Francis Fukuyama - Political scientist HARDtalk

receiving is not available on the Health Service. Now on BBC News it's

time for Hardtalk. Welcome to HARDtalk. 25 years ago,

Francis Fukuyama, one of America's leading political scientists watched

the communist bloc unravel and declared that history had delivered

a conclusive verdict ` liberal democracy had vanquished its

ideological rivals. I wonder how wise that proposition sounds today

in Ukraine, Syria, China, or even in credit`crunched Greece? Francis

Fukuyama is my guest today. Has a quarter century of global tumult

changed his mind about the end of history?

Francis Fukuyama, welcome to HARDtalk. Thank you. As we sit here,

US warplanes are in action in Syria and in Iraq. The world is in turmoil

in so many places. Given that, I wonder if you regret coining the

phrase about the end of history. Well, I think that people

misinterpreted what the end meant. The end of history meant the

direction of history as an objective rather than simply the ending of

events. And I think that, you know, it's still a question about where we

are evolving. Are we evolving towards liberal democracy or is

there some alternative system up out there that is plausible that people

would like to emulate, which is an open question. An open question, but

at the time in 89 and 92, when you expanded it into a book, you seemed

sure in your mind that there was a universally accepted model that

would work for mankind all over the world and that model, in essence,

was the liberal, democratic capitalist one. Do you still believe

in the universality of that? In 2014, it hasn't been a good year for

democracy because of two big authoritarian powers, Russia and

China, at either end of Eurasia, asserting themselves. Turmoil in the

Middle East. But I think... Do you still believe in the premise that

that it is in the end the inevitable end? No, I don't think it's

inevitable. I think democracy is fragile. Something I have come to

recognise over the last 25 years is that democratic institutions are

very difficult to establish. Particularly state institutions,

where you can govern without corruption, deliver services and

things that people want is something fairly rare in the world. I want to

get to that, this sort of foundation that you propose to be so very

important, that is, delivery of services, a government that actually

works, whatever its make`up in terms of being democratic or not. In terms

of basic efficiency. I want to talk about that. Before we get there,

staying with broad concepts. It seems to me back then, as the

communist bloc was collapsing, your idea was that across the world

different societies and body politics would look up more Western.

Even recently, in the first volume of a two volume study of politics

through history, you've talked about the idea of getting to a sort of

Denmark, and that being applicable across the world. Westernisation,

does it apply all over the world? I think it is an aspiration that

exists in many places but I think that not everyone will get there.

