Francis Fukuyama called the changes that began to occur in the late 80s of the last century “something fundamental,” because they posed a number of insoluble problems for science and politics. The end of the Cold War and the privileged position of the United States as the sole superpower provoked a change in the geopolitical situation, and as a result, the question of a new world order arose. The first to try to answer it was in “The End of History”, summary which we will consider today.
What caught your attention?
Francis Fukuyama's "The End of History" has caused quite a stir. Interest in this work was caused by a number of specific circumstances. Firstly, the public saw it in 1989. At this time, the Soviet Union still existed, and even in the abstract it was impossible to imagine that it would ever collapse. But Fukuyama wrote precisely about this. If you study even the brief content of Fukuyama’s “The End of History,” you can confidently say that his article was a kind of terrorist forecast about the near and distant future. The principles and features of the new world order were recorded here.
Secondly, in light of recent events, Fukuyama's work became sensational and attracted public attention. In terms of its significance, Fukuyama’s work is comparable to S. Huntington’s treatise “The Clash of Civilizations.”
Thirdly, Fukuyama’s ideas explain the course, results and prospects for the development of world history. It examines the development of liberalism as the only viable ideology from which the final form of government emerges.
Biographical information
Yoshihiro Francis Fukuyama is an American political scientist, economist, philosopher and writer of Japanese descent. He served as a senior fellow at the Center for the Advancement of Democracy and Law at Stanford. Previously, he was a professor and director of the international development program at the Hopkins School of Studies. In 2012, he became a senior research fellow at Stanford University.
Fukuyama gained his fame as an author thanks to the book “The End of History and the Last Man.” It came out in 1992. In this work, the writer insisted that the spread of liberal democracy throughout the world would indicate that humanity was at the final stage of sociocultural evolution, and it would become the final form of government.
Before you begin to study the summary of “The End of History” by Francis Fukuyama, it is worth knowing a few interesting facts about the author and his work. This book was translated into 20 languages of the world: it caused a great resonance among the scientific community and in the media. After the book was seen by the world, and the idea put forward in it was questioned more than once, Fukuyama did not abandon his concept of the “end of history.” Some of his views changed much later. At the beginning of his career, he was associated with the neoconservative movement, but in the new millennium, due to certain events, the author sharply distanced himself from this idea.
First part
Before looking at a summary of Fukuyama's The End of History, it is worth noting that the book consists of five parts. Each of them examines different ideas. In the first part, Fukuyama explores the historical pessimism of our time. He believes that this state of affairs is the result of the world wars, genocide and totalitarianism that characterized the twentieth century.
The disasters that have befallen humanity have undermined faith not only in the scientific progress of the 21st century, but also in all ideas about the direction and continuity of history. Fukuyama asks himself whether human pessimism is justified. It explores the crisis of authoritarianism and the confident emergence of liberal democracy. Fukuyama believed that humanity was moving towards the end of the millennium, and that's all existing crises leave only liberal democracy on the world stage - the doctrine of individual freedom and state sovereignty. More and more countries are accepting liberal democracy, and those who criticize it are unable to offer any alternative. This concept surpassed all political opponents and became a kind of guarantor of the culmination of human history.
The main idea of F. Fukuyama’s “The End of History” (the summary makes this clear) is that the main weakness of states is the inability to achieve legitimacy. If we do not take into account the Somoza regime in Nicaragua, there was not a single state in the world where the old regime was completely removed from its activities by armed confrontation or revolution. Regimes changed thanks to the voluntary decision of the main part of the rulers of the old regime to hand over the reins of power to the new government. from power was usually provoked by crises when it was necessary to introduce something new in order to avoid anarchy. This concludes the first part of Fukuyama's summary of The End of History.
Second and third parts
The second and third parts of the book are independent essays that complement each other. They talk about universal history and events indicating the logical conclusion of human evolution, the point at which will be liberal democracy.
In the second part, the author emphasizes the character modern sciences while focusing on the imperatives economic development. Even from the summary of Fukuyama’s “The End of History,” one can conclude that a society striving for prosperity and protection of its independence must take the path innovative development and modernization. Economic development leads to the triumph of capitalism.
Fukuyama believed that history strives for freedom, but beyond this it craves recognition. People constantly strive for society to recognize their human dignity. It was this desire that helped them overcome their animal nature, and also allowed them to risk their lives in hunting and battles. Although, on the other hand, this desire became the reason for the division into slaves and slave owners. True, this form of government was never able to satisfy the desire for recognition of either the first or the second. To eliminate the contradictions that arise in the struggle for recognition, it is necessary to create a state based on general and mutual recognition of the rights of each of its residents. This is exactly how F. Fukuyama sees the end of history and a strong state.
Fourth part
In this section, the author compares the typical desire for recognition with Plato's “spirituality” and Rousseau's concept of “self-love.” Fukuyama also does not lose sight of universal human concepts such as “self-respect”, “self-esteem”, “self-worth” and “dignity”. The attractiveness of democracy is primarily associated with personal freedom and equality. With the development of progress, the importance of this factor is increasingly increasing, because as people become more educated and richer, they increasingly demand that their achievements and social status be recognized.
Here Fukuyama points out that even in successful authoritarian regimes there is a desire for political freedom. The thirst for recognition is precisely the missing link that connects liberal economics and politics.
