Skip to:

CDDRL Publications

Books

Publications

Publications

Filter:

Filter results Close
  • expanded
  • expanded
  • expanded
  • expanded
  • expanded
  • expanded
  • expanded
  • expanded
  • expanded
  • expanded
  • expanded
  • expanded
  • expanded
  • expanded
Francis Fukuyama
Working Papers

Government Quality and State Capacity: Survey Results from Brazil

Ana Karine Pereira, Raphael Amorim Machado, Pedro Luiz Costa Cavalcante, Alexandra de Avile Gomide, Amanda Gomes Magalhaes, Isabella de Araujo Goellner, Roberto Rocha Coelho Pires, Katherine Bersch, Alan Ricardo da Silva
2021
Governance Working Papers
Show body
Journal Articles

What Would a Second Trump Term Do to the Federal Bureaucracy?

Francis Fukuyama, Francis Fukuyama
Washington Monthly , 2020

American public service is under grave threat. It has been heavily politicized during the first Trump term, and in a second may deteriorate rapidly as cronyism, corruption, and incompetence become the new norms.

Democracy Institutions and Organizations Journal Articles
Show body
Journal Articles

30 Years of World Politics: What Has Changed?

Francis Fukuyama
2020

Since the publication of the Journal of Democracy began in 1990, the political climate has shifted from one of democratic gains and optimism to what Larry Diamond labels a “democratic recession.” Underlying these changes has been a reorientation of the major axis of political polarization, from a left-right divide defined largely in economic terms toward a politics based on identity. In a second major shift, technological development has had unexpected effects—including that of facilitating the rise of identity-based social fragmentation.

Democracy Elections Human Rights Policy Analysis Journal Articles
Show body
Working Papers

IMMIGRATION AND POPULISM IN CANADA, AUSTRALIA, AND THE UNITED STATES

Francis Fukuyama, Francis Fukuyama, Naz Gocek
2019

In the second decade of the 21st century, the world experienced the rise of a global populist movement built around ethnic nationalism and hostility to foreigners and immigration. This movement has been led by the United States after the election of Donald J. Trump as President in 2016, and today includes leaders in Turkey, Hungary, Poland, Italy, Brazil, and a host of parties throughout Europe that challenge the liberal international order. Canada, Australia, and the United States are three former British colonies that were settled by successive waves of immigrants from abroad.

International Relations Working Papers
Show body
Working Papers

HOW THE BELT AND ROAD GAINED STEAM: CAUSES AND IMPLICATIONS OF CHINA’S RISE IN GLOBAL INFRASTRUCTURE

Francis Fukuyama, Michael Bennon, Bushra Bataineh
2019

Western observers have raised concerns over the rise and now predominance of Chinese state-backed bilateral lending in international infrastructure development. These range from China's growing geopolitical influence to the increasingly unsustainable debt levels of some of the nations receiving investments as part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). In fact the BRI today is simply the next phase of a decades-long shift in the infrastructure sector towards China and away from traditional western development lending institutions.

Working Papers
Show body
Books

Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment

Francis Fukuyama
2018
In 2014, Francis Fukuyama wrote that American institutions were in decay, as the state was progressively captured by powerful interest groups. Two years later, his predictions were borne out by the rise to power of a series of political outsiders whose economic nationalism and authoritarian tendencies threatened to destabilize the entire international order.
Governance Society Books
Show body
Journal Articles

The Populist Surge

Francis Fukuyama, Francis Fukuyama
The American Interest , 2018

Trumpist populism could easily linger longer than most people readily assume. This article defines populism and gives three reasons why we are seeing the rise of populist nationalism now, in the second half of the 2010s. Those reasons are economic, political, and cultural. It also addresses the future of populism at home and abroad.

Democracy Journal Articles
Show body
Journal Articles

The Last English Civil War

Francis Fukuyama
2018

This essay examines why England experienced a civil war every fifty years from the Norman Conquest up until the Glorious Revolution of 1688–1689, and was completely stable after that point.

Civil Wars Journal Articles
Show body
Working Papers

Reassessing the Quality of Government in China

Francis Fukuyama, Margaret Boittin, Gregory Distelhorst
CDDRL Working Papers , 2016

How should the quality of government be measured across disparate national contexts? This study develops a new approach using an original survey of Chinese civil servants and a comparison to the United States. We surveyed over 2,500 Chinese municipal officials on three organizational features of their bureaucracies: meritocracy, individual autonomy, and morale. They report greater meritocracy than U.S. federal employees in almost all American agencies. China's edge is smaller in autonomy and markedly smaller in morale. Differences between the U.S.

Governance Working Papers
Show body
Working Papers

Reflections on Chinese Governance

Francis Fukuyama, Francis Fukuyama
CDDRL Working Papers , 2016

Abstract

I am very happy to have the opportunity to revisit my ideas about Chinese governance, and to offer some speculations about its future.
Governance Working Papers
Show body
Journal Articles

Politics of Budgeting

Francis Fukuyama, Francis Fukuyama
2015

Francis Fukuyama discusses Congress's dysfunctional budgetary politics in "The American Interest", asking why the United States is one of the only advanced democracies under constant threat of government shutdown. Given America's peculiar institutions, technical and institutional reforms to the budgeting process may be limited in their impact. 

 

Democracy Institutions and Organizations Journal Articles
Show body
Case Studies

Gifford Pinchot and Sustainable Forest Management

Francis Fukuyama
2015

The year was 1909, and Gifford Pinchot, Chief Forester of the United States, faced a terrible personal dilemma.  He had discovered a pattern of corruption in the sale of public lands to developers and other private interests. But the new president, William Howard Taft, depended on support from western Republicans and had placed a gag order on the whole affair.

