Welcome to a very special episode of Doomscroll. My guest is Francis Fukuyama, a scholar and political scientist.
Francis Fukuyama is a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Mosbacher Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. He is a council member of the International Forum for Democratic Studies founded by the National Endowment for Democracy and was a member of the Political Science Department of the RAND Corporation. He is the chair of the editorial board for American Purpose.
Francis Fukuyama is the author of many books; State-Building (2004), The Origins of Political Order (2011), Liberalism and its Discontents (2022) and numerous others. He is most well known for his 1992 work, The End of History & the Last Man.
Drawing on Hegel and Marx, Fukuyama explores the concept of teleology — the idea that history is a linear process where human societies progress through sequential socioeconomic forms. As Marx famously wrote, Feudalism was replaced by Capitalism and would ultimately be replaced by Socialism. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, Francis Fukuyama argued that western liberal democracy was the final form of human government.
His thesis has been updated and revised many times since and remains a frequent subject of debate today. He is considered by many to be the most influential political scientist of the late 20th century:
Francis Fukuyama: History and Democracy | Doomscroll
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My conversation with Francis Fukuyama continues behind the paywall:
Hi Josh, it would be awesome if you Adam Curtis on for an interview. Thanks!
This expands the Overton Window for possible guests tremendously