Fifth part
The last chapter of the book answers the question of whether liberal democracy is capable of fully satisfying man's thirst for recognition and whether it can be considered the end point of human history. Fukuyama is confident that he is the best solution to the human problem, but still it also has its negative sides. In particular, a number of contradictions that can destroy this system. For example, the strained relationship between freedom and equality does not ensure equal recognition of minorities and disadvantaged people. The method of liberal democracy undermines religious and other pre-liberal views, and a society based on freedom and equality is unable to provide an arena for the struggle for supremacy.
Fukuyama is confident that this last contradiction is the dominant one among all the others. The author begins to use the concept of “the last man,” which he borrows from Nietzsche. This “last man” has long ceased to believe in anything, to recognize any ideas and truths, all that interests him is his own comfort. He is no longer capable of feeling keen interest or awe, he simply exists. The summary of The End of History and the Last Man focuses on liberal democracy. The last person is seen here rather as a by-product of the activities of the new regime of government.
The author also says that sooner or later the foundations of liberal democracy will be violated due to the fact that a person will not be able to suppress his desire to fight. A person will start fighting for the sake of fighting, in other words, out of boredom, because it is difficult for people to imagine life in a world where there is no need to fight. As a result, Fukuyama comes to the conclusion: not only liberal democracy can satisfy human needs, but those whose needs remain unsatisfied are able to restore the course of history. This concludes the summary of “The End of History and the Last Man” by Francis Fukuyama.
Essence of the work
“The End of History and the Last Man” by Francis Fukuyama is the first book by the American political scientist and philosopher, published in 1992. But before it appeared, in 1989 the world saw an essay of the same name. In the book, the author continues his main ideas.
- There is a certain consciousness in society that favors liberalism. Liberalism itself can be considered a universal ideology, whose provisions are absolute and cannot be changed or improved.
- By the “end of history” the author understands the spread of Western culture and ideology.
- The process of introducing Western culture into society is considered an indisputable victory of economic liberalism.
- Victory is a harbinger of political liberalism.
- The "end of history" is the triumph of capitalism. Anthony Giddens wrote about this, who noted that the end of history is the end of any alternatives in which capitalism overthrows socialism. And this is a change in international relations.
- This is a victory for the West, which Fukuyama views as a single integral system and does not see significant differences between countries, even in the environment of economic interests.
- The End of History divides the world into two parts. One belongs to history, the other to posthistory. They have different qualities, characteristics and features.
In general, these are the main ideas of “The End of History and the Last Man” by Francis Fukuyama.
Strong State
Separately from the “end of history,” Francis Fukuyama considered such a concept as a “strong state.” With the increasing political and ideological problems, the central of which was the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, Fukuyama radically reconsidered his political position and became a supporter of a strong state. Over time, the world was introduced after the “End of History” and “Strong State” by F. Fukuyama. In short, this book created an unexpected sensation among readers. The author began it with this thesis:
Building a strong state is about creating new government institutions and strengthening existing ones. In this book I show that building a strong state is one of the most important problems of the world community, since the weakness and destruction of states are the source of many of the world's especially serious problems...
At the end of the book, he offers an equally epic statement:
Only states and states alone are capable of uniting and expediently deploying forces to ensure order. These forces are necessary to ensure the rule of law within the country and maintain international order. Those who advocate the "twilight of statehood" - whether they are champions of free markets or committed to multilateral negotiations - must explain what exactly will replace the power of sovereign nation-states in modern world… In reality, this chasm has been filled by a motley collection of international organizations, crime syndicates, terrorist groups and so on, which may have a degree of power and legitimacy, but rarely both. In the absence of a clear answer, we can only return to the sovereign nation-state and again try to figure out how to make it strong and successful.
Change of heart
If earlier the author advocated liberalism, then in 2004 he writes that liberal ideologies that promote minimization and restrictions of government functions do not correspond to modern realities. He considers the idea that private markets and non-state institutions should perform some government functions to be flawed. Fukuyama argues that weak and ignorant governments can cause serious problems in developing countries.
In the early 90s of the last century, Francis Fukuyama believed that liberal values were universal, but with the advent of the new millennium, he began to have doubts about this. He even agreed with the ideas that said that liberal values were born due to the specific conditions of development of Western countries.
Fukuyama considers “weak” states to be those countries in which human rights are violated, corruption flourishes, and the institutions of traditional society are underdeveloped. In such a country there are no competent leaders and social upheavals constantly occur. This often leads to armed conflicts and mass migration processes. Weak states often support international terrorism.
Levels of a strong state
Francis Fukuyama's views began with liberal democracy, but life has shown that this is not enough. Humanity is not ready to coexist peacefully with each other, and if in some states it has become possible to stifle animal impulses to fight, in others they become prevalent. And Fukuyama begins to talk about a strong state, which will not be an analogue of a totalitarian or authoritarian power.
This notorious power is considered at two levels:
- all citizens are provided with social security, political stability and economic prosperity:
- the country is competitive in the international arena and is able to withstand the numerous challenges of globalization.
Finally, we can say that both the first and second books make it possible to understand the reasons for the split in the West, the causes of confrontations and the financial crisis in different countries of the world.
