02 Politics | 001 The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution

1. Preface

1.1 Rereading

I paid attention to this author and this book because of a young Chinese?man?in Wuhan mobile cabin hospital during the covid-19 era. Wearing a mask and holding a book in his hand, he was reading on the bed, as if he had formed his own small world in the hospital area, which seemed particularly valuable in current noisy and busy society. At the same time, because of the extensive dissemination of official reports and social media, the author Fukuyama also forwarded relevant report on Twitter and sent his signed book?to this young?man through?the?reporter.

So I found the Chinese version of this book on a whim. Recently, I took it out and reread it for a second time. Combined with the history of History of Chinese political thought (written by Simian?Lv, one of four greatest?historians of modern China), I probably have more new feelings. At the same time, I am deeply aware of my lack of knowledge in political science and social science, so the analysis and views of this article are actually limited and only for reference.

1.2 Introduction to the author

Francis Fukuyama, born on October 27, 1952, is a Japanese American political scholar. He has a doctorate in political science from Harvard University. He is now a professor of interState?political economy at Johns Hopkins University, the Paul Nietzsche Institute of advanced interState?studies, the Schwartz lecture, and the Freeman spogley Institute of InterState?Studies at Stanford University. He once studied under Samuel Huntington. He served as an adviser to the US State Department and deputy director of the think tank Policy Planning Bureau. He is the author of?The End of History and the Last Man, The future of post mankind - the human catastrophe of genetic engineering, Crossing the fault - reconstruction of human nature and social order, and The origins?of political order: from the prehuman?times?to the French Revolution.

His first book, The End of History and the Last Man, made him famous. He put forward the "theory of the end of history", which simply means that free democracy is the end of the development of human history. In recent years, the chaos of the democratic system in the United States and the struggle between the two parties, as well as the instability of the political situation in the world and the "decay" of the democracy?in some regions, have made his view under attack and criticism. In a recent interview with the British political and cultural magazine New Statesman, he defended himself as follows:

“He’s quick to point out how most people claiming his theory is incorrect have misinterpreted the original premise. Fukuyama didn’t envision the end of history to be a utopian state or predict that “the whole world is going to be democratic” with a “straightforward, linear movement in that direction”. He also didn’t suggest that “nothing would happen from now on”. Indeed, Fukuyama has long maintained that events – another way of saying?more history?– would continue to take place.?

Yet at 69, Fukuyama is willing to admit mistakes. He said that when he wrote his thesis he perhaps didn’t fully appreciate the concept of “political decay: the idea that once you became a modern democracy, you could also go backwards”.?”

1.3 Before writing

?Fukuyama shared his motivation for writing this book:

1. First, entrusted by his mentor Samuel Huntington, he wrote a new preface for the reprint of Huntington’s?1968 classic,?political order in a changing society. During this period, he felt deeply that the macro environment and regional development were fast, so he needed to go back to the source to tell the origins?of political development and political decay?in more detail.

“As I proceeded with the foreword, it seemed to me that, illuminating as Political Order was, the book needed some serious updating. It was written only a decade or so after the start of the big wave of decolonization that swept the post-World War II world, and many of its conclusions reflected the extreme instability of that period with all of its coups and civil wars. In the years since its publication, many momentous changes have occurred, like the economic rise of East Asia, the collapse of global communism, the acceleration of globalization, and what Huntington himself labeled the "third wave" of democratization that started in the 1970s. Political order had yet to be achieved in many places, but it had emerged successfully in many parts of the developing world. It seemed appropriate to go back to the themes of that book and to try to apply them to the world as it existed now.”

2. Second, the trend of democratization has been reversed, which challenges Fukuyama's previous "theory of the end of history". After September 11, 2001, the United States launched two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and won military victories. However, its post-war reconstruction in the local area has encountered various difficulties, and it has been unable to transplant its own democracy?to these areas. In some State?construction projects?(including Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, East Timor, Sierra Leone, Liberia, etc.) assisted by interState?organizations , these attempts also encountered various difficulties brought by local tribal politics and special regional culture. This situation and examples prompted Fukuyama to combine anthropology, sociology, economics and many other disciplines to comprehensively consider the historical origins?of the political system and the process of political decay.

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2. Analysis of the whole book

Created by Qiqi Zhang, Sep, 2022

In this book, Fukuyama?uses the examples of different countries (China, India, Britain, France, Denmark, etc.) and analyzes the origins?and changes of politics in different regions from the earliest tribal society to the formation of nation in combination with the history and political evolution of various countries. Generally speaking, the germination and evolution of politics and the formation of different civilization systems in the world are all affected by many factors: War, the game and change of forces within different interest groups, economic factors, religion and law.

