How robust is liberal democracy worldwide? Why do authoritarian countries like China, Iran and Russia seem to be struggling right now? How safe is democracy in the developed world? Francis Fukuyama joins the podcast to discuss how the ideas from his book 'The End of History' apply to what we're seeing in geopolitics today. We discuss what capital-H History is really about, whether neoliberalism is to blame for the rise of authoritarianism in recent decades, the contradictions that give strong states inherent weaknesses, and what he's watching for to see if the world might experience another wave of democratization.
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crmd on December 18th, 2022 at 14:55 UTC »
Peter Zeihan is our generation’s FF
A_devout_monarchist on December 18th, 2022 at 13:31 UTC »
I was not aware Fukuyama was still being taken credibly by the political community worldwide. His thesis was proven wrong repeatedly ever since 9/11 at the very least, the world is not inevitably headed towards some Liberal World Order. The supposed "Democratization" of the Arab Spring led to just new authoritarian governments at best and civil wars at worst, Russia has returned back to it's more autocratic routes, any sign of liberalization from China that was still left after 89 was just swept away by Xi. That is not even including instability in Latin America where Populist politics swept like a wave leading to Maduro's regime.
The Clinton Era is gone, that post-cold war optimism of the 90s was an apex of American power we will likely never see again. Even if somehow Putin has some crushing defeat in the Ukraine War (which I doubt, Russians rarely ever lose attrition wars), he still managed to break almost a century of precedent of peaceful relations between European States (Yugoslavia could be considered more of a civil war than a proper conflict between two fully developed nations) while nations such as Britain are struggling with unstable governments and potential social unrest.
The man was wrong, his ideology failed, it's time to move on and find some better thesis to explain the modern Era.
MrDannyOcean on December 17th, 2022 at 19:07 UTC »
This is a conversation I had with Francis Fukuyama, author of The End of History and the Last Man, Liberalism and its Discontents, the Political Order series, and more. He's well known for his belief that liberal democracy represents the 'End of History' - that it is the final stage of human governance and no alternative system such as the CCP, Hungary's 'illiberal democracy', etc, can replace it. I interviewed Dr Fukuyama about how recent events in China, Iran, Russia, and at home in the United States have influenced his views, and why he thinks that autocracies fall prey to the 'weakness of strong states'.