It’s Human Nature, Stupid

is meant that many players didn’t e Origins of Political Order: get to play more than once, and some From Prehuman Times to the didn’t get to play at all. Several of us, French Revolution graduate students and faculty mem- by Francis Fukuyama bers every one, sat on the sidelines Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011, and considered what might be done. We arrived at an obvious solution: In- 608 pages. stead of playing only on the center— Reviewed by Marshall Poe read: premier—court, we would play on both the center and the smaller ome two decades ago, I conduct- side court, thus allowing more people S ed an experiment in institutional to take part. We presented our plan to mechanics at . the regulars. ey grudgingly agreed Now, I didn’t know that’s what I was to try it. After only a run or two, doing at the time. I thought I was just however, there was mass defection. trying to get some “good run”—slang Almost everyone preferred to play on for a competitive game of pick-up bas- the center court, even if it meant he ketball—at Malkin Athletic Center, might not get to play at all. known as “the MAC.” But now that Why had our plan, despite its I’ve read Francis Fukuyama’s ambi- obvious rationality, failed so utterly? tious e Origins of Political Order: At the time, I thought it was due to From Prehuman Times to the French the pigheadedness and idiocy of the Revolution, I see that I was in fact test- other players. I was wrong: People at ing a theory—or rather, his ttheory—heory— Harvard are many things, some of of institutional change. And thanks to them distinctly unsavory, but they are that theory, I now understand what generally not pigheaded idiots (with a happened, which was the following. few possible exceptions who shall go One spring—I can’t remember the unnamed). In the light of Fukuyama’s year exactly—there were too many new book, I now see why our reform players for the MAC’s noon game. not only collapsed, but was doomed

  /  •  from the very start. e reason has Put all this together, and you have to do with two things: human nature a good explanation for why our re- and tradition. ally good idea came to nothing. Most First, let us examine human na- players didn’t want to lose face by ture, or rather four elements thereof. playing on the side court. ey want- Element number 1: People naturally ed to be seen as “having game,” and favor their friends. If players see their that required playing on the center buddies playing on the center court, court. ose who didn’t care about they will want to play there as well. status just wanted to play with their Element number 2: People naturally friends, many of whom were, again, get intellectually invested in tradi- on the center court. And nearly every- tions. If players have played at the one thought and felt it was somehow MAC for any length of time, they “wrong” to violate the MAC’s ancient will have many arguments “proving” pick-up conventions. Of course, that the status quo is “right.” Ele- sticking with the old conventions in ment number 3: People naturally get this case made no sense. But—and emotionally inv investedested in traditions. I Iff here’s the lesson I learned, thanks to players have played for any length of Fukuyama—institutions are not only time at the MAC, they will feel—and about rationality. ey are also, and I mean feel—attached to its convconven-en- even predominately, about the inter- tions, whether they make sense or not. play between human nature and the Element number 4: People naturally historical accidents that give birth to seek the approbation of their peers, traditions. or what we call “status.” Most players is, I think, is the primary mes- will want to play with the best players sage of Francis Fukuyama’s new book. on the best court so as to demonstrate In it, he is trying to figure out why that they, too, are the best. is some states “get to Denmark”—that brings us to traditions, or rather two is, become stable, prosperous, liberal of them. From the perspective of the republics—while others do not. “For players, the noon game has “always” people in developed countries,” he been played on the center court, and writes, “‘Denmark’ is a mythical place only the center court. Similarly, from that is known to have good political the perspective of the players, the and economic institutions: It is sta- center court has “always” been the ble, democratic, peaceful, prosperous, one on which the best players play, inclusive and has extremely low levels while the side courts are reserved for of political corruption.” I personally people “without game.” have never had any fantasies about