Fukuyama takes Denmark as an example and believes that it is a democratic country with good political and economic systems, stable, prosperous, inclusive and low political corruption. Through his?analysis, Fukuyama believes that the origins?of the basic political system come from three dimensions

1) State Building: that is, how to distinguish from tribal society, form an efficient, executive and ruling society, and provide social necessities, maintain security and other functions.

2) Rule of law: the rule of law Fukuyama mentioned here does not refer to the laws issued by rulers or institutions, but rules that are superior to the laws formulated and binding on all groups and individuals, including restrictions on rulers.

3) Accountable Government: rulers should be responsible for the people under their governance and should put the interests of the people above their own interests.

The evolution of the political system is like the evolution of species. "Survival of the fittest" follows two basic forces:

1) Familialism: the natural tendency of human beings to favor their relatives and friends

2) Cooperation: the ability to break through kinship to achieve cooperation and carry out complex social cooperation

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2.1 State?construction

State?formation includes "pristine" and "competitive" formation. Fukuyama summarized the theory of state formation, including voluntary social contracts, The State as a Hydraulic-Engineering Project, Population Density, States as the Product of Violence and Compulsion,Circumscription and Other Geographical-Environmental Factors, The State as the Product of Charismatic Authority (here, he cited Arab cases and ancient Chinese books?which tell that?the power of emperor comes from God).?

The following is an example of the formation of the Chinese state analyzed by Fukuyama:

China's political development model is different from that of the West: other institutionalized forces cannot offset the development of precocious modern countries, nor can they impose restrictions, such as the rule of law. The main driving force for the formation of China's state lies in the large-scale war of annexation. The clan system based on blood ties has formed the origin of a hierarchical regime with the development of agricultural civilization. The inheritance system, Confucianism's respect for etiquette and hierarchy, and the promotion of the monarch from top to bottom have made China's family relations closely linked to the fate of the country. In Chinese, "国家"?means “state”,?and?the first word “国”?represents "country", and the second word “家”?represents "family", which shows the origin of the formation of the Chinese state.

The large-scale and fierce wars beginning from Zhou Dynasty?reduced the aristocratic population, and destroyed the kinship system under the old system due to Military Organization, Taxation and Population Registration, The Growth of Bureaucracy, and Civilian Technological Innovation. Combining my personal knowledge, the two pairs of contradictory forces in Chinese politics before modern times were the power struggle between the Emperor (aristocratic group) and the prime minister (administrative organ), and the distribution of central and local power. Based on agricultural civilization, what is often contested is the control, property rights and taxation of land.

Fukuyama further expounded his own view: China created the first world civilization of a modern state, but this state?is not limited by the rule of law and am accountable?government. Rulers often only accept moral guidance and advice, and are restricted to a certain extent by other social forces.

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2.2 Rule of law

Fukuyama shared the definition of law itself, the difference between rule of law and legislation, and modern research on the evolution of law, and pointed out:

“The rule oflaw in its deepest sense means that there is a social consensus within a society that its laws are just and that they preexist and should constrain the?behavior of whoever happens to be the ruler at a given time.?The ruler is not sovereign; the law is sovereign, and the ruler gains legitimacy only insofar as he?derives his just powers from the law.”

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Fukuyama then analyzed the religious factors (the establishment of Catholicism), the revival of Roman law and the development of laws accompanying modern state building (taking Britain as an example), and pointed out that the difference between Chinese and European societies is that China does not have a historical basis for the rule of law based on religion, but is based on the statute law issued by the rulers. Then Fukuyama analyzed the impact of Western European’s?colonial history on the establishment of the rule of law in local countries after colonial independence. Finally, Fukuyama analyzed the history of China's dynasties based on the statute law (the law issued by the rulers), pointing out that the advantages of this system are that ordinary people can be?selected to enter the administrative organs, class barriers are broken, and large-scale projects can be completed efficiently to achieve economic development; The disadvantage is that the rulers can not receive effective supervision and restraint, resulting in the problem of "bad Emperors" can not be solved.

2.3 Accountable?government

The government should be responsible for the public's accountability and interests. Fukuyama analyzed that France, Spain, Hungary and Russia did not organically unify the state, the rule of law and the responsible government due to the imbalance of various forces in history. He took Britain as a positive example. He believed that the balance of various political forces and the glorious revolution in Britain had achieved the stability of the political system, which in turn had an impact on the financial and banking reforms, prompting the British government to borrow sharply in the 18th century, and the country was growing stronger and stronger.

Finally, Fukuyama analyzed the difference between STRONG?ABSOLUTISM and WEAK ABSOLUTISM, and stated that the formation of an accountable?government was also affected by various factors such as economy, geography, population and culture.

