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Francis Fukuyama’s Top Ten Greatest Hits

Francis Fukuyama is one of the world’s leading scholars of democracy. The Stanford University political scientist has written for the Journal of Democracy more than two-dozen times over the last thirty-two years.

The following essays include some of Fukuyama’s most incisive, offering bold insights into the relationship between democracy, modernization, and political culture.


30 Years of World Politics: What Has Changed?
Democracies are grappling with an era of transformation: Identity is increasingly replacing economics as the major axis of world politics. As our most basic assumptions come under question, can liberal democracy rebuild itself?
January 2020

Why National Identity Matters
From enhancing physical security to encouraging mutual trust, an inclusive sense of national identity continues to be crucial to the flourishing of modern states.
October 2018

Making the Internet Safe for Democracy
The outsized power of large internet platforms to amplify or silence certain voices poses a grave threat to democracy. Finding a reliable way to dilute that power offers the best possible solution.
April 2021

Identity, Immigration, and Liberal Democracy
Contemporary liberal democracies, especially in Western Europe, face a major challenge in integrating Muslim immigrants as citizens of pluralistic societies.
April 2006

Why Is Democracy Performing So Poorly?
The failure to establish modern, well-governed states has been the Achilles heel of recent democratic transitions, as democratization without state modernization can actually lower the quality of governance.
January 2015

Democracy and the Quality of the State
What is the relationship between high-quality state administration and democracy? A look back at modern Greece and Italy, along with Germany and the United States, provides some insights.
October 2013

Transitions to the Rule of Law
While we have witnessed many transitions to multiparty systems, it has proven much harder for countries to attain a genuine rule of law. We need to know more about the origins of the rule of law in order to promote it successfully today.
January 2010

The March of Equality
For Tocqueville, democracy’s inevitability is not merely providential. Economic growth, property rights, technology, conflict, and enlightenment all push the march toward democracy. Such a powerful idea cannot be bound to a single religious community.
January 2000

Democracy’s Future: The Primacy of Culture
Democratic consolidation in the East will face the most difficulties in the cultural sphere. Democracy’s fate will depend on how the West handles its own sociocultural problems.
January 1995

Capitalism & Democracy: The Missing Link
Most highly developed societies are also stable democracies. Capitalism and democracy reinforce one another and promote a desire for universal recognition.
July 1992


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