 • A Denmark, though I’m told it now has less than swimmingly. True, in Japan the best restaurant in the world. Truth and Germany, the seeds took. But in be told, I haven’t thought much about painful instances such as Afghanistan Denmark at all. I’m not sure that, as and , the crop has failed com- Fukuyama puts it, “Everyone would pletely. Indeed, these cases call into like to figure out how to transform question the idea, beloved not only by Somalia, Haiti, Nigeria, Iraq, or Af- neocons, but by much of the Western ghanistan into ‘Denmark.’” Everyone policy establishment, that liberal de- he talks to, maybe. Nonetheless I see mocracy can be planted at all. his point: Most of us would like to So what is Fukuyama’s answer to know why there are so few winners the Denmark riddle? Basically, it’s that and so many losers in the game of human institutions—be they pick-up political development. e issue has basketball games or entire nations— personal significance for Fukuyama. get stuck in ruts for reasons having In his most famous (and widely mis- to do with (you guessed it) human understood) book, e End of History nature and historical accidents. And and the Last Man, Fukuyama argued once we sort these obstacles out, the that with the fall of , road to Denmark will be, if not wide the last great alternative to universal open, then at least not impassible. liberal democracy had collapsed. In the future, he said, we would ukuyama opens e Origins of all live in someplace like Denmark. F Political Order b byy pr proposing,oposing, e rub is that much of the world quite sensibly, that it is impossible is Denmarkizing very slowly, and to understand political institutions still other parts are experiencing de- without some grasp of human evolu- Denmarkization (which may even be tion and the distinctive human nature true of Denmark, given the current it produced. I was so happy to read fiscal crisis in the European Union). this that I nearly jumped out of my If you’ve bet the farm that liberal chair. For too long, scholars have democracy is in all our futures, as either denied that human nature ex- Fukuyama has, these facts are cer- ists or contrived parodies of it, useful tainly irksome. Fukuyama wants to for axe-grinding and little else. To my find out what’s holding things up. mind, historians are the worst deniers e American political elite should (human nature is “historically con- want to know as well, as recent at- structed,” you know), while classical tempts to plant liberal democratic economists are the worst parodists institutions in virgin soil have gone (human nature is “utility maximizing,”

  /  •  except when it isn’t). Fukuyama, It’s refreshing that by “evolu- however, prefers to lambaste political tion” Fukuyama really means evolu-evolu- theorists on this score. Hobbes said tion—that is, Darwin’s “descent people are all scared to death of with modification.” “Darwinian death, and therefore created political evolution” he writes, “is built around institutions to protect them from the two principles of variance and one another. “Wrong!” says Fuku- selection: Organisms experience yama. Rousseau said that people are random genetic mutation, and those naturally innocent, and that political best adapted to their environments institutions are imposed upon them survive and multiply. So too in politi- by bad people who apparently aren’t cal development: ere is variation in innocent. “Wrong!” says Fukuyama. political institutions, and those best As it concerns political institutions, suited to the physical and social en- Fukuyama explains, human nature vironment survive and proliferate.” consists of four traits: 1) an ingrained Biological evolution created human bias toward kith and kin; 2) a search- nature; political evolution created the ing mind that, not finding a satisfac- variety of polities we see around the tory answer, spontaneously invents globe today. It follows that the only the idea of God; 3) a set of emotions way to comprehend political evolu- that are pre-programmed to make tion is to investigate how, within the us follow rules, even bad ones; and firm constraints of human nature, 4) a thoroughly non-utility-maximiz- institutions were born, selected for ing desire for respect, both for your (or against), and passed on (or not) person and for the things you like. to subsequent eras. at means, says For Fukuyama (and, one should Fukuyama, that you have to study his- add, nearly the entire scientific com- tory. Once again, I was so pleased to munity), these traits evolved, and are read this that I nearly jumped out of therefore hard-wired. ey provide my chair. ough their influence has “the building blocks of political waned in recent decades, many “ahis- development.” ey can never be torical model builders” still haunt the eradicated. ey have always been in faculty lounges of many fine institu- play and they always will be in play. tions of higher learning. ey think Forget that, Fukuyama cautions, and like physicists and, therefore, search you will never understand anything everywhere for timeless order. e about the evolution of political insti- trouble is that there is no timeless or- tutions—or, more importantly, how der to anything that evolves, whether to get to Denmark. it be a carbon-based life form or a

 • A political institution. Evolution is a than adequate given the scope and sorting mechanism that never, ever purpose of the book. And even if he stops until there is nothing left to gets some facts wrong, he had no oth- sort. is means that an evolving er way to proceed. If you are going to thing is the very opposite of timeless; do comparative history (and we must it is decidedly time-bound. A species do comparative history), you have to or institution is always the way it is compare something. HeHe diddid thethe bestbest because of the way it was. Post hoc, he could with what historians made ergo propter hoc is not an errorerror in evo-evo- available to him. “Obviously in a work lution, it’s a truism. of this scope,” he writes apologetically, Which brings us to the most “I have had to rely almost exclusively salutary part of this book: It’s full of on secondary sources for the research.” history. Fukuyama read a lot before he True enough. It is hardly his fault that took pen in hand, and it shows. We the academy couldn’t provide him are treated to satisfying and pertinent with “secondary sources” in the form sketches of human evolution, early of convenient, brief, authoritative human migrations, the emergence sketches of the histories of major cul- of the first non-kin-based political tural traditions. structures, and the differentiation of Fukuyama uses his understanding political institutions in various parts of human nature and his reading of the globe and over vast stretches of of history to construct what is es- time. e Origins of Political Order isis sentially a Goldilocks theory of how not, however, a history of the world. polities get or do not get to Denmark. Fukuyama carefully selects cases that He says that the essential institutional illustrate certain themes. us he dis- ingredients for a stable liberal democ- cusses China, India, the Middle East, racy are three: a state, the rule of law, and Europe, but not the more tradi- and accountability. Countries with all tional Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, of them in just the right mix get to and Rome. Specialist historians Denmark. “A successful modern lib- (a somewhat redundant title in this eral democracy,” he proposes, “com- day and age) will say that much of bines all three sets of institutions in a this history is potted. ey can, by stable balance.” Polities that fail to get virtue of their narrow training and vi- to Denmark either a) get stuck in an sion, say nothing else. But judging by equilibrium that rests on some subset the section on Russian history, which of these three institutions, or b) find I read as a longtime student of the themselves dealing with either too subject, Fukuyama’s histories are more much or not enough of one of them.

