Fukuyama’s Universal History

Abstract

There is a gap between the scholarly salience of works of political theory and their influence and reception outside of academic precincts. It seems that scholarly reputation hardly moves on a par with political import. Consider John Rawls. More has been written in academic journals about the works of the author ofATheory of Justice (1971) than about, say, Hayek, Oakeshott, Schmitt, or Strauss. But while the mountain of paper spent writing on Rawls lords over the rest, neither Rawls, nor any of his disciples, have ever gained any substantial ascendance in the political world, let alone any of the influence in the chancelleries of power the other four have had. Almost the opposite, however, could be said about Francis Fukuyama’s The End of the History and the Last Man (1992). Widely discussed in periodicals and magazines, and translated into more than ten languages, there is nevertheless very little serious writing on it within North-Atlantic academic political theory. But Fukuyama has had a huge audience and influence on policy debates and in governmental circles, in addition to possessing formidable academic credentials that include impressive syntheses of great scope around questions of identity, the making and unmaking of political orders, and the fate of liberal democracy today.