Francis Fukuyama is a researcher in political science who published two masterful volumes in 2011 and 2014 on The Origin of the Political Order. These books present a much more in-depth vision of global political history than his 1992 work predicting "the end of history".
The main merit of the first volume is to present the fragile balance between three institutions necessary for the emergence of an advanced society, and how these institutions developed for different civilizations.
The work is more limited in its historical range than “Why Nations Fail”, but more theoretical and in this sense, more in-depth.
Three institutions essential to civilizational development
The three essential components of advanced governments are
A State, an institution that claims the monopoly on violence that develops an administrative capacity
Rule of Law, which defines limits to the power of the sovereign, as opposed to the Rule by Law, which is the power of the State on the governed.
An accountability mechanism that allows the governed to have feedback on the government. This feedback mechanism, making governments accountable is present in democratic governments, but having some power wielded by an aristocracy is already in fact the beginning of a pluralist government.
Fukuyama quotes its precursors from the 19th century, including Marx, Durkheim, Henry Maine, Tönnies, Max Weber.
He first presented China, which developed its administrative capacity too quickly between 1000 BC. JC and 200 AD. JC, preventing the development of points 2 and 3, in this, China differs from the Romans and the Greeks who had a mechanism for public discussion 3 well before the administrative capacity of the State is developed.
He also quotes seminal writers: Adam Smith, whose work Wealth of Nations is about political science more than economics, and Tocqueville who often compares the institutions of the old French regime to those of Democracy in America. Among the more recent influences, Mancur Olson on collective action, Douglass North on institutions, and Samuel Huntington on culture.
Another distinction from this work is to state four fundamental trends in social relationships.
Four fundamental trends in social relations
Humans have natural tendencies that determine the formation of social, religious and political groups:
Inclusive selective value: the tendency to select loved ones, and reciprocal altruism guide group creation.
Abstraction: the prevalence of the mental causal model leads to supposing causations based on invisible forces or transcendent.
Proclivity to follow standards for emotional reasons rather than rational
Desire for intersubjective recognition of one’s values, gods, laws and customs. Once obtained, this recognition becomes the basis of legitimacy.
These trends are expressed in any human society. If Franz Boas, the founding father of cultural relativism opposed the notion of "civilizational progress" which would lead the civilized man from ancient Greece to Western democracy, Fukuyama agrees on the absence of such determinism and yet wants to describe how these same trends can give rise to very different results in China, India, in Arabs, Ottomans, Europe and England.
Historical development of institutions
China: State training
Spring and autumn period 771-251 BC: the individual is a point on the right of time between an infinity of ancestors and an infinity of descendants. There's
more than 3000 tribes which gradually aggregate. The chiefs are becoming more and more powerful.
Race to efficiency: Each tribe becomes a micro-state. The competition calls into question the traditions, replacement of the very aristocratic Char with 4 horses by troops of lancers and infantry archers, and meritocratic promotion of commanders.
Elites attrition during centuries of conflict undermines the importance of large family
Agrarian reform for more efficiency and to increase the administrative control of peasants
Feudalism will be completely abolished by the Qin Emperor in 210 BC, which will be followed by a repatrimonialization of society.
According to the Japanese historian Naito Torijaro, the Tang-Song transition to the 8th century AP JC corresponds to the end of feudalism and the beginning of the Modern Ere for China.
As the rule of law and feedback are not implemented early enough, the State uses technological development to increase its control of the population.
The question for Victoria Tinbor Hui in War and State Formation is: why has China a political trajectory between 700 BC and 200 BC that is similar to that of Europe between 1000 and 1500, but these lead to opposite results in terms of laws and counterpowers?
India: Brahmans and caste system
A caste system was set up in 1500 BC, the Brahmans are superior to the warriors, the caste system is ascriptive and antimeritocratic. It causes a strengthening of genealogic ties and a weakening of the government.
The emperors who unify the country seem to be accidents of history. The unity lasts only one generation, while disunited periods are accidents for China.
The English: no one can govern India, each village is organized as a small republic by strong institutions inherited from tradition and religion.
There is therefore a strong rule of law due to these institutions, and
A feedback mechanism: the country is very democratic because the chiefs must account, however, it is very uneven.
Arabs: a state formed by the conquest
According to Mancur Olson, beyond a certain group size, collective action must be in the personal interest of all individuals in the group to keep them motivated. There is a problem of collective action once the past period of conquest of the past 7th century. A large territory must be administered.
The prophet had unified the tribes but does not leave a clear succession plan: this leads to the schism of Shiites and Sunnis.
The sultan recruits his officers from slaves from Turkish tribes. An Arab with high skills and from the best family becomes too proud and difficult to control once he is promoted.
A slave soldier's body is created: the Mamluks, of Turkish and Caucasian origin, their endurance and strength is greater than the Arabs. The militia of 4000 soldiers gradually increases up to 70,000 soldiers.