  /  •  e entire book is devoted to demon- populations evolved into separate bi- strating the validity of this theory by ological species. Similarly, as humans analyzing polities that get stuck, and spread over and adapted to the varied those that don’t. ecologies of the world, isolated popu- lations evolved into cultural species. he first stop on Fukayama’s Happily, Fukuyama does not attempt T wide-ranging historical survey to tell us just what a cultural species begins with hunter-gatherer bands. is; the whole issue, he knows, is com- ese were not, Fukuyama explains, plicated, and would only sidetrack his really a political order, because they presentation. So he moves on. rested on kinship. Nonetheless, the Fukuyama tells us, however, band is important for his theory that one of the cultural species that both because it is the sodality out of evolved during this process was food- which political order first emerged making culture. Paleolithic hunter- and because, according to his argu- gatherers found what they ate; their ment, kinship is in fact “the default Neolithic descendants essentially form of [human] social organization.” made what they ate. PPlantlant and animal He is saying, in effect, “is is where domestication—the key elements we began, and this is where we will in food-making culture—evolved always return when things go wrong.” independently in several parts of the We did the hunter-gatherer thing for world over a short period of time, and an awfully long time, nearly 200,000 so were probably the result of some years. We might never have broken worldwide event, of which global out of the mold were it not for two climate change is the most likely developments: migration and agri- candidate. In any case, the evolution culture. of food-making culture is crucial for Unlike other primates, humans Fukuyama’s story, because it led to the proved astoundingly mobile and emergence of his main protagonist, adaptable. In a very short time the state. For him, the state is the (100,000 years) we covered much first true political order. It breaks the of the globe and learned to live in a hold of kinship and replaces it with great variety of environments. is impersonal, hierarchical relation- rapid dispersion engaged a common ships like those found in nearly all evolutionary process: speciation. As contemporary polities. In the band, Darwin’s finches spread over and whom you were related to mattered adapted to the varied ecologies of most; in the state, what you had done the Galápagos Archipelago, isolated and could do for your superiors was

 • A what counted. Just how proto-states ties. e Qing dynasty had too much (tribes, chiefdoms, etc.) and states state and not enough (and perhaps emerged out of food-making culture no) rule of law or accountability. It is a bit of a mystery, and Fukuyama was, in other words, a despotism. e knows it. So he reviews the several Mauryan , by contrast, had and contradictory theories, and again too much rule of law and not enough felicitously moves forward. state and accountability, making it a He is more certain—as is the sort of theocracy. In both cases, the evidence—about the reason states road to Denmark was blocked by the rapidly became larger and more establishment of unbalanced polities powerful after they did emerge: “the that were merely good enough. e problem of war.” In pre-modern story of how they got stuck in these times (“modern” being roughly after predicaments, Fukuyama shows, 1789), the primary business of most is full of unforeseeable twists and states was fighting. Here again, we turns. ere are no “laws of history” see an evolutionary process. States at work here, there is only history— fought one another over found accidental, chaotic, messy, cluttered, or constructed niches; the fittest and confused. And yet, lawless as states, as Herbert Spencer would history may be, it does manifest have said, survived, while the less fit regularities. One of the most im- vanished; the overall level of fitness, portant for Fukuyama is continuity. here measured by military prowess, e longer polities remain stuck, the rose quickly as states became fewer, more difficult it is to unstick them. larger, and more sophisticated. is is is because their incomplete or selective process produced a species unbalanced institutional mixes come of state that we know as the “empire.” to be viewed as tradition, which in us, in a relatively small temporal turn engages the human tendency window—approximately 3,000 ... toward mindless norm-following, no to 1 ...—we see and im- matter the norm. In this way, what perial traditions emerge in the Near was in fact the product of a thor- East, North Africa, Europe, India, oughly contingent process comes to China, and Central America. be viewed as a necessary, eternal, and Fukuyama describes the political even sacred part of the universe itself. evolution of only two of these ancient “We have always done it this way” imperial traditions, the Chinese and comes to imply, “We should always Indian, for they illustrate cases of do it this way.” For Fukuyama, the incomplete and/or unbalanced poli- reason modern China and India are a

