Even the best of liberal democracies have not been able to solve for “identities”. Fukuyama does a great job of tracing the evolution of identity in the first part of the book, but fumbles a little bit by restricting himself to a single perspective when analysing contemporary identity politics in the second half.
Reading The Dawn of Everything made me realise that we might have traded individual freedom for what we call civil society. And this version of civil society, from all that I see around me, is going rogue.
Francis Fukuyama picks up from where he left off in The Origins of Political Order. He adds three more dimensions of socioeconomic development – social mobilisation, idea legitimacy, and economic development to show state, law and democracy evolved to their current state, with different countries following different paths. The book ends with a commentary on political decay and the effect on democracy.
These days, we assume that a liberal democracy is the best form of government. But the world wasn’t always like this. How did we get here, and why did different countries get here at different times? From biological foundations of human behaviour to language and development of political systems, this is an enlightening read that helps us better understand the world we live in.
My favourite reads of 2020. An eclectic mix of fiction, almost fiction, and non-fiction. From data, digital advertising and free will to political institutions, mass extinctions and philosophy, a little bit of everything.