'The origins of Political Order' - Francis Fukuyama - review

Fukuyama first won major acclaim with his overly optimistic article claimed that history ended in 1989 at the fall of the Berlin Wall.  While his thesis was certainly disputed by conflict in the Balkans and then destroyed events in the middle east since, it spawned an impressive book in 1992, review here.  In this book, Fukuyama refrains from prophesising and evaluates the genesis of the state.

This work is an impressive blend of anthropology, social biology, history and political science.  In this volume, Fukuyama goes in search of the origins of modern government – something so essential to our lives that we forget how arduous it was to create in the first place, assuming conscious acts were involved rather than necessity.

Starting with the altruistic and co-operative behaviour observable in chimps – Fukuyama traces the evolution of hunter-gathering bands into tribes, which, with the aid of religion, transformed themselves into states so as to more effectively make war.

Unlike tribes, states did not disintegrate with the death of a charismatic leader, and hence were seen as guaranteeing a better chance of survival. Attila the Hun or Genghis Khan were here today, gone tomorrow; the Han or Ming dynasties endured for centuries. Across the globe the key process was to overcome “patrimonialism” or the biological propensity to favour clan, kin and family, this natural desire is the foremost type of political decay, which bedevils Afghanistan or Somalia today, as well as felling countless great empires.

Fukuyama’s book is neither Eurocentric nor monocausal, and he blends high theoretical skills with the dense description much favoured by anthropologists and historians. This means his book is a extremely detailed read, with a lot of scattered history to enable the reader to navigate the basic details of Han or Ming China.

Bypassing ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, he starts with ancient Chinese emperors who ruled through a meritocratic mandarin elite, selected by written examinations. When that exhibited signs of decay, the emperors introduced a network of eunuch spies to counteract it. By contrast, India never developed a powerful central state, except when foreigners imported it, which may explain why the democratic prospects of India are a great deal better than those of its northern neighbour.

He moves on to the Abbasid caliphs and Ottoman Turks, who used abducted slaves, called Mamluks and Janissaries, as soldiers and administrators.  These men lacked any blood ties to the tribes, and could not pass on their offices to their children, and thus would not in theory be susceptible to patrimonialism, and be entirely to loyal to the state.

In Europe, Fukuyama highlights the role of the Roman Catholic Church in eradicating tribal customs, particularly pertaining to inheritance, and in instituting both the rule of law and separation of temporal and spiritual powers.

By the 18th century, the key elements of modern political order were discernible in one part of the world or other. China had an exceptionally strong state of great venerability. India, the Middle East and Europe had the rule of law. Britain and Denmark had developed accountable government. The rest of modern history is a game of catch up, as the combination of these three factors replicate and ramify throughout the world.

This book was truly eye-opening and I have already begun reading the second volume: ‘Political Order and Political Decay’.  The lessons contained within this book allows the reader to contextualise everything from the National Grid to the Syrian Civil War.  It thus merits 5/5.