Magisterial in its learning and admirably immodest in its ambition.' - David Gress, The Wall Street Journal 'In many respects, Fukuyama is an ideal guide for this enormous undertaking. It is a perspective and a voice that can supply a thinker's tonic for our current political maladies.' - Earl Pike, The Cleveland Plain Dealer 'An intellectual triumph-bold in scope, sound in judgment, and rich in provocations in short, a classic.' - Ian Morris, Slate 'A sweeping survey that tries to explain why human beings act as they do in the political sphere. 'Ambitious and highly readable.' - The New Yorker 'Political theorist Francis Fukuyama's new book is a major accomplishment, likely to find its place among the works of seminal thinkers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Locke, and modern moral philosophers and economists such as John Rawls and Amartya Sen. Drawing on a vast body of knowledge-history, evolutionary biology, archaeology, and economics-Fukuyama has produced a brilliant, provocative work that offers fresh insights on the origins of democratic societies and raises essential questions about the nature of politics and its discontents. The first of a major two-volume work, The Origins of Political Order begins with politics among our primate ancestors and follows the story through the emergence of tribal societies, the growth of the first modern state in China, the beginning of the rule of law in India and the Middle East, and the development of political accountability in Europe up until the eve of the French Revolution.

Francis Fukuyama, author of the bestselling The End of History and the Last Man and one of our most important political thinkers, provides a sweeping account of how today's basic political institutions developed. 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. Some went on to create governments that were accountable to their constituents. 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. A New York Times Notable Book for 2011Ī Globe and Mail Best Books of the Year 2011 TitleĪ Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction of 2011 title About the Book Fukuyama, author of the bestselling 'The End of History and the Last Man' and one of the world's most important political thinkers, provides a sweeping account of how today's basic political institutions developed in the first of a major two-volume work.Ī landmark history of the origins of modern democratic societies by one of our most important political thinkers.

The origins of the political order