In 1989, witnessing the fall of the Iron Curtain, U.S. political scientist Francis Fukuyama declared that history had ended, with Western liberal democracy representing the final form of government and mankind’s ideological evolution.

The next 25 years proved to be more complicated than he anticipated: a plethora of regimes and ideologies have swept across the globe toward authoritarianism, away from his optimistic outlook.

The pioneering thinker at Stanford University said he still resolutely stands behind his original claim: that democracy and capitalism are the best means of carrying human development forward.

“I do think that democracy is not just a small segment of Western experiment, but part of a progressive and evolutionary move toward human emancipation,” Fukuyama told an enthusiastic audience at a seminar titled “Is there a democratic recession?” at the Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies on Monday.


“We are living in an age when authoritarian countries are feeling confident and pressing civil societies around the world. But our political choices matter a great deal. We can exercise agency over the regime.”

While offering a healthy dose of criticism over China’s state governance, Fukuyama urged Korea to support other democracies in a coalition against the “international authoritarian movement.”

Despite the massive shift toward democracy worldwide over the past four decades, the last decade was characterized by a “democratic recession,” he said. The period, coined by political sociologist Larry Diamond, started in 2005 with electoral democracies steadily declining.

These countries were not small nations, but geopolitically influential ones ― Russia, Turkey, Nigeria, Venezuela, the Philippines, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Thailand and Kenya, according to the professor.

“We are at a very delicate moment now,” he added, “because we don’t know which way history will go. It’s an open question.”

Fukuyama expressed his confidence that democracy will spread around the world once again. The rising middle class worldwide ― expected to more than double to 5 billion by 2030 ― will demand the rule of law to protect their property and press for political participation to preserve their class, Fukuyama argued.

This is due to the fact that beyond a certain level of income, people feel insulted when they are treated as “disobedient children,” he said.

As demonstrated in Ukraine, the Arab world and Hong Kong in recent years, Fukuyama hoped that the educated middle class would be the force behind international democratization. But the more pressing question is whether or not the movement will create stable and sustainable institutions dedicated to democracy.

Fukuyama said that China, which has so far defied the author’s thesis by combining one-party dictatorship and Keynesian economics, will be forced to succumb to changing realities.

“The Communist Party of China has legitimated its rule by mixing nationalism and materialism, but the current urbanization-driven model cannot sustain 6 or even 5 percent growth into the future,” he stressed.

“To prevent a recession and revolt, the party will have to improve its rule of law through corporate management, innovation and social responsibility.”

The scholar with a “rock star” reputation had a stern outlook for China’s rule of law, calling it “rule-based decision-making.” He criticized President Xi Jinping’s anticorruption campaign, which has ousted thousands of officials without following proper procedures.

“An official wakes up one morning and reads in a newspaper that he’s got three mistresses or been taking bribes. He’s charged with crimes with no proper trial,” he said. “More fundamentally, the degree of corruption revealed by the campaign itself suggests that the state is not well governed.”

China’s history of having “bad emperors” is another fundamental weakness of Chinese leadership, he claimed. Despite the state’s extensive policy-making and enforcing capacity, the absence of upward accountability can create a tyrant despot.

In Fukuyama’s view, the last “benevolent emperor” was Deng Xiaoping, while the last “malevolent emperor” was Mao Zedong. Xi has accumulated power with his purge, much like Mao, but there is nothing people can do to rein in the reign of terror, the professor warned.

Fukuyama explained that unconstrained power can “self-defeat,” but having “too much democracy” can equally constrain. A system of excessive checks and balances in the U.S.’s courts and Congress has created a crisis of governability, or “vetocracy.”

He highlighted the U.S. government’s inability to undertake infrastructure projects, as labor, environment or civil groups often sued the government. “It takes 15 years for what China can finish in a single year,” he said.

“Democracy is not simply about the constraint of government, but having one that can deliver,” Fukuyama said, adding that what matters is the state’s ability to provide public goods and services for security, education, health care and welfare.

Echoing his argument in his latest book, “The Political Order and Political Decay,” Fukuyama stressed that a functioning democracy requires a delicate balancing act of political accountability, rule of law and state effectiveness.

The “strong government” he envisions is not repressive or intrusive, but effective and efficient, similar to Nordic governments. To get out of the current democratic recession, Fukuyama said it is necessary to rekindle the economies of the U.S. and Europe.

When asked by The Korea Herald during a question and answer session how East Asian societies should grapple with their hierarchical Confucian culture to enhance democracy, he said: “The thing about culture is that while it is powerful, it is also subject to structural changes. The social relationships of South Koreans have changed enormously over the last 50 years and since the democratic movement of the late 1980s.”

Although not all changes have been for the good, such as the decline of community and family and the rise of excessive individuality, Korean society is in a process of continual evolution, Fukuyama said.

“We like living in a democratic society, not just because we become rich that way, but because we become more complete human beings,” he said. “Korea has the duty to help democracy flourish around the world.”

Korea will host the Eighth Global Assembly of the World Movement for Democracy in November in Seoul, which was launched in 1999 to “strengthen democracy where it is weak; to reform and invigorate democracy where it is longstanding; and to bolster pro-democracy groups in countries that have not entered the process of democratic transition.”

By Joel Lee (joel@heraldcorp.com)