Send your good work in the knowledge base is simple. Use the form below
Students, graduate students, young scientists who use the knowledge base in their studies and work will be very grateful to you.
Similar documents
"The end of history" as a philosophical problem. The concept of "The End of History" by F. Fukuyama. Understanding the historical development of F. Fukuyama. The influence of ideology on the development of history. The problems of our time have revealed various kinds of “threats” to human existence.
course work, added 11/07/2008
Social and philosophical interpretations of history as the basis for the study of the historical process. The concept of the “end of history” as a form of reflection of the crisis of modern society, its interpretation in the context global problems. Russian dimension of the "end of history".
test, added 04/05/2012
Eschatology: the end of history and the rebirth of the world. Analysis of the creativity of N.A. Berdyaev as one of the outstanding philosophers of the twentieth century, the relevance of his philosophical views. Messiahship, its religious roots and duality. The Apocalypse as interpreted by N.A. Berdyaev.
abstract, added 03/09/2017
The essence of the materialist understanding of history, dialectical and historical materialism in Marxist philosophy. The influence of the method of material production, the level of the economy and the development of industrial relations on the fate of the state and society.
test, added 09/24/2014
The central idea of Francis Bacon's philosophy. Criticism of ordinary and scholastic reason. Human attitude towards religion. Empirical method and theory of induction. Forces of nature and the simplest laws of their action. Methodology of natural science, experimental knowledge.
abstract, added 03/08/2014
The main models of the philosophy of history: providential, cosmodentric, formational and the concept of the “end of history”. Prototype of the history of the "Axial Age" by Karl Jaspers. Description of Hegel's theory and the civilizational model of Oswald Spengler's philosophy of history.
course work, added 02/26/2012
Continuity of culture as continuity of knowledge in the cultural views of F. Bacon. Empiricism as a theory of knowledge based on experience and induction. Typical sources of human error according to Bacon: idols of the clan, cave, market and theater.
FUKUYAMA, FRANCIS(Fukuyama, Francis) (b. 1952) - American political scientist and sociologist, author of liberal concepts about the prospects for the development of modern society.
Born in Chicago into a family of social scientists, ethnic Japanese, who fully adopted the American way of life. Fukuyama himself doesn't even own Japanese, although he knows French and Russian. In 1970 he entered Cornell University to study classical literature and received a bachelor's degree in political philosophy in 1974. He continued his education at Yale University with a course in comparative literature, then changed it to a course in political science at Harvard. In 1977 he defended his doctoral dissertation on Soviet foreign policy in the Middle East.
At the beginning of his career, he considered himself not an academic scientist, but a political analyst. In 1979, he began working at the RAND Corporation, a security research institute created by the US Air Force, where he worked intermittently until the late 1990s. In 1981 he was invited to work at the US State Department. Here he worked under R. Reagan in 1981–1982 and under D. Bush Sr. in 1989, serving as deputy director of the Policy Planning Staff at the US State Department. As a prominent expert on the Middle East, he was part of the American delegation at the Egyptian-Israeli negotiations on Palestinian autonomy in the early 1980s. During the Bush era, Fukuyama became famous for his prediction of German reunification and was the first to publicly demand the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact.
His famous article was published in 1989 End of story? Fukuyama later published a book based on it (1992). He argued that “liberalism has no viable alternatives left”; the liberal ideology of Western society has finally defeated all its rivals on the battlefield of ideas. The concept of the “end of history” caused a heated debate among social scientists around the world, which continues to this day.
In the 1990s, Fukuyama began working primarily as a social scientist, becoming an academic specialist and the author of a number of intellectual bestsellers - Confidence. Social virtues and wealth creation (1995), The Great Gap. Human nature and the reproduction of social order (1999), Our posthuman future. Consequences of the biotechnological revolution (2002), Nation Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century(2004). From 1996 to 2001 Fukuyama served as a professor public policy in the School of Public Policy at George Mason University, and since 2001 has been Professor of International Political Economy at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.
Having gone into science, Fukuyama continued to participate in the political life of America. Actively advocating the elimination of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, he, however, did not support the American government’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003. Fukuyama is known for his critical statements regarding the prospects for the development of post-Soviet Russia, which, in his opinion, “may begin to reverse development towards an authoritarian, aggressive, nationalist state.”
Fukuyama is one of the members of the Presidential Council on Bioethics under George W. Bush.
In Russia, Fukuyama’s concept of the “end of history” is often understood very simplistically, as propaganda of the American way of life: American liberalism is supposedly the last and highest stage of world history. However, Fukuyama's ideas are much more complex. While welcoming the evolution of political and economic institutions towards modern liberal democracy, he is, however, not inclined to praise all the processes that accompany this movement.
Comparing data for developed Western countries, in “The Great Divide” he emphasized that since the mid-1960s, negative phenomena caused by disorganization have sharply increased in developed countries family relations, an increase in crime and a decline in trust between people. There is a sharp increase in the level of crimes of all types, vagrancy, drunkenness, etc. are on the rise. As for the institution of the family, here too there is a sharp drop in the birth rate, the divorce rate is constantly increasing, as well as the percentage of children born out of wedlock. The most important thing, according to Fukuyama, is the growth of distrust between people, the simultaneous decline in trust in public institutions and in each other. All this is, as Fukuyama called it, the Great Gap - a growing state of anomie, loss of orientation in life, a kind of “in-betweenness”, when old norms are deformed or destroyed, but new ones do not yet exist. Society is fragmenting, turning into a crowd of loners.
