“End of History” Francis Fukuyama

T HE “E MPIRICAL ” A RGUMENT Fukuyama points out that since the beginning of the Nineteenth Century, democracy, which started off as being merely one among many systems of government, has grown until nowadays the majority of governments in the world are termed "democratic". He also points out that democracy's main intellectual alternatives (which he takes to be various forms of dictatorship) have become discredited.

T HE “P HILOSOPHICAL ” A RGUMENT Fukuyama argues that the original battles for prestige among the first men of history, and the willingness of some to risk their lives in order to receive recognition from another is an unnecessary form of human behavior within a democracy. In essence; the roles of master and slave are rationally understood by both parties to be unsatisfying and self- defeating. This follows the work of Hegel and an Anglo-Saxon tradition typified by John Locke's ideas on self preservation and the right to property.

T HE “I NSTITUTIONAL ” A RGUMENT Finally Fukuyama also argues that for a variety of reasons, radical socialism (or communism) is likely to be incompatible with modern representative democracy. Therefore, in the future, democracies are overwhelmingly likely to contain markets of some sort, and most are likely to be capitalist or social democratic.

A SSUMPTIONS  According to Fukuyama, since the French Revolution, democracy has repeatedly proven to be a fundamentally better system (ethically, politically, economically) than any of the alternatives.  Fukuyama does not claim at any point that events will stop happening in the future. What he is claiming is that all that will happen in the future (even if totalitarianism returns) is that democracy will become more and more prevalent in the long term, although it may have 'temporary' setbacks (which may, of course, last for centuries).  Fukuyama's argument is only that in the future there will be more and more governments that use the framework of parliamentary democracy and that contain markets of some sort.

A RGUMENTS  Empirical evidence has been used to support the theory. Freedom House argues that there was not a single liberal democracy with universal suffrage in the world in 1900, but that today 120 (62 percent) of the world's 192 nations are such democracies. They count 25 (19 percent) nations with 'restricted democratic practices' in 1900 and 16 (8%) today. They counted 19 (14 percent) constitutional monarchies in 1900, where a constitution limited the powers of the monarch, and with some power devolved to elected legislatures, and none today. Other nations had, and have, various forms of non-democratic rule.  The democratic peace theory argues that there is statistical evidence that democracy decreases systematic violence such as external and internal wars and conflicts. This seems compatible with Fukuyama's theory, but hardly with the increasing class conflicts that Marx predicted.  The end of the Cold War and the subsequent increase in the number of liberal democratic states were accompanied by a sudden and dramatic decline in total warfare, interstate wars, ethnic wars, revolutionary wars, and the number of refugees and displaced persons.