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The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution

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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.

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.

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.

The book makes interesting points. I particularly like the author's framework for a definition of democracy: State--Rule of Law--Accountability. If any one of these elements is missing, democracy fails. Thus democracy has a moral core which can never be ignored or dismissed. The word "accountability" means responsibility (and often courage); accountable rulers act for the good of their people rather than for their own power and selfish needs.

Fukuyama's assertions that there has never been a society without religion and that violence is inborn, "rooted in human nature," are also thoughtful and challenging. Furthermore, the fascinating historical detail he relates about the Swedish and Danish monarchs in the 18th century, who made common cause with the peasantry against a weak aristocracy, points to the variety of ways nations achieved, failed to achieve, or can achieve democratic rule. There are numerous thought-provoking historical facts in the book (i.e., that the Brahmins in India had a higher authority than the warriors), but facts alone do not create a good book.

Fukuyama's style deadens the mind. Surely he had read the great literary works (he mentions Tolstoy's "War and Peace"--his only reference to a literary work) but what had he learned from them? Had he learned, for example, that metaphors, details, parallelism, anecdotes (or illustrations), variety in sentence structure, and conciseness are the essential elements of good writing? Had he learned anything about the vigor and pith of language? No. And if you say that that's the way political scientists, or historians, write, just have a look at Tocqueville's excerpts which Fukuyama quotes (345). These excerpts alone, as well as those by Adam Smith (412), should have made Fukuyama blush in shame. Let me be more specific.

The first noticeable weakness in Fukuyama's style is wordiness. (Some reviewers have already remarked on that.) I will try to edit one of his typically overwritten sentences:

Fukuyama: "The expansion of the charmed circle of human beings accorded equal dignity was very slow, however, and only after the seventeen century came eventually to include the lower social classes, women, racial, religious, and ethnic minorities, and the like" (445).

My editing: "The charmed circle, which accorded equal dignity to all citizens, expanded slowly; only after the 17th century did it eventually include the lower social classes--women and religious and ethnic minorities." Fukuyama uses 39 words; I have used 31. If any reader finds that my shorter version distorts the author's meaning, please let me know. Wordiness is not a trivial aspect of writing; it obstructs clarity. It hangs over the book's landscape like stubborn fog.

The above quotation also demonstrates Fukuyama's preference for helping verbs (is, was) and linking verbs (look, seem, become, or the odd "came" in this quote) over action verbs. Of course, writing must include helping and linking verbs, but it must also use action verbs that move the prose forward at a good clip. If we imagine the book as a long road across which the words travel, we can say that Fukuyama relies heavily on abstract nouns and adjectives which move slowly across the page like heavy vehicles--buses, trucks, and tanks. Here are some them: "cooperative problems," "selective pressure," "external environment," "adaptable organization," "political stability," "organizing for predations," "coercive capacity," "relatively privileged groups," and "debt renegotiation." And who moves these heavy vehicles forward? the frail and pitiful helping and linking verbs! Where are the action verbs, where are the images, the metaphors, and the rich diction that could turn this excruciating prose into a vital and limpid narration?

Finally, I must point out Fukuyama's fondness for passive constructions. The German language likes passive constructions; the English language definitely does not. Yes passive constructions abound in this book. Here's one example: "The fluidity and open access demanded by modern market economies undermine many traditional forms of social authority and force their replacement with more flexible, voluntary forms of association" (471). Yes, there are two action verbs here ("undermine" and "force") but the construction is passive. Here's my active version: "Modern market economies demand fluidity and open access and thus undermine traditional forms of social authority and forcefully replace them with flexible and voluntary forms of association."

How could Jonathan Galassi, a respected editor, a poet, and a discerning translator of poetry, release to the world a book with such an inferior and inadequate style?

Fukuyama is an interesting thinker, whether you agree or disagree with him. If you're interested in political science (or for that matter political economy), I can highly recommend this book. This book is one step more serious than pop-science (e.g. The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century, The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution, Global Capitalism: Its Fall and Rise in the Twentieth Century, The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, just to mention four books so you understand of my reference point). This is a plus for me, but some readers might find the prose too dense. Still the author knows how to write so you will not get a book with stilted, academic English.

This book looks at the emergence and growth of government (or in the author's terminology "order"). A lot of the book is taken up by history, but with a purpose. To develop a more general theory of government. Just like Hobbes's Leviathan: With Selected Variants from the Latin Edition of 1668 tried to do some time ago or Huntington's Political Order in Changing Societies (The Henry L. Stimson Lectures Series). Huntington is also the mentor of Fukuyama.

My understanding is that this is the first part of two books.

Fukuyama being a political scientist is not prone to grand theorizing as much as a sociologist would be. However, I would have liked a stronger attempt at theorisation and model building. Also I would have liked to see a bit more tables and graphs, because they help my understanding. They are largely absent.