2.4 Political development

In the last chapter of the book, Fukuyama compares the evolution of political system with biological evolution, and analyzes the biological foundation of the political system, ideals as cause, the competitive factors, and the historical factors that promote and change the political system. He?also believes that the decay?of political system has two main forms:

1) Institutional rigidity, that is, the system sticks to the stability of the current stage, which is disconnected from the external environment and unable to adapt to external changes;

2)?Repatrimonialization, that is, the return to kinship. For example, appointing relatives to important positions in the system, which?will breed corruption.

Finally, Fukuyama looked forward to the future. Taking China and the United States as examples, he believed that any imbalance among the three elements of the state, the rule of law and accountable?government would have a certain negative impact.

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3. Summary

3.1 Through analyzing the biological evolution of human beings and the early rise of tribal society to the establishment of modern countries, Fukuyama believes that a good modern country must have three elements and maintain the balance of the three: the state?building, the rule of law and the accountable government;

3.2 human beings have the biological behavioral instinct of being close to their blood relatives. For a good political system, it is even more necessary to break this barrier and realize the coordination and cooperation of different subjects in order to achieve complex social behavior and maintain the adaptability of the system to the external environment.

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4. Personal thoughts on business organizations

4.1 Self management of commercial organizations

If we compare business organizations to modern countries and learn from the three elements proposed by Fukuyama: state building, rule of law and accountable government, it seems that we can also establish such a system:

A well-run and promising business organization should have:

1) Reasonable operating organizational structure:?so as to enable enterprises to effectively implement their own strategic decisions and achieve values and goals;

2) Good internal norms and systems:?in this way, employees can be encouraged and empowered to give play to their initiative, actively realize their own value, and clearly divide the responsibilities, so that they can be rewarded and punished appropriately;

3)?Accountable management system:?Managers'?and leaders’?decisions often have an important impact on the enterprise. Therefore,?it is necessary for them to listen to the opinions and suggestions of various groups widely, so as to avoid major decision-making mistakes caused by single information?source. Employees and enterprise are integrated, and excellent managers?& leaders?can also listen to criticism and suggestions from the bottom, so as to reflect on their own decisions and the current situation of the company. At the same time, wrong decisions or decisions that have a significantly bad?impact on the company's values should also be subject to a certain degree of supervision and restriction to prevent personal opinions from being arbitrary within the company.

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4.2 Political Risks and Considerations

If we take a long-term view, we will see that politics will play an increasingly important and even the most important role in the development of commercial organizations. The trump administration's interference and influence on tiktok, the EU GDPR’s protection of personal data privacy?and?rights, the isolation and blockade?&?import and export policies of various places during the epidemic, as well as international war conflicts, foreign relations, regional policies, etc., will become the first factors that commercial organizations need to evaluate before entering a certain market.

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This political uncertainty also reminds commercial organizations of the need to maintain vigilance and preventive measures against risks at all times, and needs to refine risk management and maintain regional service differences. Compared with large-scale expansion and high growth rate, the most difficult thing is to maintain a certain degree of restraint, even for individuals. As the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu once said in the Tao Te Ching, "道常无为而无不为", that is to say, The Principe of the universe follows natural laws, without trying to “do” anything. As it follows natural laws, nothing is neglected.

5. Times and People

I have visited many countries and seen many works of art in museums. When I see the rusty implements, or the worn sculptures, I often feel that the times are created and developed by people; At the same time, people are also living beings in a specific era and environment, subject to multiple constraints of time, space, politics and other conditions.?

In other words, people have the ability to change and create history; But there are also limitations within human beings that are usually shaped by history. The development of high technologies such as the Internet and life sciences will in turn force politics reform and change. New technologies provide individuals with tools for self-learning and exploring the world, as well as channels for sharing opinions and creating value.

Recently the biggest international news is the death of Queen Elizabeth II. When we look far ahead to those great people who have passed away for a long time and made outstanding contributions to the world history (such as Einstein, Madame Curie, Newton, etc.), we will find ourselves so limited and small. Therefore, we need to always be modest and grateful, and find our true life value in this era of unpredictable political changes.

Reference

1.?Fukuyama F. (2011). The origins of political order : from prehuman times to the french revolution (1st ed.). Farrar Straus and Giroux.

2.?方舱“读书哥”今天回家了！还拿到了签名版的书-新华网. (n.d.). Retrieved September 12, 2022, from https://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/2020-03/13/c_1125708662.htm

3.?Gibson, M. (2022, June 9). Francis Fukuyama: We could be facing the end of “the end of history.” New Statesman. Retrieved September 12, 2022, from https://www.newstatesman.com/encounter/2022/03/francis-fukuyama-on-the-end-of-the-end-of-history

4.Schuessler, J. (2022, May 10). Francis Fukuyama Predicted the End of History. It’s Back (Again). The New York Times. Retrieved September 14, 2022, from https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/10/arts/francis-fukuyama-history-liberalism.html