No, not because these practices were evil but because they stood in the way of the Church becoming wealthy. An interesting read indeed. How is that for provocation?
I await Volume II with much anticipation.
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