I know many of my friends hit delete, claiming TLDR when they see my long emails related to book reviews that may sound boring to most. But in addition to helping me retain at least some small percentage of what I read, sending out such reviews prompts one or two friends to reply with additional pointers that makes this practice of spamming worthwhile. I came to know about The Origins of Political Order - From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution by Francis Fukuyama through one such pointer from a friend of mine and I am grateful. Since the contents piqued my interest, ordered a physical copy. It took me a while to finish as it is a tome. I so thoroughly enjoyed the panoramic comprehensiveness of the material that I already ordered and received Vol 2 titled Political Order and Political Decay - From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy which is sitting on the book shelf.
As the title of the book implies, the treatment flows chronologically starting from the times before the notion of a state existed (Part 1) and proceeds to the state building process across the globe (Part 2). In general, Western scholars writing such books tend to focus more on the European and American states as they usually don't know a lot about Asian or Middle Eastern history. Fukuyama delves deep into China and India as well as Middle Eastern states such as Turkey in addition to various European nation and city states. American as well as Russian, Japanese, South Korean, Indonesian histories get their fair share of treatment as well. Though countries like Nigeria are certainly in his radar, if we need to pick a region that has not been discussed that much in detail, perhaps it is the African continent. Part 3 discusses the evolution of the rule of law and how church and state played each other in various parts of history, trying to derive legitimacy for their existence from the other side. Even in contemporary states, he claims that outwardly visible tools or phrases (such as "Checks and Balances") are often mistaken for actual substance and implementation, pointing out US or India as examples, where courts and rule enforcement can be effectively used to grind many things to halt. Next part has a long treatment on the accountability of government with the concluding chapter discussing the theory of political development.
I am not a big fan of Whig history, not only when it comes to civilizations/anthropology but even when it comes to science. So, his approach where he is not claiming any one system/model is superior to everything else resonated with me. Without much bias, he presents model after model and in the end tries to shake out a set of principles that are applicable to any society in the world. His assessment is that for a state entity to function well, it should be supported by three pillars:
- Strong Government: This is to ensure that it can discharge its duties well and be effective even when there is insubordination or opposition amongst its citizenry to policies it wants to implement
- Rule of Law: It is equally important to have clearly understood, rule of law that is seen as fair and one that does not allow anyone, including the heads of state or the governing class, to function outside its framework
- Accountability: This pillar ensures that the state remains accountable to its people and the citizenry has a very strong say in how the state behaves.
Stated in these terms, this may sound obvious and nothing too insightful or controversial. But if we walk through the versions of governing models that existed through human evolution, this may not be so obvious. We should note subtle details like the concept of democracy is folded into the accountability clause. Considering the way world is being governed over the last few decades, Fukuyama claims that countries like China and Russia have only a strong government but do not have rule or law or accountability. India falls at the intersection of rule of law as well as accountability but doesn't have a strong government. In the current world order some of the Nordic countries like Denmark, Sweden, and Finland are the ones that will fall into the intersection of the all three circles in a Venn diagram that portrays the three factors as intersecting circles.
While the book is academic in nature, and so is full of of terms such as primogeniture, patrimonialism, vassal states, Caesaropapism, agnatic lineage and so on, Fukuyama's prose flows nicely and is quite accessible. I was humbled by the consistency and ease with which he could describe systems and practices across time and space that were extremely different to each other. For example, he discusses Janissaries of the Ottoman empire in the 8th century where they forcibly removed male children from their family, imported them into the empire, made them slave soldiers while also making them ruling class. Since they were given power but were not tied to their original family, clan or tribe, this model ensured loyalty towards the state! Then switches over to Indian caste system, compares it to China and Europe showing how religion played (or did not play) a role in how the social governing structure in each of these regions came about. China never had any indigenous religion that coalesced into a nation wide phenomenon beyond ancestral worship. India and the Middle East had major religious innovations that served as powerful checks against the governing bodies, but still never became single centralized bureaucratic institution like the Catholic church. While Church played big roles in Europe and is even the main reason as to why women had lot of rights to property, the reason behind is not support for women or feminism but its eagerness to get access to their land. Childless widows who had land but not allowed by the church to marry again within the tribe will give the land to church. Compare that to men who will marry again to produce heir and leave the land to them rather than to the church!
The chapter titled Rente Seekers is quite insightful from macro economics perspective. The ancien regime of France before the French Revolution used to look awe inspiring from the outside, with its stunning palaces, buildings and cities. But inside it was crumbling since the state had a hard time raising the money needed to conduct its wars. It was routinely selling offices that could be passed on from generation to generation to generate revenue. The inheritors, without adding any value to the system will simply try to increase the rent they were seeking for existing structures/systems, that will atrophy the economic development further. If the oligarchs couldn't be taxed further, the government tried to tax the poor that irritated the lower rungs of the population more, forming a vicious cycle. While abolishing the vassal state could have helped improve the economy, simultaneously satisfying the population and the king, the rent seekers hated it. All of this culminated in a revolution to correct the problem in the end. This is another example where strong rule of law that ends up preserving what is not right, lands the country in bad consequences. While the problem may have been solved via a revolution in France, a modified version of that economic model exported by Spain seems to be haunting Latin America even now!
Through my own experiences, I have understood how difficult it is to include images in a book (in short, royalty fees are exorbitant). Still can't help complaining that books like these could use lot more figures, flow charts, images and pictures. Unlike many academics (e.g. Jared Diamond) that come across as left leaning liberals, Fukuyama was dyed in the wool conservative and a Reaganite in the decades past. Not sure if his stance has changed over the years. But in this work he comes across as quite balanced. If you have the patience and interest to read through these 500 pages, this book will certainly leave you with a panoramic view of the growth of human civilization spanning the globe. Planning to read a pop culture book or two before picking up that volume 2 sitting on the shelf.