Having carefully studied statistics and data from numerous studies on different areas life of society, Fukuyama not only stated the civilizational crisis, but also offered a very interesting explanation of it.
The Achilles heel of revolutionary development processes, he believes, is the lag of informal cultural values and norms from new requirements. To emphasize the importance of informal "social order", Fukuyama uses the concept of "social capital". It is the values that guide people in everyday life that are the basis of trust between people and their cooperation. Therefore, according to Fukuyama, it is the formation, strengthening and decline of moral values that leads to a kind of cyclical nature of social life. The first time the “connection of times” disintegrated during the transition from feudalism to capitalism, the second time - during the transition from capitalism to the emerging post-industrial society.
Those problems of modern developed societies, which were expressed in the Great Divide, arose, according to Fukuyama, due to the excessive individualization of people. This is confirmed, for example, by rich Asian countries with the traditional dominance of collectivist values (Japan). They have so far managed to avoid (or at least temporarily prevent) many Negative consequences The Great Divide. However, Fukuyama considers it unlikely that Asian countries will be able to adhere to traditional values for several generations. They, too, will have their own Great Divide, but a little later.
Fukuyama's concept seems to be deeply pessimistic: modern society affected by a serious illness, the way back is impossible, and the way forward may be associated with a further exacerbation of the problems. However, the American sociologist is optimistic in his forecasts. Cultural progress, he argues, is based on self-organization - “the social order, once undermined, strives to rebuild itself.”
Already in the 1990s, according to Fukuyama, it became noticeable that “the Great Divide was becoming obsolete and that the process of updating norms had already begun.” As a citizen of America, a country with puritanical spiritual values, Fukuyama points, first of all, to a “return to religiosity.” In this regard, his ideas largely overlap with the works of the Russian-American sociologist Pitirim Sorokin, dating back to the turn of the 1930s and 1940s. However, if Sorokin considered the historical process to be “running along a closed straight line,” then Fukuyama sees the progress of society in the growth of social capital in each new cycle. Thanks to this possible (but not guaranteed) growth, “the arrow of History is directed upward.”
Fukuyama's works cause great resonance among modern social scientists because he creatively continues the traditions of his predecessors. As is known, in the study of macrotrends in the development of society, two approaches compete - linear-progressive (K. Marx, I. Mechnikov, D. Bell, W. Rostow) and cyclical (N. Danilevsky, O. Spengler, P. Sorokin, L. Gumilev ). Fukuyama combines both the first and second directions, bringing together a linear vision of history with cyclicality. Political and economic history societies develop, as he believes, according to the laws of progress and linearity (this idea is reflected in the concept of the “End of History”), and the social and moral spheres of life are subject to cyclicality (which is reflected in the concept of the “Great Divide”).
Main works: The Great Divide. M., AST Publishing House LLC, 2003; Confidence. Social Virtues and the Path to Prosperity. M., "AST Publishing House", 2004; End of story?– Questions of philosophy. 1990, no. 3; The end of history and the last man. M., AST, 2004; Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnological Revolution. M., AST, 2004.
Natalia Latova
Fukuyama's book is most like two thick dry cake layers, between which an offensively thin layer of delicious filling can barely be seen.
The theory of the “break of eras” developed by Fukuyama seemed quite interesting to me. Humanity is just now experiencing a transition from an industrial society to an information society, when old values have been destroyed and new ones have not yet been formed. Like all changes, the transition cannot be painless. The labor market is changing, women are working more and more and their incomes are increasing, families are being destroyed, fewer children are being born, crime is growing - these are the main problems of the Great Divide, closely related to each other. Although some of these points are positive phenomena in themselves, they have an ambiguous effect on others.
Since the book is mainly based on American material, the author pays a lot of attention to issues of individualism, liberal values and the ease and naturalness with which Americans unite into groups and communities. Individualism, which is the greatest value of the American nation, has reached dangerous proportions. People yearn for a cohesive society, but no one is ready to give up their individualistic values and sentiments. Wanting everything at once is the main problem of modern people. They quickly and willingly join various groups and associations (if, of course, this is not too burdensome), but these groups themselves remain weak, with unreliable connections, and outside them there is the same loneliness, mistrust and emptiness. The phenomenon of miniaturization of society, expressed in the presence of many groups, the influence of which, however, is weak and unstable. It is unlikely that this contradiction will be resolved in the near future, when people want to simultaneously demonstrate moral individualism and be part of a community. These arguments are the very filling, even if discussing this topic is like pounding water in a mortar.
Issues of the formation of moral norms and rules, social capital, groups, networks and hierarchies occupy a large part of the book. Chapters with titles like “The Limits of Spontaneity and the Inevitability of Hierarchy” evoke little enthusiasm. Looks like a textbook on sociology, the degree of fascination is appropriate.