That's the reality. It's still the case if you ` I know that the Arab

Spring has disappointed virtually everyone. But if you saw the initial

mobilisation against tyranny, you see... You see the same thing going

on in Ukraine today and different parts of the world. It happened in

Turkey, in Brazil, over the last year that people have gone into the

streets because they want a government that is responsive. That

is driven by rising middle classes and so, in some countries, the

impulse doesn't exist. But that connection between growing wealth

and the demand for political recognition and political

participation is a foundation of democracy and it seems to me that

transcends a lot of cultures. Now the hard part is getting to Denmark,

to convert that initial impulse, that initial mobilisation into

durable institutions. And I think that is where we have fallen. I will

pick up on that in a moment. Another aspect of what you wrote back then

and I am sorry to hark back to it, but it was so important and

influenced so many other thinkers. Part of it was a set of assumptions

about American power. About America's ability, through both its

own model and through its projection of its power, to shape the world

after its own image. I wonder whether you have fundamentally

changed on that proposition. Well again, I never argued that America's

model, in fact, the concept of the end of history applies more to the

European Union more than it does to the US because the end of history is

a place where law has replaced power politics as a way of resolving

disputes and I think America still loves its military and in a certain

sense they believe in power. That was one of the causes of the

setbacks for democracy, that Americans thought that they could

reshape the world using hard power. In a sense, I think, I don't want to

put words in your mouth, you somewhat resented the degree to

which some neoconservatives in the US used your ideas as a vehicle for

their own thoughts. That's right. Your thoughts about how America

should project itself around the world. That leads me to today. When

you look at American warplanes bombing Iraq and Syria today, do you

think that is fundamentally misguided? No. I don't actually. I

think the thing is that America constantly oscillates between

excessive involvement and hubris as we did in 2003 with the invasion of

Iraq and then a retreat into a quasi isolationism, which happened in

Vietnam. And I think understandably after Iraq and Afghanistan,

Americans are tired of this thing. I think we have made some tentative

moves away from that. But I think there are many regions in the world

where that power is necessary and many areas count on the US to

support them, hopefully not with the kind of noisy bomb blasts of the

Bush administration, but through more effective and moderate

application of force. Are you clear in your mind what America is bombing

Syria and Iraq for? I have a clear idea of my preferable strategy, I

think the United States shouldn't pick friends and enemies in this

region. We need to prevent the bad guys from taking over, contain them,

though that should be it. In this round of American military

engagement in the Middle East, in your view, this isn't and shouldn't

be about values being delivered through military might. I think that

the one thing we should have learned from Iraq and Afghanistan is that

the US doesn't have the resources, the staying power, the wisdom to do

something like create democracy in a Middle Eastern country or even

settle something as complex as the Syrian civil war. What we can do is

contain it so it doesn't hurt other people that we care about or

ourselves. We are not in a position to dictate outcomes. Let's pick up

on another idea that is at the front and centre of this latest volume of

yours, Political Order and Political Decay. It seems to me a shift in

your focus away from individual rights, liberties and democracy

toward the basic machinery of efficient government and delivering

services to people. Why the shift? Well, it really has to do with my

observation about the world. I think that in many poor countries it is

the inability to deliver basic services and not the absence of

democracy that has led to the delegitimation of democracy. A study

in India showed 50% of school teachers weren't showing up despite

the fact that they were being paid. This is such a basic failure, and if

you think about Brazil last year, the protest that broke out in Sao

Paulo and other cities, it was over bus services and wasting money on

the Olympics and the World Cup when education was in such terrible

shape. Am so I think that that `` and so I think that that is what

democratic government means, it means giving people what they want

in terms of the services governments are supposed to provide. The point,

surely, is that it doesn't have to be democratic government. That is

where Fukuyama 2.0 is so different from the original Francis Fukuyama.

You, in essence, have to acknowledge the lesson of Asia and China.

Putting the words of a former Singaporean diplomat, to put it

bluntly, democracy isn't a necessary or sufficient condition for good

governance. You now, today, appear to echo that. I think it is correct.

If you compare China with Zimbabwe or North Korea, it provides those

services and it is a better quality authoritarian government. And so I

do think that is a separate way to measure the performance of states.

Now I think in the long run, there is a connection between democracy

and the ability to do these things well, because it is a tendency of

authoritarian governments to lose sight of what their citizens want,

because they aren't forced to. But you are absolutely right that you

can have good government in the absence of formal democracy. Has

China and what is, it has done in 30 years, transforming its society and

the economy, and the lives of hundreds of millions, has it forced

a rethink on your part? It is the most important challenge, I think,

ideological challenge, to liberal democracy out there. Because it in

certain ways has been more efficient in providing those services than a

comparable democratic government like the one in India that has

trouble making decisions, can't provide infrastructure and the basic

needs to its citizens. I think though that we need to look in the

long run at questions of sustainability, because the Chinese

have bought this performance at a great cost in terms of not just

human rights that haven't been respected, but poisoned air,

poisoned water, one fifth of agricultural land that is too

polluted to produce edible food. And so it is a complex story. But it is

an impressive... It is a complex story... It's complex and no`one

pretends there aren't problems in China. Here is something that Ronnie

Chan, I met him at a conference the other day and he is fascinating, he

is a very rich Hong Kong Chinese property tycoon and he puts it this

way, he says "there are fundamental differences between freedom pursued

by China and the way it is thought of in the US. The West emphasises

personal liberty while in the East, some individual freedom can be

forgone to foster greater cohesion in the group" . It is a refrain we

hear quite a lot from China. They have fundamentally different values,

a different mindset at work. You say that China is unsustainable. If that

is true, maybe it is sustainable. This goes back to an argument I had

with Samuel Huntington, my mentor, who said there were huge cultural

differences. He was the clash of civilisations guy. He was and he

said Chinese respect authority and America is much more

individualistic. This is something that changes over time. It changes

as people get richer. As you develop an educated middle class with

aspirations, opinions, with assets the government can take away, cross

culturally, these people have pushed for political participation. It is

true in Europe, America and Asia and it will be true for China down the

road. Let me shift the focus to a different sort of intellectual

challenge to the notion of the ultimate triumph of liberal

democracy and that is actually to be a little bit more negative about the

liberal democracies we have, particularly in the US and Europe.

Would it be fair to say that, as you have analysed very closely the way

the politics of the US and Europe works, you have become more aware of

the deficiencies and the inbuilt decay within Western democracies?

Yes, that is true. In my book, Political Order and Political Decay,

I talk about the fact the biggest example of decay is the United

States. All political systems are subject to decay, either through

intellectual legitimacy, or insiders use privilege to capture political

power. They use it for their own purposes. If all systems are subject

to decay, going back to this other one, the opening discussion, by

definition, if everything ultimately decays, just as we know through

history, empires have risen and fallen. There can never be an end to

history. That's right, and understood as

advanced, and understood as the normative ideal for what kind of

political ideal you would like, I think you can maintain that. Can

you, even if within what you regard as the best mankind model, liberal

democracy with free markets, even then you say the internal dynamic is

towards decay. No, you can say as an ideal it is there, that is how you

know it is decay. It doesn't lead up to that ideal. We got rid of one

form of the corruption in the 1970s, and it has returned. Some groups are

able to influence Congress in ways that are not representative. In the

banking sector, powerful corporate groups can shape policy to their own

liking, establishing privileges for themselves. That is not democracy.

