The goal is worthy but the path is unclear

Fukuyama (of End of History fame) is always fun to read. He has bold ideas and is effective at presenting them, even if you might not agree with his argument. He has a new book out reviewed in The Truth About Liberalism by Sophie McBain.

This is apparently the core of the new book, Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy by Francis Fukuyama.

According to Fukuyama, the three elements of a successful modern democracy are a legitimate and effective state, the rule of law, and democratic accountability. Countries exhibit these to various degrees. Take China, which has a highly effective state but a lack of democratic accountability. In India, the reverse is more true: its democratically elected leaders struggle, thanks to institutionalized corruption and bureaucratic incompetence, to get anything done.

Fukuyama does not single out a particular driving force behind political development, which he sees as a complex interplay of economics, culture, geography, climate, conflict, political personalities, and luck. He does, however, identify patterns. He offers, for instance, an interesting study into how different patterns of colonial rule in Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America have affected state development in these areas.

“The problem is that Denmark didn’t get to be Denmark in a matter of months and years,” Fukuyama writes. “Contemporary Denmark—and all other developing countries—gradually evolved modern institutions over centuries.” This means that attempts to impose institutions on countries from the outside rarely succeed. An underlying theme to Fukuyama’s latest work is the importance of humility and the need for policymakers to accept their limitations. In this way, Fukuyama is striking out at two sets of former colleagues.

I read and agree after translating into my own terms.

Legitimate and effective state - Consent of the governed.

The rule of law - Including private property.

Democratic accountability - Transparency, accountability and consequences

I also agree that every state has its own path dependencies towards development that are difficult to discern or predict. You cannot accelerate the seasoning of wood and you cannot impose institutions. It is analogous to the long failure we have had of trying to make people middle class by giving them middle class things (home ownership, education attainment, etc.), failing to recognize that those things are a consequence of being middle class, not a cause of it.

That doesn't mean that there is nothing to be done to help the process along. Only that the things that can be done to help are usually smaller, less obvious and take a longer time than anything we typically do today.