Francis Fukuyama touches on many profound and potentially interesting aspects. Doesn't cultural relativism at some point begin to destroy itself? Did the Pill bring more liberation to men than to women? Can social capital “run out”? The problem is that the author often takes such an irritatingly dry and self-confident tone that you want to immediately start arguing with him even when he says sensible things. And the book itself, I repeat, is dry, stuffed with statistics and unreadable diagrams, for which, of course, the disgusting quality of the printing is responsible. That's what I didn't expect from this seemingly good series.
Francis Fukuyama. Illustration: gvsu.edu
After the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Fukuyama gained wide international fame thanks to his book “The End of History and the Last Man,” in which he proclaimed the triumph of liberal democracy throughout the world as the end point of the sociocultural evolution of humanity. His work has been translated into more than 20 languages and has caused widespread resonance in the scientific community and the media. Now the former apologist for the global liberal world order is observing its crisis and trying to understand the phenomenon using the particular example of the United States. From Fukuyama's point of view, the reason for the decline of the United States is not liberalism itself, but a specific political model American democracy, which has become a source of dysfunction. Recognizing the limitations of this approach, however, it should be recognized that in the aspect of studying the functioning of the US government apparatus, the proposed article by Fukuyama contains interesting observations. In general, we can admit that the methodology proposed by him can be applied much more widely, not only to the crisis of any democratic model, but also to an authoritarian one. Next we give brief retelling a very lengthy article by Francis Fukuyama.
Government scholars have documented a steady deterioration in the overall quality of American government for more than a generation. A number of studies of the activities of federal services paint a depressing picture. Federal employees appear to be more motivated by compensation than by missions that cannot compete in compensation with business and non-profit organizations. They are dissatisfied with both their reward for work that is done well and the lack of consequences for doing work that is done poorly. The US bureaucracies themselves operate under multiple and often conflicting mandates from Congress and the courts. Because of this, they cost American taxpayers a significant amount of money, while their achievements are highly questionable. The internal decision-making system of bureaucratic departments is often blocked, and the high degree of staff morale and cohesion noted in the past is lost. Bureaucratic autonomy in the United States outside routine congressional intervention is not a bad thing, but rather a good thing because it better ensures the professionalism of government employees. Fukuyama examines the general management crisis in the United States using the specific example of the history of one federal agency - the US Forestry Department.
Political scientist Samuel Huntington used the term "political collapse" to explain the political instability in many newly independent states after World War II. Huntington argued that socio-economic modernization creates problems for "traditional political orders", leading to the mobilization of new social groups whose participation cannot be "housed" in existing political institutions. Thus, political breakdown is caused by the failure of institutions to adapt to changing circumstances. Decline is in many ways a condition for political development: the old has to be broken in order to open the way for the new. But transitions can be extremely chaotic and brutal, and there is no guarantee that old political institutions will continually and peacefully adapt to the pattern of new conditions. This situation is a good starting point for a broader understanding of the phenomenon of US political decline.
The very stability of institutions is also a source of political decline. Institutions are created to meet the needs of specific circumstances, but when circumstances change, institutions are unable to adapt. One reason for this is cognitive: people develop mental models of how the world works, and tend to stick to them even in the face of contradictory evidence. Another reason is vested interests: institutions favor an “insider class” who formalize the status quo and resist pressures for reform.
Political decline thus occurs when institutions fail to adapt to changing external circumstances, either due to intellectual inflexibility or the power of current elites interested in protecting their positions. Decline can crush any type of political system: authoritarian or democratic. And while democratic political systems theoretically have self-correcting mechanisms that allow them to reform, they also open up the possibility of legitimizing the activities of powerful interest groups that can block needed change. This is exactly what has been happening in the United States in recent decades. Many of their political institutions are seen to become increasingly dysfunctional, and there is no guarantee that the situation will change without a significant upheaval to the political order.
Max Weber argued that there is a difference between politics and administration. Politics was the sphere of achieving final goals subject to democratic contestation, and administration was the sphere of implementation that could be studied empirically and subjected to scientific analysis. In the United States, civil service reform, carried out at the end of the 19th century, was based on a similar attitude based on the proposals of such scientists and political figures as Francis Lieber, Woodrow Wilson And Frank Goodnow. They believed that the achievements of natural science of that time were quite applicable to solving social problems. The belief that public administration can become a science now seems naive.
Further, Fukuyama argues that one of the sources of the decline of the United States is a specific democratic model, adopted as the basis for the functioning of American statehood and which does not meet the requirements of modernity.
The United States has a Madisonian model of democracy enshrined in the US Constitution. (1) This model of democracy was intended to mitigate the problem of insider takeover and prevent the emergence of a dominant faction or elite that could use its political power to establish tyranny. To do this, power is distributed among competing branches of government, thereby creating opportunities for competition between different interests in a large and diverse country. But Madisonian democracy often does not work as ideally imagined. Elite insiders tend to have greater access to power and information, which they use to protect their interests. And ordinary voters have nothing against a corrupt politician unless stolen money is directly involved.
Cognitive inflexibility or prejudice also inhibits social groups from mobilizing for their own interests. For example, in the United States, many working-class voters support candidates who promise to cut taxes on the rich, even though such tax cuts cost them the most important government services.
Various lobbying groups for manufacturers are focused on the prices of their products, in contrast to ordinary consumers or taxpayers who are “dispersed” and the prices of these goods represent only a small part of their budgets.