I read this book after getting through Matt Ridley's "The Rational Optimist." I thoroughly enjoyed Ridley's book but was skeptical about his single-minded emphasis on evolutionary bottom-up processes (a free market of ideas) as drivers of political development/order. Whereas Ridley almost always sees top-down governmental action as an impediment to development--something that stifles the naturalistic order produced by free market exchanges--Fukuyama takes a more even-handed, multi-dimensional and one might argue, accurate approach.

Fukuyama ascribes the development of political order to the rise of governmental accountability, the rule of law, and a centralized, impersonal state/bureaucracy. To defend this premise, he tackles some of the simplifications offered by Enlightenment thinkers, Marxists and free-marketers/libertarians. For one, he shows how Enlightenment thinkers got the 'state of nature' wrong: humans evolved to hunt and gather in groups--there never was a time when individuals acted as free-agents who, in their rational self-interest, came to establish a 'social contract' wherein they would give up some liberty in order to provide for the common security (government). Instead, there was an ongoing interplay between an emergent market morality (provided by tit-for-tat exchanges), the need to wage war, and ideas (religion, ideology & normative beliefs regarding the law) that together have tended to promote the development of political order in societies. And political development, rather than being a constant progression toward some liberal-democratic or Marxist-utopian goal, is fragile and just as likely to decay as it is to progress. Furthermore, Fukuyama explains why it is futile to try to radically impose a new social order on a state (evidenced by the excesses of the French Revolution and failures of collectivist farming reform in communist societies); and also, why one cannot count on limited governments and free markets to produce political development.

Fukuyama does not offer any simple causes or solutions to the problems of political development in this volume--and that's a good thing. Polemical condemnations of American imperialism, authoritarianism, and centralized government are, thankfully, nowhere to be found. Instead, some of the major contributors of political decay/disorder are described as patrimonialism (nepotism), a lack of social unity (collective exploitation by any one group), "collective action problems" (whereby individuals interests benefit from a suboptimal order) and a lack of faith in the law. The author does not expound democratic models over authoritarian models of development; nor does he consider economic development to be contingent on the rise of democratic institutions. He discusses the deficiencies of weak (inability to act decisively & tackle entrenched interests) and strong governments (potential for abuse of power). Furthermore, he provides evidence against the cynic's view that governments and political actors alway seek to maximize their 'rational self-interests'--desire for recognition, institutional conservatism, and ideas being curbing factors. In all, I would say his treatment of the subject is even-handed, thorough and copiously defended with examples from across time and regions.

Fukuyama has called this book the primer that he wished he'd had as an undergrad student in political science. His style of writing is direct and well-organized. Fukuyama provides enough background information to make his discussions of most concepts and various instances of political development across regions and time comprehensible, but I still found myself getting a bit lost at times. Thankfully, he summarizes his points often and at the end of chapters. If I had to critique this book as a primer for undergrads, I'd say that perhaps it might be a bit too heavy-duty in the length and the number of examples provided by Fukuyama to make his points. However, this book is immense in scope and scale, well-reasoned and dispels a number of misconceptions starting political science students might have or might develop over time--making it invaluable to serious students. And, then again, what are professors for if not to challenge their students with "impossible" readings and then help make the difficult points understandable?

I just finished reading this book, and I enjoyed it. My background is in Biology so I studied in the Natural Sciences and Mathematics. I enjoyed languages, so I also studied in French and Spanish, and I really enjoyed reading for pleasure, so I studied American, French, Chinese and English Literature. As I am getting older, I am beginning to realize that I basically only have a high school level understanding of History, so my present goal is to fill in the gaps and catch up a bit. This was my first book on Political History, so I'm not sure my comments will be all that helpful to people who are more familiar with the subject.

My general criticisms would be 1) the figures are not worth including in the book as they are currently presented, and 2) the prose often does not flow very well, so the meaning of many sentences is obscured.

In Natural Science textbooks figures are an essential explanatory feature: they are usually well conceived and constructed, detailed and clear. I find the figures in this book to be so simple to the point of being beside the point or their meaning too vague to be worthwhile including. A few words in boxes do not an explanation make. Either make the figures more dynamic and understandable (i.e. useful on a first read), explain them well via the text, or don't bother including them.

While the flow of writing is generally good, there are sentences that I had to read over and over again in order to understand them: have a good proof reader, not in your field of expertise, read the final draft in order to modify sentences that don't make a lot of sense on first or second reading.

Well, this being my first Polysci book, I can't comment too much on content other than that I do find many of the premises plausible, although a few more varied examples to support your points would be helpful and allow for a more critical analysis of your ideas (lacking, as your discipline does, possibilities for direct experimentation :-).

Being my first encounter, I have to say I did appreciate your repetition: tell them what you are going to say, say it, tell them what you just said: but that aspect was really overdone, and if I were reading this book as an expert in the field, I'd totally lose patience with the repetition of salient points.

Here are the points I will take away from the book:

*There are three components of a truly democratic government: 1) an effective bureaucracy, 2) rule of law, 3) and accountability of the government to the people.

