Francis Fukuyama
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Who Is an American? July 29, 2024
In his acceptance speech for the vice presidency at the Republican National Convention, JD Vance stated that “one of the things that you hear people say sometimes is that America is an idea.” But, Vance asserted, the country was not just a “set of pr...
Fukuyama v. Fukuyama May 12, 2023
To the general public, Francis Fukuyama’s name is synonymous with the “end of history” thesis, which contends that since the end of the Cold War and the fall of communism, liberal democracy is the only ideology that has a universal appeal. His detrac...
The Discontents of Francis Fukuyama April 18, 2023
The end of the Cold War was supposed to usher in a better world. After four decades of struggle, the great battle between liberalism and Bolshevism had ended in the former’s decisive victory. Many in the West hoped that liberalism would now have free...
The Secret Postmodern Radicalism of Francis Fukuyama December 20, 2022
In his most recent book, Liberalism and Its Discontents, published this year, author Francis Fukuyama argues that the “virtues” of liberal democracy must be “clearly articulated and celebrated.” This injunction is a curious one. For more than three d...
Getting Liberalism’s Attitude Back November 09, 2022
Francis Fukuyama’s work is generally treated much the way pigeons treat statues: as something on which to deposit badly digested ideas, which are then left for others to clean up. His notoriety for the “End of History” thesis is based on a misreading...
Fukuyama Pines for that Old-Time Liberalism July 12, 2022
“IN WATCHING THE FLOW of events over the past decade or so, it is hard to avoid the feeling that something fundamental has happened in world history.” These were the seminal opening words of Francis Fukuyama’s article “The End of History?” published ...
The Ground Is Shifting Under Francis Fukuyama’s Feet June 29, 2022
In his new book, the author of The End of History attempts to explain how liberalism is threatened by illiberal elements on the left and right. But flaws in his analysis almost guarantee that this is not the end of the discussion....
No Alternatives to Liberalism June 15, 2022
David Corey reviews Francis Fukuyama's book,Liberalism and Its Discontents, in which Fukuyama defends liberalism....
Fukuyama’s Neoliberal Blame Game April 15, 2022
It’s a measure of the stresses bearing down on the post-1989 liberal order that its chief ideologist, Francis Fukuyama, feels compelled to write a book-length defense of liberalism (already published in Britain, and forthcoming in May in North Americ...
Francis Fukuyama's Discontent March 18, 2022
In the middle of the 19th century, Auguste Comte, the French positivist thinker and forefather of sociology, devised a new faith. His Religion of Humanity would channel the natural desire for worship towards scientific and humanist ends. There was no...
At History’s End, with Francis Fukuyama August 27, 2021
In his famous 1989 National Interest article “The End of History?,” Francis Fukuyama argued that capitalist liberal democracy very well may constitute the “end” of “history” in a Hegelian sense — “the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution.” H...
Fukuyama's Hollow Nation-State April 22, 2019
Francis Fukuyama's Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment presents a portrait of the Enlightenment that is meant to help illuminate our political moment. The problem is that its portrait of the Enlightenment is tendentious an...
Francis Fukuyama's Shrinking Idea January 21, 2019
There's an intriguing phenomenon in publishing you could call the One Great Idea book. Usually written by a leading senior scholar in an interdisciplinary field such as international relations, political philosophy, or comparative literature, the One...
Francis Fukuyama's Master Concept January 21, 2019
Dignity, recognition, esteem, respect, and the resentment that arises when they are not accorded—these are the themes of Francis Fukuyama's new book. Like many political commentators, he was surprised by the results of two elections in 2016: the vict...
Does Trump Mean the End of the End of History? October 19, 2018
Francis Fukuyama may yet prove to be right in predicting the end of history. But there is no doubt that he was premature. The idea that people have reached an "end point" of "ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy...
Divided We Stand: Identity Politics and the Threat to Democracy October 12, 2018
Francis Fukuyama's sense of grievance, expressed in the preface to his new book, is patent. Ever since he published his essay “The End of History” in 1989, he writes, he has been asked whether this or that event didn't invalidate his thesis. The even...
'Identity' by Francis Fukuyama October 08, 2018
Today when we think of “identity politics” we tend to think of right-wing racists or left-wing student radicals. But in his new book Identity, Francis Fukuyama sees identity politics as a much broader trend indicative of deep and longstanding develop...
Francis Fukuyama Postpones the End of History August 31, 2018
In February, 1989, Francis Fukuyama gave a talk on international relations at the University of Chicago. Fukuyama was thirty-six years old, and on his way from a job at the rand Corporation, in Santa Monica, where he had worked as an expert on Soviet...
2016 Election Undermines 'End of History' Case March 25, 2016