Liberal democracy is almost universally associated with a market economy, which tends to produce winners and losers and reinforce what James Madison called “different and unequal abilities to acquire property.” This type of economic inequality is not bad in itself, since it stimulates innovation and growth and occurs in the context of equal access to the economic system. However, this becomes highly problematic when economic winners seek to turn their wealth into unequal political influence. They can do this by bribing a legislator or bureaucrat, that is, on the basis of transfer of benefits, or, more destructively, by bending institutional rules in their favor - for example, by closing out competition in markets where they already dominate, that is, by As you tilt the playing field more and more steeply to your advantage.
Modern liberal democracies have three branches of government - executive, judicial and legislative - corresponding to three main categories of political institutions: state, rule of law and democracy. The executive branch is the branch that uses force to enforce rules and implement policies. The judicial and legislative branches limit executive power and direct it in the public interest. The basis of institutional priorities in the United States, with its long tradition of distrust of government power, has always emphasized the priority of coercive institutions - the judicial and legislative powers over the state.
American politics in the 19th century could be characterized as a "state of courts and parties," where government functions that in Europe would have been performed by one of the executive branches of the bureaucracy were instead performed in the United States by judges and elected representatives. Before the Pendleton Act was passed in 1883 government agencies In the United States, employees were filled by nomination based on patronage by political parties. The creation of a modern, centralized, merit-based bureaucracy capable of exercising jurisdiction over the entire country did not begin until the 1880s, and the number of professional civil servants slowly increased a half-century later during the New Deal era. These changes took place much later and more hesitantly than in countries such as France and Germany. “Big government” in the United States has especially grown since the presidential election Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. But the irreversible increase in the size of government in the 20th century appears to mask a major decline in its quality. This is largely due to the fact that the United States has reverted in a certain way to the old "state of courts and parties", that is, to a system in which the courts and the legislature have usurped many of the executive branch's own functions, making the actions of the government, in general, inconsistent and ineffective.
The courts, operating in the British tradition of case law, are to blame. The history of American courts demonstrates a constant increase in the judicial component of decisions that in other developed democracies are processed by administrative bureaucracies. This leads to an increase in expensive legal proceedings, slowness of decision-making and highly incompatible with the implementation of laws. Today in the United States, rather than controlling the government, the courts have become alternative instruments for expanding government control. In parallel, the executive power was usurped by Congress. Interest groups, having lost the ability to directly corrupt legislators through bribery, have found other ways to capture and control them. These interest groups exert influence disproportionate to their place in society. They distort taxes and spending and increase general level deficit and the ability to manipulate the budget to one's advantage. They also undermine the quality of government through numerous mandates issued by Congress. Both phenomena - the constant increase in the judicial component in decisions and the spread of influence of interest groups, as a rule, undermine trust in the government. Distrust in government then perpetuates and feeds on itself. Distrust in executive bodies leads to the requirement for frequent legal checks of the administration, which reduces the quality and efficiency of management. At the same time, the demand for government services prompts Congress to introduce more and more mandates for the executive branch. Both processes lead to a decrease in bureaucratic autonomy, which in turn leads to rigid, uncreative and incoherent governance outcomes. The crisis of democratic representation is that ordinary citizens do not feel that their supposedly democratic government truly reflects their interests and is not controlled by various shadow elites. Paradoxically, what is special about this phenomenon is that the crisis of representation occurred in large part due to reforms designed to make the system more democratic. The bottom line is that these days there is too much law and too much democracy relative to American statehood.
The starting point for the development of negative processes was the civil rights movement in the 1950s, when fundamental decisions were generated by the courts. The model of using the courts to enforce new social rules was then used by many other social movements - from environmental protection and consumer safety to women's rights and same-sex marriage. In the second half of the twentieth century, all European countries went through similar changes in legal status racial and ethnic minorities, women and homosexuals. But in France, Germany and Great Britain the same result was achieved not through the courts, but through the Ministry of National Justice, acting on behalf of the parliamentary majority. Legislative changes to the rules were prompted by public and media pressure, but were carried out by the government itself rather than by private individuals acting in conjunction with the justice system.
In countries like France and Germany, law came first, then the modern state, and only then democracy. In the United States, on the contrary, the very deep tradition of English common law came first, then democracy and only then the development of the modern state. The American state has always remained weaker and less capable than its European or Asian counterparts. More importantly, American political culture has been structured since its founding around distrust of executive power.
The role of lawyers in the United States expanded dramatically during the tumultuous years of social change in the 1960s and 1970s. Together with Congress, the United States ultimately received a huge expansion of the regulatory functions of the state.
This system is cumbersome not only in terms of the level of self-regulation, but in the highly “legalistic” way in which it is carried out. Congress created a bunch of new federal agencies, but did not delegate to these bodies the ability to deviate from the rules - something that European or Japanese government agencies enjoy. Congress intentionally encourages litigation by expanding the pool of possible plaintiffs. If at the end of the 1960s there were approximately one hundred courts per year on problems of public administration, then in the 1980s there were 10 thousand, and more than 22 thousand at the end of the 1990s. Often similar conflicts in Sweden or Japan were resolved through quiet consultation, whereas in the United States, interested parties in the bureaucracy fought through a formal legal process. Because of this, public administration increasingly began to face uncertainty, procedural complexity, redundancy, lack of completeness, and high transaction costs. The system has become much less predictable. From the point of view of the quality of public policy, the system leads to high costs without guaranteeing results. American conservatives often fail to understand that an underlying distrust of government makes the American system far less effective at providing judicial regulation than democracies with strong executive powers have chosen.
