The Origins Of Political Order:  From Prehuman Times to The French Revolution, by Francis Fukuyama

This is by no means an easy book to read, coming in at about 500 pages of pretty dense material relating to political science, but it is certainly an interesting book to read.  To be sure, the author and I come from different perspectives and I am by no means the sort of evolutionary thinker that the author is.  Still, those differences aside, there is much to appreciate in a book like this, as the author spends a great deal of time and effort demonstrating the complexity of political order and how it can be easily lost and difficult for some regime to gain.  The author also notes, rather cannily, that failed states can be viewed either as threats or opportunities based on the nature of the order one wishes to establish, and that there are threats to political order that are unceasing and that cannot be permanently gotten rid of, no matter how hard one will try.  The author also views political order, a subject of some personal interest, with a fair amount of nuance, showing that a society requires some level of buy-in and may have “good enough” property rights to know a good deal of growth even if its rule of law is limited.

This particular book has thirty chapters divided into five parts.  The first five chapters of the book are part of the author’s discussion of human social behavior before the state (I), arguing for the necessity of politics (1), the state of nature (2), the tyranny of cousins (3), tribal societies and their views on property, justice, and war (4), and the coming of the state, especially in warring states China (5).  After that there are eleven chapters that deal with various aspects of state building around the world (II), namely Chinese tribalism (6), war and the rise of the Chinese state (7), the great Han system (8), political decay and the return of patrimonial government in China (9), India’s great detour (10), India’s class system (11), the weaknesses of the Indian states (12), slavery and the Muslim exit from tribalism (13), the rise of the Mamluks (14), the functioning and decline of the Ottoman state (15), and Catholicism’s undermining of the family (16).  There are then five chapters on the rule of law (III), how it began (17), the church becoming a state (18), and the state becoming a church (19), oriental despotism (20), and the state as stationary bandits (21).  After this, seven chapters discuss responsible government (IV), with discussions on the rise of political accountability (22), rent seeking in France and Spain (23), the movement of patrimonialism to Spanish colonies (24), absolutism and weak governments in Eastern Europe (25), more perfect absolutism in Russia and Prussia (26), taxation and representation (27), and why accountability and absolutism are found in different places (28).  Finally, the last two chapters discuss political development and decay (29) both in past and present (30), after which there are notes, a bibliography, acknowledgements, and an index.

Overall, the author’s wide cultural knowledge and interests helps him to understand a lot of the pitfalls that states fall into, pointing out that accountability is a complicated matter and that no representation without taxation is as important as no taxation without representation.  Furthermore, by showing that there are several paths to responsible government, the author avoids falling into the pitfalls of Whig history while also providing models that other societies could follow in making sure that common people are better educated and that there is some kind of alliance that is made against overweening government while still preserving a strong enough government for the defense of the nation.  Strangely, the author does not provide more information about the United States except to caution about the dangers of contemporary political malaise, even though the American experience is certainly a good one to show how it is that responsible government spreads, even though it also shows the conflicts that often develop when there are breakdowns in the ability of the political realm to confine cultural conflict.  Obviously that has a lot of contemporary relevance.