Governance Corruption Democracy Democracy promotion Policy Analysis Rule of Law State-building International Relations Democracy promotion Security Corruption Rule of Law Environment Case Studies
Show body
Journal Articles

Why is Democracy Performing So Poorly?

Francis Fukuyama, Francis Fukuyama
Journal of Democracy , 2015
Democracy Journal Articles
Show body
Books

Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy

Francis Fukuyama, Francis Fukuyama
2014

 

 

Book Description

Writing in The New York Time Book review, Michael Lind described The Origins of Political Order as "a major achievement by one of the leading public intellectuals of our time." Fukuyama completes the most important work of political thought in at least a generation. Taking up the essential question of how societies develop strong, impersonal, and accountable political institutions, Fukuyama follows the story from the Industrial Revolution to the globalization of democracy, from the rise of the Prussian bureaucratic state to the so-called Arab Spring and the deep dysfunctions of contemporary American politics. He examines the effects of corruption on governance and explains why only some societies have been successful at rooting it out. He explores the different legacies of colonialism in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, and offers a clear-eyed account of why certain regions have thrived and developed more quickly than others. And he boldly reckons with the future of democracy in the face of a rising global middle class and entrenched political paralysis in the West.

A sweeping, masterful account of the struggle to create a well-functioning modern state, Political Order and Political Decay is destined to be a classic. 

Francis Fukuyama discusses the central argument and main themes behind his new volume, "Political Order and Political Decay."

About the Author

Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He has previously taught at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and at the George Mason University School of Public Policy. Fukuyama was a researcher at the RAND Corporation and served as the deputy director for the State Department’s policy planning staff. He is the author of The Origins of Political Order, The End of History and the Last Man, Trust, and America at the Crossroads, among other books. He lives with his wife in California.

 

Governance Corruption Democracy Institutions and Organizations Corruption Society Books
Show body
Working Papers

What is Governance?

Francis Fukuyama
2013

This paper points to the poor state of empirical measures of the quality of states, that is, executive branches and their bureaucracies. Much of the problem is conceptual, since there is very little agreement on what constitutes high-quality government. The paper suggests four approaches: (1) procedural measures, such as the Weberian criteria of bureaucratic modernity; (2) capacity measures, which include both resources and degree of professionalization; (3) output measures; and (4) measures of bureaucratic autonomy.

Governance Working Papers
Show body
Journal Articles

The Patterns of History

Francis Fukuyama
The Journal of Democracy , 2012
Democracy Governance History Society Journal Articles
Show body
Journal Articles

American Political Dysfunction

Francis Fukuyama
The American Interest , 2011
Journal Articles
Show body
Books

The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution

Francis Fukuyama
Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux , 2011

Virtually all human societies were once organized tribally, yet over time most developed new political institutions which included a central state that could keep the peace and uniform laws that applied to all citizens. Some went on to create governments that were accountable to their citizens. We take these institutions for granted, but they are absent or are unable to perform in many of today's developing countries-with often disastrous consequences for the rest of the world.

Economic Affairs International Development History Society Corruption Governance Security Rule of Law Policy Analysis Institutions and Organizations Books
Show body
Policy Briefs

New Day New Way: U.S. Foreign Assistance for the 21st Century

Michael A. McFaul, Larry Diamond, Steve Radelet, Gayle Smith, Brian Atwood, David Beckmann, Lael Brainard, Francis Fukuyama, George Ingram, Carol Lancaster, Charles MacCormack, Larry Nowels, Ray Offenheiser, Stewart Patrick, William Reese, Sam Worthington
Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network , 2008

U.S. foreign assistance—the rationale behind it, the amount we give, its orientation and organization—has changed dramatically in the last decade. These changes have challenged its efficacy but have also created new opportunities to modernize U.S. foreign assistance. The importance of supporting development and reducing poverty abroad are understood now as never before to be both moral imperatives and prerequisites for sustained U.S. national security.

Climate change Environment Foreign Aid International Relations Security Policy Analysis Foreign Policy Governance Terrorism Agriculture Climate Military Institutions and Organizations Society International Development Disease Health and Medicine Policy Briefs
Show body
Policy Briefs

Should Democracy Be Promoted or Demoted?

Michael A. McFaul, Francis Fukuyama
Washington Quarterly , 2007

Francis Fukuyama and Michael McFaul present an argument for continued American efforts to promote democracy and a plan to strengthen policy tools for those efforts. They advocate a concept of dual-track diplomacy and the creation of a new Cabinet-level department of development, with distinct resources and programs for democracy promotion.

Democracy Governance Democracy promotion International Relations Diplomacy International Development Policy Briefs
Show body
Books

What Went Wrong and Right in Iraq

Larry Diamond, Francis Fukuyama
Johns Hopkins University Press in "Nation-Building: Beyond Afghanistan and Iraq", Francis Fukuyama, ed. , 2005

Bestselling author Francis Fukuyama brings together esteemed academics, political analysts, and practitioners to reflect on the U.S. experience with nation-building, from its historical underpinnings to its modern-day consequences. The United States has sought on repeated occasions to reconstruct states damaged by conflict, from Reconstruction in the South after the Civil War to Japan and Germany after World War II, to the ongoing rebuilding of Iraq.

Civil Wars Security Conflict Books
Show body