Interest groups are to blame. Another notable feature of the US political system is its openness to interest group influence. Such groups can exercise their influence by acting on the government through the courts or simply directly. Trading political influence for money in the modern United States goes through back door in a form that is completely legal and difficult to eradicate. Criminal liability for bribery is narrowly defined in US law as a specific transaction in which a politician and private party They clearly agreed on the principle “you - for me, I - for you.” The law does not cover what sociologists call “reciprocal altruism,” or what an anthropologist might label the exchange of gifts. In an altruistic relationship, one person gives a benefit to another without the explicit expectation that he will be rewarded with a favor in return. Exchange means rather a moral obligation to return the benefit in some way in the future. It is on the basis of this kind of deal that US industry lobbying is based. Modern states create strict rules and incentives to overcome the tendency to favor family and friends, including practices such as civil service examinations, merit qualifications, and conflicts of interest. There are anti-corruption laws against bribes. But the power of natural sociability is so strong that it finds a way to penetrate the system. Rules to block nepotism are still strong enough in the US to prevent overt favoritism from becoming a common feature in modern politics USA, although it is interesting to note how strong the desire is to create political dynasties, such as the Kennedy brothers, the Bush families and the Clinton family.
Reciprocal altruism is rampant in Washington and is the main channel through which interest groups have succeeded in corrupting government. Interest groups are able to influence members of Congress legally by simply making a donation without any specific expectation of returning favors. Often the legislator himself initiates the exchange of gifts for the benefit of an interest group in the hope that he will receive some benefit after leaving government service. The explosion of lobbying in Washington and the rise of interest groups has been a remarkable sight in recent decades. For example, in 1971, there were 175 registered lobbying firms operating in Washington. A decade later - approximately 2500. In 2009 - 13,700.
Often, the influence of interest groups and lobbyists does not stimulate new policies, but makes existing legislation much worse than it could be. The legislative process in the United States has always been much more fragmented than in countries with parliamentary systems and disciplined parties. The confusion of congressional committees with overlapping jurisdictions often results in multiple and conflicting mandates. This decentralized legislative process produces inconsistent laws and practically invites the participation of interest groups that, if not powerful enough to shape general legislation, can at least protect their specific interests. Ordinary Americans express widespread disdain for the influence of interest groups and money in Congress. Public opinion polls show that trust in Congress has fallen to an all-time low, just above the single digits.
In the modern United States, elites speak the language of freedom but are perfectly happy to settle for privilege. Economist Olson noted in his work that in times of peace and stability, democracies tend to accumulate an increasing number of interest groups. Instead of creating wealth through economic activity, these groups use the political system to extract benefits or rents for themselves. These rents are collectively unproductive and costly to society as a whole. But the general public was concerned about the lack of collective action. As a result, negative phenomena can only be stopped by a big shock, such as war or revolution.
By Madison, a cacophony of interest groups will collectively interact to produce public interest in the same way that competition in a free market produces public good through individuals acting on the basis of their narrow selfish interests. Catch called this phenomenon “the interest group of liberalism.” But not all groups are equally capable of organizing collective action. The interest groups vying for the attention of the US Congress do not represent the entire American people, but the most organized and (which often amounts to the same thing) the wealthiest parts of American society. This tends to work against the interests of the unorganized, who are often poor, poorly educated, or otherwise marginalized.
Political scientist Morris Fiorina has provided significant evidence that the American "political class" is far more polarized than the American people themselves. Policy is determined by well-organized activists, whether in the party and Congress, the media, or lobbying interest groups. The sum of the actions of these activist groups does not produce a compromise position, but leads to polarization and gridlock in politics.
Blocking decisions. Fukuyama calls this phenomenon the rise of “vetocracy.” The US Constitution protects individual freedom through a complex system of checks and balances that were specifically designed by the Founders to limit the power of the government. In practice, in the US constitutional system, powers are not so much functionally divided as they are duplicated in all branches, which leads to periodic usurpation of one branch by another and conflicts. Federalism often does not delegate certain powers to the appropriate level of government, but rather duplicates them at several levels. In such a system of redundant and non-hierarchical power, different parts of the government can easily block each other. Combined with the general expansion of the courts' political powers and the widespread influence of interest groups, the result is an unbalanced form of government that undermines the prospects for necessary collective action.
The effectiveness of consensus decision making quickly deteriorates as groups become larger and more diverse, and so for most groups decisions are not made by consensus, but by the agreement of some subset of the population. The smaller the percentage of the group needed to make a decision, the more easily and effectively it can be done.
The US political system has many more checks and balances, or what political scientists call "veto points", than other modern democracies. This increases the costs of collective action, and in some cases makes it impossible altogether. In earlier periods of US history, when one side or the other was dominant, this system served as a means to moderate the will of the majority and force it to pay more attention to the minority.
