The Origins of Political Order

How states, the rule of law, and accountable government actually arise, and why assembling all three at once is so rare and so hard. Fukuyama writes the long history of political order from prehuman bands to the modern state, and the lesson is sobering: the decent government we take for granted is an unusual achievement, easily lost and not easily rebuilt. A useful corrective to the assumption that the institutions we inherited will simply persist on their own.

The political scientist best known for a thesis about the end of history who has spent the decades since writing the deeper book underneath it. The Origins of Political Order asks how the three pillars of a decent modern state, a competent government, the rule of law, and accountability, actually arose, and why they are so hard to assemble together. He writes the long history of how order is built.