The Origins of Political Order - Francis Fukuyama; Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2011 pp. 483
This the first book of a study of the politics of human societies from its beginnings prior to the agricultural revolution up to the French Revolution. The chapters on China, India, and the Ottoman political development are excellent short studies of an area that IMO most of us, including myself, are unfamiliar with. I am going to give this a rare A+
Quotes:
If we are seeking to understand the functioning of contemporary institutions, it is necessary to look at their origins and often accidental and contingent forces that brought them into being.
Pg. x
Once the Industrial Revolution occurred and human societies exited the Malthusian conditions they experienced up to then, a new dynamic was added to the process of social change that would have political consequences. Pg. xiii
Liberal democracy is more than majority voting in elections; it is a complex set of institutions that restrain and regularize the exercise of power through law and a system of checks and balances. Pg.4
Political institutions develop, often slowly and painfully over time, as human societies strive to organize themselves to master their environments. But political decay occurs when political systems fail to adjust to changing circumstances. There is something like a law of conservation of institutions. Human beings are rule-following by nature; they are born to conform to the social norms they see around them, and they entrench those rules with often transcendent meaning and value. When the surrounding environment changes and new challenges arise, there is often a disjunction between existing institutions and present needs. Those institutions are supported by legions of entrenched stakeholders who oppose any fundamental change. Pg. 7
. . . it is the perceived legitimacy of the government that binds populations together and makes them willing to accept its authority. Pg. 11
We might label this the Hobbesean fallacy: the idea that human beings were primordially individualistic and they entered into a society at a later stage in their development only as a rational calculation that social cooperation was the best way for them to achieve their individual ends. . . . But it is in fact individualism and not sociability that developed over the course of human history. That individualism seems today like a solid core of our economic and political behavior is only because we have developed institutions that override our more naturally communal instincts. Pg. 29
Historically . . . religion . . . it is a source of social cohesion that permits human beings to cooperate far more widely and securely than they would if they were the simple rational and self- interested agents posited by the economists Pg. 37
Norm following is embedded in human nature via the specific emotions of anger, shame, guilt and pride. . . . Human beings can invest so much emotion in following a norm that it becomes irrational with respect to self-interest. Pg. 40
One of the great mistakes of early modernization theory . . . was to think that transitions between “stages” of history were clean and irreversible. The only part of the world where tribalism was fully suspended by more voluntary and individualistic forms of social relationship was Europe, where Christianity played a decisive role in undermining kinship as a basis for social cohesion. Since early modernization theorists were European they assumed that other parts of the world would experience a similar shift away from kinship as part of the modernization process. But they were mistaken. Pg. 78
Inhabitants of agricultural societies may be richer (than hunter-gathers – GRH) on the average, but they also have to work much harder and the tradeoff may not seem appealing. Pg. 84
. . . the transition from tribe to state involves high losses in freedom and equality. Pg. 85
in the end, there are too many interesting factors to be able to develop one, strong predictive theory of when and how states formed. Pg. 92
Legal scholars have argued the first model of the modern bureaucratic “office” as defined by Weber was created within the new, twelfth century church hierarchy. Among the hallmarks of the modern office are a separation between the office and officeholder; the office is not private property; the officeholder is a salaried official subject to the discipline of the hierarchy within which he is embedded; the offices are defined functionally; and the office holding is based on technical competence. Pg. 270
The church’s move towards institutional independence stimulated corporate organization of the other sectors of feudal society as well. Pg. 271
* The existence of a separate religious authority accustomed rulers to the idea that they were not the ultimate source of law. Pg. 273
Human beings have an innate propensity for creating and following norms or rules.
Pg.439-40
Human beings by nature desire not just material resources but also recognition. Pg. 441
Shared mental models – most particularly those that take the form of religion – are critical in facilitating large scale collective action. Collective action based merely on rational self-interest is wholly inadequate in explaining the degree of social cooperation and altruism that actually exists in the world. Religious beliefs help to motivate people to do things they would not do if they were interested only in resources or material well-being, . . . Pg. 442
Building an institution is not like building a hydroelectric dam or a road network. It requires a great deal of hard work to persuade people that institutional change is needed in the first place, build a coalition in favor of change that can overcome the resistance of existing stakeholders in the old system, and then condition people to accept the new set of behaviors as routine and accepted. Pg. 479
I read _Animal_Farm_ afterwards to see what else that crazy Orwell could be thinking, it was more political with the pigs of the farm saying that all deserve equal rights, [ but making themselves more-equal than the other animals ], not a climactic story and nowhere near the impact of _1984_, but pretty interesting.
, I’m sad to see a spoiler for _1984_ posted here, it was such an impactful surprise ending, I thought. Maybe people could hide their spoilers with the background color #f9f9f9?
...on the other hand, it would be a reality check..
