Publisher’s write-up:
‘Nations are not trapped by
their pasts, but events that happened hundreds or even thousands of years ago
continue to exert huge influence on present-day politics. If we are to
understand the politics that we now take for granted, we need to understand its
origins.
Francis Fukuyama examines the
paths that different societies have taken to reach their current forms of
political order. This book starts with the very beginning of mankind and comes
right up to the eve of the French and American revolutions, spanning such
diverse disciplines as economics, anthropology and geography. The Origins of
Political Order is a magisterial study on the emergence of mankind as a
political animal, by one of the most eminent political thinkers writing today.’
When we look at political
structures around the world, we would have several questions. Why do certain
countries seem to be authoritarian for long periods of time in their history?
Why are some regions politically unstable, whereas others have maintained
liberal democracies for centuries? In this book, Professor Francis Fukuyama
explains how political systems emerged in various parts of the world – from
pre-historic times till the French Revolution.
The regions that the author
discusses include China, India, Europe, the Middle East and to a limited
extent, Latin America. The US is often touched upon, but the scope of the book
ends at the French Revolution and thus, there is not much to cover about the US
in this volume. The author explores how societies were initially organised
tribally – which tended to be egalitarian and from there, multiple places have
had different approaches to build institutions and the challenges that the
community would face during this process. Political order has three components
according to the author, being state building, rule of law and establishing
accountability of the government.
The main points argued by the
author is that the success or failure of a state is not often defined by resources
that they have at their disposal or the battles won but the institutions that
are built. To build on these – the author brings about several examples, the
most profound being the ones centred around England – how they developed a
strong state as compared to a weaker absolutist state in France and Spain. It
was interesting that many of the references that the author had were books that
I had read earlier, like Machiavelli’s Prince or Sun Tzu’s The Art of
War.
I was initially sceptical about
this book over the neutrality of the author’s perspective considering his
political leanings, having served in the Reagan administration and being a
founder of what I consider a very toxic ideology – neoconservatism. To be fair
to him, the author has distanced himself from these ideals and the Republican
Party during the 21st Century. But I would say that this book is
neutral and does not aim at putting forth a particular manner of administration
or ideology as superior to the other.
If politics and history interest
you, this book provides a good insight to both of them. There are people who
often believe that several government institutions are redundant; this book can
provide with examples as to why those are necessary for effective state
building and also why having an all-powerful authority at the top is not viable
and if achieved, has hardly been good for the state.
This book could deter hyper
nationalists / jingoists when their respective nation is evaluated and that
their past was not all that glorious but then, I do not expect them to pick up
a book of this kind. I might have liked a more dedicated section on Japan and
their largely isolationist policy till the 20th Century; and how
they built such a state.
On the whole, I would say that
considering my personal interests on both politics and history, I found this
book very insightful. If you have similar interests, you would like this book
too. This author has done enough to get me interested in the second volume and
I shall be reading it soon. On that note, I award the book a rating of eight on
ten.
Rating – 8/10
Have a nice day,
Andy
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