That is not the ideal representative of one man, one vote. It is not

democracy in economic terms. And genuine free`market capitalism

either. The last five or six years have forced us to think carefully

about whether free`market capitalism works. Thomas Piketty was on this

programme recently, his contention is that we have inbuilt problems,

the rise of inequality itself. His contention is that capitalism as it

works today is self`defeating in some ways. That could be the case,

but the formula that was the winning one is not capitalism by itself but

capitalism with democracy. You have to have... This is what has

happened, in capitalism with democracy. The theory would say in a

democratic society where people generally have power, if a certain

elite abuses its position, it is corrupt or takes away winnings, the

political system will mobilise to stop them. That happened in the

United States in the 1930s. After the last great economic crash, you

have the rise of Franklin Roosevelt. Do you believe it is happening this

time? Do you see self correction? No, this is what is troubling about

the current period, after the financial crisis in the late 2000s,

you have not seen this globalisation. Part of the reason is

that the crisis was not severe enough. No`one should wish another

great depression, but in a sense the policymakers put a floor under what

happened, and now many people have forgotten they went through this. Is

it possible that you have not been imaginative enough? You are being

frank about the problems you see in the Western system, but you still

sort of believe a Rightist Western system is the best. Some Leftists,

for example, there is a commentator in this country who says surely the

lesson of the last five years is similar to the lesson of 1989 when

it comes to communism. That is that nothing is ever settled. He says the

upheavals of the first part of the 21st`century have opened up the

possibility of a new kind of global order? The question is really, is it

a fundamentally new approach? Or is it basically the same formula but

adjusted? More regulations. We've gone through this period from the

rise of Reagan and Thatcher, markets were celebrated by regulation and

privatisation, that was the name of the game. It didn't work. The system

was unstable, and we are now readjusting it. As we did in the

1930s. It is basically the same system. There is a deeper and more

troubling thing going on which is technology, underneath all of this,

you have the rise of intelligent machines, the possibility of

increasing middle`class incomes will be eroded. And we see evidence that

this is happening. This is not a problem of capitalism but economic

advance. It is going on in China as much as it is here. But that's a

question that I think throws the whole system into a lot of doubt.

Because, it is not clear what the solution to this particular problem

and inequality is. Another element I will throw into the mix which could

raise questions about your analysis. It seems to me, overall, you apply

rationality and rational analysis to the way you have seen the world

working over the last 100 years. Maybe there are intangibles,

important ones, connected with tribal identity, with religion and

fear, with sometimes xenophobia among humankind. That does not

really fit within your analysis but are very important to the way that

sometimes people make decisions about the kind of body of politics

they want to live within. I would be the first one to acknowledge that

they are powerful forces, and actually when democracy is

successful, it is not a purely rational process. The reason

Americans are patriotic is not because they have looked at all

systems around the world and made a careful decision theirs is the best,

they do it because they are American and brought up in those traditions.

I think the trick about democracy is to link that belief and national

identity to a set of institutions, which is inclusive and truly

democratic. But you have to build that identity out of these

irrational sources, because that is what the political community emerges

from. I want to end by bringing us back to

the opening of this debate where we talked about American warplanes

bombing Iraq and Syria. How on earth, when you look at those

societies today, and you look at the example of the new potency of

so`called Islamic State, now occupying swathes of territory

across Iraq and Syria, how do you conceive a way of getting from where

those territories are today to a place where, in any way, they

resemble liberal democracies that you believe to be the best

organisation of human society? What you have to do is look back in

history. Europe went through a period of religious warfare between

Protestants and Catholics in the beginning of the 16th and 17th

centuries which resulted in the Peace of Westphalia. It went through

another long period of nationalism. Both of these are a form of identity

politics, which are destructive of liberal democracy. It was a matter

of exhaustion, in 1945 Europeans looked up and said, this is crazy.

We have to exclude nationalism from our political mix, that was the

foundation of the EU. And the peaceful world... What worries me

about this conversation is the direction of travel that you set out

confidently 25 years ago is so misguided now. Europe looks so

tired, and so much of the world is now driven by identity politics.

Whether tribal, ethnicity based. You know as well as I do that is where

so many nations are going. Look at the Middle East or Putin's Russia.

Those are all true. We could be on the cusp of an authoritarian

revival. That is very troublesome. The argument was never going to be

this inevitable Marxist machine going on and individual agents

didn't matter, I think democracy... You used the word "average". ``

"evolution". That leaves people like me to believe that rather than

Darwinian survival of the fittest, perfecting a species, we were

somehow going to perfect our modes of governance which does not seem

right? You have to back up. In 1970, there were 35 electoral democracies

in the world. In 2014, despite all of the things you've talked about,

there are still 110, we've gone from one third of the world to two thirds

of the world living in some form of democracy. So it is very troubling.

I'm worried about the way the world is going right now. But I do think

the acceptance of the principle of democracy and the general acceptance

of a globalised market economy is much more widespread now than it was

50 years ago. So, let's hope that we stay on that track and are able to

stay there. That is a good place to end, with an optimistic view.

Francis Fukuyama, thank you for coming on HARDtalk. Thank you.

This very dry September continues. Very little rain this weekend. A few

light showers but most places will be dry. There will be a lot of

cloud. Where the