Francis Fukuyama is chairman of the editorial board of American Purpose.
Fukuyama is Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), director of the Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy program, and Mosbacher Director of FSI’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, all at Stanford University.
Fukuyama’s most recent book is Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment (2018).
His two-volume analysis of political order—The Origins of Political Order and Political Order and Political Decay—appeared in 2011 and 2014. Other books include Our Posthuman Future (2000), The Great Disruption (1999), and Trust (1995).
His book The End of History and the Last Man (1992) has appeared in over twenty foreign editions.
Material Objects and Virtual Objects
In my recent post describing my long-term hobby of making furniture, I noted that woodworking was broadly speaking a pretty low-tech activity in which nostalgia for old technology played an important role. While this is largely true, that doesn’t mean that it can’t be linked to the virtual
2034
2034: A Novel of the Next World War by Eliot Ackerman and James Stavridis (New York: Penguin Press, 2021) imagines a future war between the United States and China that takes place in the eponymous year, much like Peter Singer’s Ghost Fleet. Admiral Stavridis had a highly distinguished military
Trust Science?
This week brought a startling development in the debate over the Covid epidemic. President Biden signed an executive order commanding the U.S. intelligence community to renew its investigation of the virus’ origins. This follows on an admission by Avril Haines, Director of National Intelligence, that we do not know
Just In Time
The Wall Street Journal recently published an article entitled “Auto Makers Retreat from 50 Years of ‘Just in Time’ Manufacturing.” It noted that the Covid pandemic, the semiconductor shortage, and the burgeoning U.S. conflict with China were forcing American auto makers to rethink the lean manufacturing technique first developed
Building Furniture
As you may have figured out by now, I like to build physical objects. My day job has always involved creating intangible things—books, articles, teaching, lecturing—and it is very satisfying to create objects that you can touch, sit on, and use in daily life. I built the beds
Facebook Sovereignty
Neal Stephenson’s classic 1992 cyberpunk novel Snow Crash depicts a future United States in which all forms of hierarchical authority have collapsed and each suburban subdivision has become its own burbclave requiring visas and passports to enter. There is a character named Raven who is untouchable for crimes he
Infrastructure, Governance, and Trust
Before I get off the subject of infrastructure, I want to make a more general point about the nature of governance at this point in the 21st century, which has to do with social trust. I wrote a whole book on this subject back in the 1990s, but a lot
A Highway in Montenegro and the Struggle with China
While we are on the subject of infrastructure, I want to take a moment to talk about how a highway in little Montenegro is playing out in the larger geopolitical struggle with China. Montenegro is the smallest country in the Balkans, with a population of just over 600,000. It
