June 14th, 2011

The Challenge of Political Order

In an interview about his new book, The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution, FSI Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow Francis Fukuyama tells Matthew Shaffer of the National Review Online, "This really started with a practical concern I had after dealing with failed states and nation-building issues in the wake of September 11 and our nation-building efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. It seemed to me that the United States in particular didn’t appreciate the difficulty of this kind of activity, because we didn’t adequately understand how hard it was to establish institutions."

• » National Review: The Difficulty of Political Order

April 20th, 2011

Fukuyama debuts latest book to Stanford community

On April 11, the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) hosted an event to celebrate the release of Francis Fukuyama's latest book, The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution. The occasion drew an audience of over 100 faculty, students, and members of the community, who were eager to hear Fukuyama introduce the first volume of this "magnum opus," which traces the history of the development of political institutions through the eighteenth century. Fukuyama was joined by two Stanford faculty members to provide commentary on the book; Ian Morris, Professor of Classics and History, and Barry Weingast, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institute. Audio & Video transcripts available flyer available
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March 23rd, 2011

Francis Fukuyama's The Origins of Political Order

Evan Goldstein in the Chronicle of Higher Education, reviews the new book of Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow Francis Fukuyama, The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Says Goldstein, the book doesn't limit itself to the whole of human history. Rather, it begins in prehuman times and concludes on the eve of the American and French Revolutions, mining the fields of anthropology, archaeology, biology, evolutionary psychology, economics, political science and international relations to establish a framework for understanding the evolution of political institutions. Read more »

March 8th, 2011

Francis Fukuyama's "The Origins of Political Order" reviewed in New York Times

In a book to be published in April, The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution, Francis Fukuyama, the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow, presents a sweeping overview of human social structures throughout history, writes Nicolas Wade in the New York Times. Dr. Fukuyama, he says, is concerned mostly with cultural aspects of human society. He explicitly assumes that human social nature is universal, and built around certain evolved behaviors such as reciprocal altruism, creating and following rules, and a propensity for warfare. Because of this shared human nature, "human politics is subject to certain recurring patterns of behavior across time and across cultures," Fukuyama writes. Read more »

May 18th, 2004

Renowned political economist and author Francis Fukuyama speaks on state-building

In a May 14 lecture hosted by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, Francis Fukuyama, PhD -- professor of international political economy at Johns Hopkins University and renowned author of The End of History and the Last Man -- discussed the problem of weak nation-states; the effectiveness of various approaches to strengthening such states; and the importance of culture, context and history in the task of state-building. Read more »