  /  •  long way from Denmark can in part time, this restriction fell away as well. be found in sticky traditions that that Nepotism and cronyism reappeared, are centuries old. and the game was up. e Ottoman Fukuyama then turns to another Empire took another step toward case of institutional imbalance, the extinction. sundry Muslim polities of the early Having thus established what modern period. He chooses them doesn’t get a polity to Denmark,Denmark, because they well illustrate his theory Fukuyama then addresses what does, of political decline. at theory is or rather what did at first. What fol- simple: States deteriorate when they lows is a long and somewhat familiar allow nepotism and cronyism—the exercise in comparative European default modes of human social political development. e stage is order—to reassert themselves as or- set by the medieval Catholic Church, ganizing principles. e case of the which, he claims, both reduced the Ottomans is particularly instructive. power of families by finding ways ey used a peculiar and extreme to expropriate their property and as- method to fight nepotism and crony- serted the superiority of canon law ism: ey put people without families by forcing Emperor Henry IV to go and friends into administrative and down on his knees at Canossa. e military offices. Of course, people first of these actions bolstered the without families and friends are hard state—families being its enemies, in to find. Realistically speaking, you Fukuyama’s estimation—while the have to make them. And that is pre- second laid the foundation for the cisely what the Ottomans did. ey rule of law. He then juxtaposes the enslaved boys from Christian lands, histories of early modern England, raised them, trained them, appointed France, Hungary, and Russia, apply- them to offices, and forbade them ing the Goldilocks principle as he from marrying. Voilà! A class of of- goes. Only England had just the right ficials free from the entanglements of combination of state power, legal au- kinship and friendship. It worked for thority, and government accountabil- a while, but could not be sustained in ity. at’s fortunate, because England the long term because, well, people was the first Denmark, and therefore naturally like to have families and set the standard to which Fukuyama friends. Eventually the sultan granted wants us all to aspire. But it’s also his military slaves the right to marry problematic, because he argues—and under the proviso that they not pass must argue, to be consistent—that their offices on to their children. In the emergence of liberal democracy

 • A in northwestern Europe was largely Yet policymakers should find at the result of historical accidents that least one element of this book useful, cannot be reproduced by any earthly and that is what it has to say about power. Liberal democracy, it turns historical continuity. ere is no out, is a fluke. doubt that the road to Denmark is blocked in many parts of the world by s a historian, I concede that what ancient, entrenched, and thoroughly A FukuyamaFukuyama says about pre-mod-pre-mod- imperfect political traditions. I made ern political development sounds this case for Russia a number of years quite sensible. As a citizen worried ago, and I imagine my colleagues in about the failure of so much of the Chinese, Indian, African, and Latin world to get to Denmark, however, I American studies could make simi- have to say that it’s all a bit unsatisfy- lar cases for their respective areas of ing. is is because what Fukuyama interest. Political leaders should not has constructed, and constructed underestimate the intractability of quite solidly, is only a theory of pre- human nature or the weight of tradi- modern political development. In the tion. I learned this lesson two decades last section of the book, he as much ago playing pick-up basketball. It as admits this by arguing that “the may be that I wasn’t the only one: conditions for political development was playing then and have changed dramatically since the there as well. I doubt very much he eighteenth century.” e reason is, remembers our attempt to rationalize paradoxically, the emergence of lib- the noon game at the MAC. But it eral democracy and its handmaiden, doesn’t matter, for all he needs to do robust industrial . e to learn the lesson thereof is to read pre-modern rules do not apply in Francis Fukuyama’s finee Origins of the modern context, so Fukuyama’s Political Order. pre-modern theory of political devel- opment is of little aid to those con- temporary nations plodding toward Denmark. He promises a second Marshall Poe teaches history at the Uni- versity of Iowa. He is also the host volume covering the period from the of New Books in History French Revolution to the present that (http://newbooksinhistory.com), where will, presumably, adjust his theory to he interviewed Fukuyama about the modern conditions. I wish him luck. book under review.

  /  • 