The End of History and the Last Man
Francis Fukuyama's 1992 argument that liberal democracy may be the end-point of humanity's ideological evolution.
At a glance
Key ideas
The end-point of ideological evolution, History still happens, Not an American model …
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Francis Fukuyama and The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order
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- Writing after the Cold War, Fukuyama argues that history, seen as an evolutionary process, ends with Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.
- He does not claim events will stop, only that democracy will become more prevalent over the long term.
- He draws on Hegel, Marx and Alexandre Kojève.
- Critics on the left and right called it an oversimplification, and Fukuyama later said it did not foresee democracies backsliding into authoritarianism.
Why it matters
- It became the reference point for arguments about the world after the Cold War, answered by Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and Kagan's The Return of History.
Key facts
- Author
- Francis Fukuyama1
- Published
- 1992, Free Press (hardcover); Perennial paperback 19931
- Origin
- Expands his essay "The End of History?", in The National Interest, Summer 19891
- Responses
- Samuel P. Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations (essay 1993, book 1996); Jacques Derrida's Specters of Marx (1993); Robert Kagan's The Return of History and the End of Dreams (2008)1
Key ideas
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The end-point of ideological evolution1
Liberal democracy is "the final form of human government", with no progression beyond it to another system.
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History still happens1
Events will not stop; even if totalitarianism returns, democracy will grow more prevalent over the long term.
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Not an American model1
Fukuyama later said the European Union, not the United States, better reflects the world at the end of history.
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Islamism has limited appeal1
Unlike Stalinism and fascism, it has little appeal outside the Islamic heartlands, he argued.
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Revisited1
In 2014 he warned of "political decay", and later said he had no theory of how democracies could go backward.
Connections
Links
Sources
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