For most of us, civilization is a constant. It was here when we were born and, barring a massive calamity, it will be here after we die. As such, it escapes serious scrutiny by the majority of us who do not extend ourselves beyond the daily distractions of work and family, the pleasures of play and profit. But for a minority of us, our ubiquitous present is just a brief moment in time, one rung on the unfathomably long ladder of human organization which began with bands of hunter-gatherers millennia ago and, barring some global catastrophe, will end with interstellar posthumans at some point in the distant future. For these inquisitive few, the now, with its politics and its beliefs, its successes and its failures, can only be understood when a coherent history of how we got to this now can be told. This is the task Mr. Fukuyama has set for himself, a globe-trotting journey through the history of humanity's political order, sparing not a civilization in an effort to understand how we came to be here.
How do we get to Denmark? This is not a question solvable by Google maps. It is, instead,a question posed by political theorists. How does a nation evolve into a peaceful, orderly, democracy (Denmark) with minimal corruption and opportunity for all? To begin to answer this question, Mr. Fukuyama, first, defines political order, "a strong and capable state, the state's subordination to a rule of law and government accountability to all citizens," then retreats some 2,500 years into our past to fetch and explore the first, recorded attempts at actualizing these three component's of political organization. The reader is given a crash course on China's Kin dynasty, one of seven, warring Chinese states which elevated itself to prominence by destroying its rivals and consolidating their power into a single, unified force. Next, Mr. Fukuyama locates the state's subordination to the rule of law in religious traditions. Though the Christian and Jewish faiths are given their moment, he pays particular attention to ancient India's class-based society in which the priests, or Brahmin, were the protectors of sacred law and who yielded to no one when it came to interpretation and actualization of that law. Finally, we arrive in western Europe during the second millennium where, in Britain and elsewhere, we discover the beginning of government accountability in a series of wars which lead to political conflicts which opened the door for citizens of the state to demand a say in the composition and the destiny of the state. Along the way, Mr. Fukuyama takes a number of enlightening detours, describing key events, E.G. The Concordat of Worms, which influenced the evolution of political order.
This is a successful history. Mr. Fukuyama has not only vividly described the regimes that were pivotal to the development of the modern state, he delves into the anatomy of political order by highlighting the important pillars upon which such a successful state rests. But while this is logically and commendably communicated, I found the author's analysis, that a nation's cultural history plays a substantial role in the nature of its present-day state, to be compelling. Some may object to his contention that states are, in large part, reflections of and slaves to their pasts, but the cases he makes for why Russia collapsed into an authoritarian oligarchy, why China accreted to state capitalism, and why India developed into a corrupt democracy are all incisively argued. Just as fascinating is his explanation for why Africa and Native North America remained tribal while western Europe evolved towards civilization. How such massive differences in intellectual, industrial and political organization can manifest as a result of quirks of geography boggles the mind.
My only major objection to this work stems from Mr. Fukuyama's habit of ascribing to the various institutions in history the uniform desire to gain power through indoctrination and centralization. For instance, the Catholic church's actions are always viewed through the lens of what's best for the Catholic church. This smacks strongly of Confirmation Bias. After all, these institutions are not monoliths. Not only do different administrations have different agendas, individuals of influence within the institutions will occasionally have the power to make decisions based on their own beliefs and biases, not the beliefs and biases of the institutions they represent. And so, while I agree that, generally, institutions act to preserve their authority, It seems sloppy to filter their every action through the same, polarized lens. The Origins of Political Order feels a little too neat, key moments inevitably yielding to logical outcomes when we know that the actors involved aren't always rational or logical.
Otherwise, this is a challenging and captivating read, the first of two volumes. The second promises to finish the story of political order by analyzing formative events from the French Revolution to the present day. As of now, our story is only half told. (4/5 Stars)
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