Francis Fukuyama famously predicted 'the end of history’ with the ascendancy of liberal democracy and global capitalism. The topic of his latest book is, therefore, surprising: the building of new nation-states.The end of history was never an automatic procedure, Fukuyama argues, and the well-governed polity was always its necessary precondition. 'Weak or failed states are the source of many of the world’s most serious problems, ’ he believes. He traces what we know—and more often don’t know—about how to transfer functioning public institutions to developing countries in ways that will leave something of permanent benefit to the citizens of the countries concerned. These are important lessons, especially as the United States wrestles with its responsibilities in Afghanistan, Iraq, and beyond.Fukuyama begins State-Building with an account of the broad importance of 'stateness.’ He rejects the notion that there can be a science of public administration, and discusses the causes of contemporary state weakness. He ends the book with a discussion of the consequences of weak states for international order, and the grounds on which the international community may legitimately intervene to prop them up.
Spis treści
1. The Missing Dimensions of Stateness
The Contested Role of the State
Scope versus Strength
Scope, Strength, and Economic Development
The New Conventional Wisdom
The Supply of Institutions
The Demand for Institutions
Making Things Worse 2. Weak States and the Black Hole of Public Administration
Institutional Economics and the Theory of Organizations
The Ambiguity of Goals
Principals, Agents, and Incentives
Decentralization and Discretion
Losing, and Reinventing, the Wheel
Capacity-Building under Conditions of Organizational Ambiguity: Policy Implications 3. Weak States and International Legitimacy
The New Empire
The Erosion of Sovereignty
Nation-Building
Democratic Legitimacy at an International Level
Beyond the Nation-State 4. Smaller but Stronger Bibliography
Index
O autorze
Francis Fukuyama is a senior fellow and the Mosbacher director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. He is the author of Political Order and Political Decay, State-Building, The End of History and the Last Man, The Origins of Political Order, America at the Crossroads, and Falling Behind.