The Origins of Political Order

Author: Francis Fukuyama

Preface

Need for understanding political origins

• The Wantoks of Melanesia - example of tribal social system limiting economic development

  1. Whole of Papua New Guinea was comprised of numerous wantoks who were groups of people led by a Big man

  2. Big man was chosen purely based on talent to distribute resources within a wanton. Every generation had a different Big man.

  3. Later when Australia gave freedom and put a democratic government in place still the wantoks functioned just like they used to except all Big men became MPs and started bringing in resources from the government for their wantok.

  4. They had never had a system for land ownership before as everything was shared and till date corporations have to do a lot of organised talks to buy and operate in lands. Almost seems like corruption to other world.

Before the State

Necessity of Politics

• Liberal democracy becomes default form of government. But recent decline.
  1. Freedom house says: 1973 - only 45 free countries and 1990s 120 countries free
     1. Factors: education, ease of travel etc
  2. But decline in freedom measures since 2000s. Like erosion in democracy or switch to authoritarian governments.

Political anxieties

• Manipulating elections, buying newspapers etc - Russia, Venezuela and Iran
• Stuck in between authoritarian and liberal - leaders playing it safe - Kazak, Uzbek etc.
• Failure to deliver basic services
  • Ukraine - Orange revolution. People revolt against wrong elections only to regret the new president later.
  • Latin america. Economic inequality, gangs, crime etc.
  • India - Seems like good democracy but not. China on the other hand pretty good.
• Economy - Recent instabilities. Good growth due to open market. But lack of good politics makes economy instable.

Political Decay

Political Decay occurs when political systems fail to adjust to changing circumstances.

• Bad adaptability - USA
  1. US constitution was designed with a broad range of checks and balances by which different parts of the government could prevent other parts from exercising tyrannical control. ==But no guarantee that it will allow state authority when the need arises.==
  2. Makes log term fiscal stability hard. Overspending, high credit etc. Major power position in limbo.
• Easy solutions but hard to implement
  1. Because of high polarity.
  2. Most Conservative Democrat today is more liberal than the most liberal Republican.
  3. Neutral regions have highly reduced.
  4. Parties have become ideologically homogenous and deliberative debate between them has deteriorated.
• Institutional inertia - Failing to act fast. Hiding behind status quo.
• Bad short term fixes instead of serious institutional reform.

  • Cause of French revolution. Caring about certain segments of stakeholders.

Fantasies of Statelesness

1. Everybody likes the idea of statelessness. But there’s no plan for post statelesness.
2. Taking the governments functions for granted - Who fills potholes in Fairfax county?
3. Poor growth in sub Saharan countries - fully libertarian. But people take care of health, security etc. by themselves.

Getting to Denmark

Mimicking Denmark is not gonna be feasible for every other country. It’s a long process that has to align with underlying culture. Even Denmark doesn’t know how it’s government happens to be so good.

Three institutions that constitute a democracy:

1. The state
2. The rule of law
3. Accountable government

• 💡 ==All democracies don’t have all 3 in place very well==

The State of Nature

• Hobbes’s Leviathan
  • To escape from war, human beings agree to give up their natural liberty to do as they please in return for other people respecting their right to life. The government secures the right to life by securing peace.
• Locke’s Second Treatise on Government
  • Fundamental law of nature gives human beings the right not just to life, but to life, health, liberty or possessions. Avoid unjust authority and tyranny.
• Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origin and the foundation of Inequality among mankind
  • Considers man more peaceful than in Leviathan. Leviathan is just a product of centuries of social development. Natural humans are solitary, timid, fearful and not war lovers. Political society only makes man dependent on each other.

All three were wrong in assuming primordial individualism and lack of social sense in early humans. Kin selection and reciprocal altruism - cooperation among organisms

The Struggle for Recognition

Struggles for recognition is fundamentally different from struggle for economic exchange, since the conflict is zero sum rather than positive sum. That is, one person’s recognition can come only at the expense of the dignity of someone else. Status can only be relative. In contests over status, there are no win-win situations as in trade.

Political parties emerge from people following a person of admiration. Later the recognition is passed on to institutions.

The conservativism some of societies with regard to rules is then a source of political decay. Rules and institutions created in response to one set of environmental circumstances become dysfunctional under the later conditions. But they cannot be changed due to people's heavy emotional investments in them. This means that social change is often not linear - that is, a process of a constant small adjustments to shifting conditions. But rather follows a pattern of pronounced stasis followed by catastrophic change.

