Review: The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution

It is really tempting to explain things in terms of one or two factors, especially politics. I've been guilty of it myself; I've written "it's geography, stupid!" more times than I'd like to say. Yet, simplifying explanations of history, society, and government tend to be tools of evil (or stupidity). In the past, Christianity and Catholicism were used to explain imperialism under the guise of the White Man's Burden. The Nazi Reich based their explanations of the history of the world through racial differences and genetics. And today, we see the rising spectre of religious and racial hatred in the alt-right movements in Europe and the United States. We see people (close to our President!) putting history as a battle of "Christianity" versus "Islam" and "the White Man" versus "The Colored Man".

You also see some simple, not evil answers too. For example, somebody somewhere said something about guns and germs and steel explaining why some societies developed while other failed to. And while that certainly seems like a reason that the Americas failed to develop while Eurasia had millennia old states, it doesn't explain why some states became modern since they were freed from imperialism and while other states simply fell apart.

Fukuyama, in The Origins, is described the origin of the state and political order to set context for his book... Political Order. To do this he brings out all the major social sciences that he can: anthropology, sociology, demography, geography, economics and, of course, history. This makes what is essential/The best AP World History book (that won't get you a 5) ever/.

The history starts some six million years ago, while humanity was breaking off from our primate cousins, continues with the increasingly complicated relationship between families, tribes, and clans and ultimately culminates in the first state: imperial China. From Imperial China, we move west, to India, and then the Middle East, where we finally get to Europe to explore how the different histories of democracy unfolded until we get to the French Revolution.

In each location, we get another piece of the puzzle to what makes a state a /good/ state. China, for example, was the first that was able to subdue the social human animal:

Fukuyama considers a major factor and signal of political decay to be "Patrimonialism", or the genetic predisposition we have as humans to favor our families (through kin selection) or those who have allied with us (through reciprocal altruism). We might, as non-scholars, simply call it "nepotism" or "letting your daughter hang out with you and foreign leaders." Time and time again, it becomes the state societies revert to, whether by weak political structure or overt attempts to build such a society.

However, some societies, like India never get past patrimonialism. India's caste system is hyper-patrimonialism, where the entire structure of the universe is devoted to making sure that resources stay within a family line. Meanwhile, patrimonialism is subdued by religion in the eruption of Islam and the concept of the umma, or in the Catholic Church's insistence on her marriage laws being taken seriously (which, incidentally, meant the Catholic Church would acquire more and more resources).

At the same time, religion allows there to be a highly developed rule of law: India, Western Europe, and the Muslim world all have a highly developed sense that their leaders are below God's law. Yet, in China or Russia (influenced by the Hordes) religion was subservient to the leader. Indeed, in China the religion never developed past ancestor worship!

This rule of law is necessary for a state to be both powerful and to be checked. It means that the state and its ruler is beholden to something greater than itself. That means, depending on the era, religion but it also means literally just legal constitutions. It is powerful enough to bind the warriors of India to the brahmin religious class above them... but also keep kings from massacring entire towns.

The third piece of political order is accountability. Accountability is built into our primeval social structures: if the Chieftan fails to be good, we just make somebody else Chieftan. You can literally look at the person while you do it. But as societies grow large, accountability disappears. It may arise, like in Eastern European kingdoms, where only certain portions of the noble class have any power over the ruler. Or it might fail to arise at all, as it did in China. Or even noble accountability might be squashed, as it was in France and Russia.

The balance of these three- rule of law, accountability, and a modern meritocratic state- are what make political order. They, in turn, are embattled and bolstered by a constellation of religion, patrimonialism, and secular values. What made Europe explosively imperial? Guns, germs and steel!

But other stuff, too.