The Arabs being cut in Egypt from their source of Turkish slaves, the Mameluks become a hereditary caste. They organize charitable organizations to overcome the restrictions of patrimonial transmission.
The regime resisted the Mongol invasion but will fall in front of the Turks because the Mamluks are too traditionalist, and would not adapt to the firearms that the Ottomans adopted.
The government avoids patrimonialisation by putting slaves at the higest levels, and sets up a strong State, while a rule of law is ensured by religion.
Ottoman: Oriental despotism?
Turkish troops invaded Anatolia and took Constantinople in 1453.
As the slavery of Muslims is prohibited, officers go to all non-Muslim villages and ask to see the birth registers. They take the best children from 12 to 15 years old. These children become slaves, which is worth to the Ottomans the epithet of oriental despotism, but these slaves have better opportunities than Muslims. They will become general or even high-functionaries, ministers.
Their education as teenagers in the imperial school fosters a great in-group solidarity. The Janissaries and Sipahis gradually obtained the right to inherit their charge, which contributed to the decadence of the Ottomans.
Europe: Critical Junctures
Europe is the best example of non-determinism in history and of the potential for historians of an infinite regress of critical junctures. For instance: since when is the West is more individualistic and meritocratic.
Karl Marx explained how the Industrial Revolution in England brought Bourgeois Western society to individualism and caused the alienation of the proletariat. So, this would date back to 1750.
Max Weber attributed to Luther's reform the transition to individualism. This would date back to the modern era around 1500AD.
Henri Maine, Frederick Pollock and Paul Vinogradoff suggest that the reform took in England because of the rule of strong law which developed between the 10th and 12th centuries, and which culminated with the Magna Carta. We note that the individual property right is well defined in this legal framework and notarial donations have clauses in the event of a future dispute between the donor and the beneficiaries, while the provision is normally subject to the approval of the agnatic family.
Finally, following the observations of John Hajnal, and the arguments of Alan McFarlane, and Jack Goody individualism, meritocracy, the weakness of patriarchy in the West, and the rights of women in the Western world are consequences that the go back to certain decisions of the Catholic Church in the 5th century AD. The Catholic Church would have prohibited marriage with the brother's wife, adoption, and marriage to cousins not for ideological reasons (the Orthodox Church has never had these laws) but to build up an area. This aspect will be popularized by psychologist Joseph Heinrich in his 2020 book: "The WEIRDest People in the World". So one could say tongue in cheek that feminism and the fight against the patriarchy only really started in the 5th century AD, and is one of the distinctive features of western tradition.
Variety of European cases:
Strong absolutism: Russian and Prussian states, or the elites are co-opted by the monarch to exploit the peasants. The Republic of Novgorod is quickly under control. Fukuyama comments that free cities only existed in the Middle Ages because the king was weak and wanted a counterweight against the high aristocracy which controlled the countryside.
Low absolitism: France and Spain, these countries are unable to raise enough taxes because they have exempt the nobility. State functions are sold in the form of hereditary load to finance the State. The law remains customary The English (s) have promoted a "common law" which replaces their customary right.
Parliamentary monarchy: in England the king conceded to the nobles La Magna Carta, a balance of power leads to inclusive institutions.
Weak monarchy: Hungary and Poland have an even more powerful nobility. The sovereign is subject to election. The nobles refusing to pay for the defense of the kingdom, Poland and Hungary will lose their independence.
Finally, Fukuyama notes that European democracies that have developed the 3 institutions nevertheless seem unable to reform their social security system to adapt it to their demographic evolution.
Charles Tilly presented European evolution since 900 AP JC as the history of wars and their tax funding. The France of the Old Regime can only tax as much as possible 15% of GDP The English government could extract 30% to finance its wars. If the United States revolts under the slogan "no taxation without representation", he suggests that the opposite slogan "no representation without taxation" is the solution to the problem of corruption which siphons developmental aid. So having NGO bring aid is a weaker form, and it might be preventing the appearance of a political order.
Conclusion
Fukuyama, just like Acemoglu and Robinson or Piketty sees that History is dotted with critical junctures. The historian can always go back, to present an earlier event as the primary cause.
If Fukuyama proclaimed the end of history in 1992 because democracy had, according to him, won the ideological war, he noted in 2011 that this provocative commentary had already been made in the 20th century by the French political philosopher Alexandre Kojève who proclaimed that the end of history had taken place at the end of the Battle of Jena in 1806: Napoleon's victory forces Prussia to become a modern state, and the rest of history since 1806 is only backfilling.
The merit of this work less complete but more in-depth than that of Daron Acemoglu is to theorize the need for an administrative state strong enough to ensure the defense, police, and justice, a rule of law to limit the power of the State, and an accountability and feedback ensuring efficient and inclusive institutions.
The four fundamental human tendencies recall the work of Stephen Boyden on biohistory and evolutionary psychology.