*The role of religion in politics is significant, whether it be the role of Christianity in helping develop rule of law and comparatively weakening kinship relationships in the West, or Christianity, Islam and Buddhism promoting in-group relationships that transcend political regions and alliances.

*The default mode of human political order is clan or kinship level relationships.

*Humans are basically social organisms and have a tendency to violence based in their animal nature.

*Through most of human history, the majority of human beings have been subjected to extraordinary cruelty by a few of their fellows. (These "fellows" ought to be taken out and flogged, hanged or shot, so the majority of us can just go about enjoying our lives in peace and industry.)

I got a kick from another poster who said, basically, "I stopped reading this book when the author explained how Christianity, in the form of the Catholic Church, `destroyed' `the family' (kinship relationships)." Had he read on, he would have discovered how Christianity, and other `we are the people' religions, provided a context for the rule of law which is so paramount to the effectiveness of our own society.

I have often thought that an atom is an extremely complex thing. And, if you even just forget about the nucleus of the atom, and focus on the electrons, that a molecule is an extremely complex thing. If you go further up in complexity, an organic molecule is even more highly complex. Get a lot of these various macromolecules together and you might get a cell in all its complexity. Go beyond a cell and you get a single celled, or a multi-celled organism; go beyond that and you get a human being: an extremely complex thing interacting with its environment. But put two of these human beings in a room together, and you have a magnitude of complexity beyond our comprehension. And, then yet again, 7 billion of us, and you have chaos, or...order, after a kind.

Best wishes to all of you!

Well researched, highly informative and clearly written! The author thoroughly addresses the 'origins of political order,' beginning with studies in evolutionary psychology. He then traces how politics evolved through the ages as social organizations grew from roving bands to the modern nation state. The scholarship is impressive throughout. Fukuyama is just as conversant with philosophers such as Hobbes and Rousseau as he is with the latest studies in cultural anthropology. Surprisingly, this book will shed considerable light on contemporary American politics and the polarization of the two party system as well. For these and other reasons, I'm considering a second purchase of one in hardcover. My present copy is a Kindle eBook which is great for highlighting and so forth. However, I would also like to have a hardbound edition, given the book is one of lasting importance in my opinion.

Fukuyama is still running on his theme of liberal democratic victory but he has to explain why there has been a backslide in the last four years. He traces state and polity formation in China, India and the Muslim empires and shows how there had been backsliding from their previous developments. China under the Qin dynasty of 221 b.c. had a full fledged state with very little patrimonialism. China also lacked rule of law, which is why it back slid in to patrimonialism again. India's religious foundation had rule of law but it was certainly not liberal.

To a great extent the religious structure influences the 'formula' if you will, for liberal democracies. All polities should be measured by their level of state, rule of law and government accountability. At different times and seasons, non-western and western countries have ebbed and flowed in the qualities of each.

I was intrigued by a few unique points. One trend noted in China, the Middle East and in the Catholic church was the control of family and lineage. Eunuchs, celibacy and the Mamluk empire contained strategies to remove family heritage, kin relations from the centers of power. Fukuyama claimed that taking care of kin is the oldest societal structure. When you remove kin altogether it leaves room for the ruler to hold power. The strategy has been tried on not only the state but on the military as well.

Fukuyama summarizes his findings in listing these five themes through human history in political processes: 1. humans "never existed in a pre-social state" pg. 439 2. Sociability is "built around... kin selection and reciprocal altruism." (patrimonialism) pg. 439 3. humans have a "propensity" to create and want norms and rules pg. 440 Institutions often form out of emotions not logic, however. 4. humans have a "natural propensity for violence" pg. 440 5. Humans want not only resources but recognition pg. 441 "a great deal of human politics revolves around struggles for recognition." pg. 441

It would appear that regardless of international cooperation, altruism at its finest, there will always be a holdout for personal recognition. Heritage will always be the last standing bastion of a secular selfishness. It's the closest strict logical reasoning can get to eternal life.

Religion has been one of the main sources of norms and rules, influential in the most prosperous democracies today. This is not to say that other ideologies could also be so influential, they just haven't been as yet. I see this book as showing how human thirst for legacy, moving from individual to even global recognition displays the weakness of our pride. The reality is that we do not exist to be recognized.

Most people reviewing this and similarly important books tend to be much better educated than I am, or at least more articulate. I'd just like to say that for a person who did not get a liberal arts degree, I think this is so helpful in understanding the world. I enjoy reading history a great deal, and trying to understand what happened and why. This pretty much sums up why the world is how it is. When people can't see why Sunni and Shia can't get along, I'd like to remind them Catholics and Protestants had a pretty good war in Ireland not long ago, and they may have read a paragraph or two in World History about centuries of very bloody religious wars throughout Europe after Luther. And when they talk about how repressed Muslim women are, I'd like to remind them my grandmother couldn't vote til middle age, and how shocked she'd be if could see how my granddaughter dresses. People don't like to change the things they value.