I liked it. I learned a lot of history and can understand better the relationship between the ruling part of a government and the functional part. Took a long time to finish! ( )

I suppose I learned something, but the book was very heavy and with the audio version I couldn't see the figures the author kept talking about. I had not known anything about the history of governments in Central/South America, Africa, or most of Asia, and there was a bit of that. ( )

Sweeping overview of history of modern state; classic Fukuyama ( )

Democracy and Liberalism
In the second volume of his work in political theory Francis Fukuyama contemplates the development of democracy and it's main characteristics (modern state, rule of law and accountability). Reflecting on the experiences of different countries and regions, the Author discuss the possibilities of democracy and the perils and challenges it faces. Liberal democracy, argues Fukuyama, isn't a natural development in politics. It must be constructed with institutions and desired by the people. Most important, it must answers the demands and fulfills the aspirations of the society. The ideal solution, Fukuyama points, is an efficient liberal democracy. In that regard, there is no simple solution. One must experiences distinct institutions and relates to diverse historical background. In the meantime, one has to believe in the advantages of democracy, because authoritarianism and dictatorship are along the way. Easy said than done! ( )

This book does not adequately consider the exceptionalism of South Africa, the only African country where there was a substantial colonial creation of a state, and regimes that employed notions of the rule of law and accountability which, however, excluded the majority of people. But its characterisation of colonialism in Africa as "dominion of the cheap" and its use of Mamdani's view that apartheid was the generic form of the colonial state in Africa provide an illumination of the overall themes in this two volume characterisation of the world today. You cannot read just the second volume, you have to read volume one first. Volume one is on the positive side of OK. Volume 2 is very good indeed. "All societies, authoritarian and democratic, are subject to decay over time. The real issue is their ability is to adapt and eventually fix themselves." So the decay in our fledgling democracy, even before it has fledged, is disappointing, but not unusual - or the end of the road. Neopatrimonialism and clientalism surround us on all sides but Britain and the US dealt well with the same tendencies in the nineteenth and early twentienth centuries. The US has since decayed into a "vetocracy", and the EU is heading in the same direction. But the struggle continues! The analysis of Greece and Tanzania is new and unusual - and China forms a unifying theme across the 2 volumes - a strong state that has avoided both the rule of law (it has rule by law) and democracy. The references are amazingly wide, and the book is a very engaging read. ( )