Tyranny of Cousins

1. Bands - small group of nomads
2. Tribes - agriculture starts, population rises, tribes.
   1. Tribe is a group of segments each doing their task.
   2. Tribe is based on a principle of common descent.

A moment’s reflection will indicate that segmentary societies can arise only on the conditions of unilineal descent. For the segments to be non-overlapping every child must be assigned exclusively to either the father’s or the mother’s descent group.

Tribal Societies: Property, Justice, War

Warfare and Military organization

Hobbes is famous for his assertion that state of nature is a state of war where every man was against every man. Rosseau by contrast argued explicitly that Hobbes was wrong, that primitive human beings were peaceful and isolated and that violence develop only at a later stage when society had begun to corrupt human morals.

Violence is a social activity engaged in by groups of males and sometimes females. The vulnerability of both apes and humans to violence by their fellow species members, in turn drives the need for greater social cooperation.

War and the Rise of the Chinese State

Tribes and small kings go away. Shang yang introduces legalism. It is in conflict with Confucianism. Confucianism was about kinship, families and moral values. Legalism was about rules and staying loyal to the government. Legalism takes the front stage.

Short answer - Geography

1. Chinese mainland is very well connected. Easily traversable unlike Europe.
2. No clear differences in ethnicity or culture in all of China. Not the same in Europe.
3. Multipolar system with lack of hegemony and a single leader.
4. No absolutist leader like Qin for the Chinese.
5. Diffused power and no hereditary system in China

The Great Han System

After Qin died, there was unrest, wars and Han dynasty came. It kept legalism but brought back Confucianism too. Morals became important.

How come Rome was seeing military coups (Ceasar, Pompey) but not China?

Answer:

Han dynasty highly reduced the power of military. Pen became mightier than sword. Thanks to Confucianism.

Political Decay and the Return of Patrimonial Government

There should be no general presumption that political order, once it emerges, will be self-sustaining.

Han dynasty also fails due to

1. A stupid king
2. Bad environmental changes
3. Rise of Daoism (Confucianism was for elites and Daoism was for the peasants)

Patrimony comes back.

This resulted in increase in aristocracy getting richer. Rich getting rich.

Looking back, Either

1. State aligns with peasants to redistribute lands from the rich to poor. (Sweden, Denmark)
2. State aligns with rich and sustains in form of taxes. (Russia, France)

Indian Detour

India vs China

1. Social foundations too deep to break. Varnas and Jaatis.
2. Infact social ties make state progress hard.
3. British ended up uniting all the dispersed groups to one.
4. People don’t believe in the government as much as they believe in social status.
5. But in China.. people have no choice.. they heed to government always.

Islam and Mamluks

Rise of Islam in the middle-east.

1. Tribal sections from Muhammad’s time.
2. Later rulers realise need for slaves and military power.
3. They pick Turkish kids, train (rip off their origins) and make them loyal slaves for the military.
   1. No families. No children. Everything is communal.
4. They unify the Arab nations and propagate Islam.

Decay.

1. Sultans are also not Patrimonial. No proper way to choose a Sultan. So the process breaks eventually.
2. Mamluks become Patrimonial and start fighting amongst themselves.
3. Meanwhile ottomans are fighting with the Europeans so their arms and weaponry improve.
4. Finally Mamluks fall to Ottomans.

Ottomans

After Mamluks, Ottomans follow. They unite muslim lands even larger and rule well. Key features.

1. They base their governance on justice
2. They remove much of hierarchy. Only one level with land supervisors and peasants.

Fall

1. No good way to select leader
2. Central lands under power, but edges ho out of control
3. Patrimonialism starts again

Christianity

The difference between Europe and China/India/Arabs is that social development preceeded Political development. People in western Europe were already individualistic, women and men equality way before formation of state.

The social progress was kind of a output of the church’s actions. Church had set rules to love God more than family this binding people while making them self-sustaining. Church became rich by widows or childless couples donations.

When europe was bombarded with wars, they had to look back for social security and that gave rise to Feudalism.

1. In China, politics and economics formed the state.
2. In Europe, religion was powerful enough to form state.
3. In India and Muslim states neither happened.

Rule of Law

The Church becomes State

The Church and monarch split in Europe. Church starts to form rule of law (Basis for today’s civil law). Decentralised regions earlier were brought under a single umbrella. UK managed this successfully. France couldn’t. All of UK was under taxation. France had regional differences and couldn’t.