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

Francis Fukuyama (Author)

Book Description

Release date: April 12, 2011

Virtually all human societies were once organized tribally, yet over time most developed new political institutions which included a central state that could keep the peace and uniform laws that applied to all citizens. Some went on to create governments that were accountable to their constituents. We take these institutions for granted, but they are absent or are unable to perform in many of today’s developing countries—with often disastrous consequences for the rest of the world.

Francis Fukuyama, author of the bestselling The End of History and the Last Man and one of our most important political thinkers, provides a sweeping account of how today’s basic political institutions developed. The first of a major two-volume work, The Origins of Political Order begins with politics among our primate ancestors and follows the story through the emergence of tribal societies, the growth of the first modern state in China, the beginning of the rule of law in India and the Middle East, and the development of political accountability in Europe up until the eve of the French Revolution.

Drawing on a vast body of knowledge—history, evolutionary biology, archaeology, and economics—Fukuyama has produced a brilliant, provocative work that offers fresh insights on the origins of democratic societies and raises essential questions about the nature of politics and its discontents.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. The evolving tension between private and public animates this magisterial history of the state. In his hominids-to-guillotines chronicle of humanity's attempts to build strong, accountable governments that adhere to the rule of law, international relations scholar Fukuyama (The End of History) advances two themes: the effort to create an impersonal state free from family and tribal allegiances, and the struggle—often violent—against wealthy elites who capture the state and block critical reforms. Fukuyama's multifaceted comparative approach grounds politics and government in the demands of biology, geography, war, and economics, and pays appropriately lavish attention to China (he styles the Qin Dynasty of 221 B.C.E. the world's first modern state), India, and the Islamic countries. A neo-Hegelian, he's especially trenchant on the importance of ideology—especially religious beliefs—as an autonomous instigator of social and political change. (He cogently ascribes Europe's distinctively individualistic culture to the medieval Catholic Church's "assault on kinship.") Fukuyama writes a crystalline prose that balances engaging erudition with incisive analysis. As germane to the turmoil in Afghanistan as it is to today's congressional battles, this is that rare work of history with up-to-the-minute relevance. (Apr.)
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From Booklist

Political theorist Fukuyama presents nothing less than a unified theory of state formation, a comparative study of how tribally organized societies in various parts of the world and various moments in history have transformed into societies with political systems and institutions and, in some cases, political accountability. Drawing upon a diverse range of sources—sociobiology and anthropology as well as macroeconomics and legal history—and paying particular attention to political development in Asia, Fukuyama describes a somewhat evolutionary mechanism wherein political systems develop in response to certain societal conditions and become institutionalized because of, among other things, their ability to adapt. Very much a continuation of his former teacher Samuel Huntington’s interest in political decay, this wide-ranging and frequently provocative work also carries the mantel of the great nineteenth-century sociologists, who addressed many of the same questions. Though Fukuyama hints at his theory’s relevance to present-day political challenges, readers seeking commentary on anything more recent than the French Revolution will need to be patient; this is volume 1 of 2. --Brendan Driscoll

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 608 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First Edition edition (April 12, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374227349
• ISBN-13: 978-0374227340
• Product Dimensions: 1.8 x 6.3 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (57 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #189,902 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Francis Fukuyama is Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), resident in FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.

Dr. Fukuyama has written widely on issues relating to questions concerning democratization and international political economy. His book, The End of History and the Last Man, was published by Free Press in 1992 and has appeared in over twenty foreign editions. His most recent books are America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy, and Falling Behind: Explaining the Development Gap between Latin America and the United States. His latest book, The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution will be published in April 2011.

Francis Fukuyama received his B.A. from Cornell University in classics, and his Ph.D. from Harvard in Political Science. He was a member of the Political Science Department of the RAND Corporation from 1979-1980, then again from 1983-89, and from 1995-96. In 1981-82 and in 1989 he was a member of the Policy Planning Staff of the US Department of State, the first time as a regular member specializing in Middle East affairs, and then as Deputy Director for European political-military affairs. In 1981-82 he was also a member of the US delegation to the Egyptian-Israeli talks on Palestinian autonomy. From 1996-2000 he was Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public Policy at the School of Public Policy at George Mason University, and from 2001-2010 he was Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. He served as a member of the President's Council on Bioethics from 2001-2004.

Dr. Fukuyama is chairman of the editorial board of The American Interest, which he helped to found in 2005. He holds honorary doctorates from Connecticut College, Doane College, Doshisha University (Japan), and Kansai University (Japan). He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Rand Corporation, the Board of Directors of the National Endowment for Democracy, and member of the advisory boards for the Journal of Democracy, the Inter-American Dialogue, and The New America Foundation. He is a member of the American Political Science Association, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Pacific Council for International Affairs. He is married to Laura Holmgren and has three children.

March 2011

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

195 of 213 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Fukuyama's Magnum Opus April 12, 2011

By Justin Hyde

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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.

65 of 68 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A thoughtful addition to the world-historical theorizing genre May 8, 2011

By Ryan

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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.

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Order from Chaos May 19, 2011

By michael mcgreevy

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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.