Compared to the American Madisonian system, the British system of democracy appears to be a more evenly balanced and highly competitive party system. T.n. The Westminster system, which developed in England in the years after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, is one of the most efficient in the democratic world, since it pure form it has very few veto points. The tradition of free media in the United Kingdom is another important informal check on the executive. In the Westminster system there is only one all-powerful legislative chamber. In the Westminster system there is no separate presidency, no strong upper house, no written constitution and therefore no judicial review, no federalism or devolution of government powers to localities. In Great Britain, the first-past-the-post electoral system, along with strong party discipline, tends to produce a two-party system and strong parliamentary majorities. Termination of debate among legislators requires a simple majority of members of parliament. The parliamentary majority chooses a government with a strong executive power, and when it makes a legislative decision, this decision cannot be challenged in the courts at all. This is why the British system is often described as a "democratic dictatorship". But while power is concentrated, the Westminster system nevertheless remains fundamentally democratic because if voters don't like the government, they can re-elect it. With a vote of no confidence, they can do this immediately, without waiting for the end of the term. This means that government is more sensitive to the perception of overall benefit than to the needs of specific interest groups or lobbying systems.
The difference between the Westminster and Madison systems is obvious when comparing the fairly simple procedural adoption of the budget in the UK and the long and painfully difficult one in the USA. However, the classic Westminster system no longer exists anywhere in the world, including in Great Britain itself, as that country has gradually adopted a system of checks and balances. However, the United Kingdom still has fewer veto points than the United States. Germany, the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries in particular have been able to support more high level trust in government, which makes governance less adversarial, more coherent and better adapted to the changing conditions of globalization. The picture looks different for the EU as a whole. Recent decades have seen a significant increase in the number and sophistication of lobby groups in Europe. With the shift in governance from national capitals to Brussels, the European system as a whole is beginning to resemble that of the United States. Individual parliamentary systems in Europe can afford fewer veto points than US checks and balances, but with the addition of a large European layer many more veto points are added. The rise of the EU is also Americanizing Europe regarding the role of the judiciary. The new structure of European jurisprudence, with its multiple and overlapping layers, has increased, rather than decreased, the number of judicial vetoes in the system.
Solving modern society's problems requires a healthy, well-functioning political system, which the United States does not currently have. Some countries Latin America, which copied the presidential system in the United States in the 19th century, have similar problems with decision-making bottlenecks and a politicized administration.
The US Congress jealously guards its right to make laws. Multiple congressional committees often produce repetition and duplication, or multiple agencies are created with similar goals. The Pentagon, for example, operates under 500 mandates for which it must report annually to Congress. Congress created about 50 separate programs to retrain workers and 82 separate projects to improve teacher qualifications. The financial sector in the United States is divided between the Federal Reserve, the Department of the Treasury, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the National Credit Union Administration, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, and many government attorneys general who decided to take control of the banking sector. Ironically, public opinion polls show high levels of public trust in precisely those institutions, such as NASA, that are least subject to immediate democratic oversight. The US political system presents a complex picture in which the system of checks unduly constrains decision-making.
The process and consequences of political disintegration. In conditions of acute political polarization, the decentralized US system is less and less able to represent the interests of majoritarian groups and gives an excessive advantage to interest groups and activist organizations that, taken together, do not add up to the sovereign American people. This is not the first time the US political system has been polarized and indecisive. In the middle of the 19th century, it could not resolve the issue of expanding slavery to new territories, and in the last decades of the 19th century it could not determine what was the priority of policy - an agricultural or industrial society. Madison's system of checks and balances and parties and their clientele running the political system was sufficient to govern an isolated and largely agrarian country in the 19th century, but not a globalized world power now.
Today, once again, the United States is trapped by its own political institutions. Because Americans do not trust government, they are generally reluctant to delegate decision-making authority to it, as is the case in other democracies. Instead, Congress mandates complex rules, which reduce government autonomy and lead to slow and costly decision-making.
The government does not act well under the given conditions, which confirms the lack of trust in it from the people. The latter, in these conditions, does not want to pay higher taxes, which, as the people believe, the authorities will waste. But without adequate resources, the government cannot function properly.
Two obstacles stand in the way of reversing the trend toward decay. The first of these is a matter of policy. Many politicians in the United States recognize that the system is not working well, but they nonetheless have strong interests in maintaining the status quo. No political party has an incentive to cut itself off from interest group money, and interest groups don't want a system in which money doesn't buy influence.
Just as happened in the 1880s, a reform coalition must emerge in the United States that brings together groups without a stake in the current system. But achieving collective action among such groups is very difficult. They need guidance and a clear program. Neither one nor the other is currently observed.
The second problem lies in the world of ideas. The traditional American solution to perceptions of government dysfunction is to try to expand democratic participation and transparency. But most citizens have neither the time nor the inclination to address complex public policy issues. Therefore, increased participation will simply pave the way for well-organized activist groups to gain more power. The obvious solution to this problem would be to abandon some of the potential democratizing reforms, but no one dares to imagine that the country needs less participation and transparency.
As a result, the development of the country's political malaise and the unlikely prospect of constructive and gradual reform will prolong the process of disintegration of the American political system, which is likely to continue until some external shock brings into being a real coalition of reforms and galvanizes it into action.
(1) James Madison (1751-1836) - American statesman, fourth President of the United States, one of the key authors of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights.
