Francis Fukuyama quotes

Francis Fukuyama is a renowned American political scientist and author, best known for his influential work "The End of History and the Last Man." He is a leading expert in global politics and has made significant contributions to the field of political theory. Fukuyama's insights on democracy, governance, and international relations have shaped academic discourse and policy-making around the world. With a distinguished career spanning decades, Fukuyama continues to be a prominent voice in contemporary political debates. Learn more about Francis Fukuyama and his impactful work by exploring his books and articles.

Politics emerges as a mechanism for controlling violence, yet violence constantly remains as a background condition for certain types of political change. Societies can get stuck in a dysfunctional institutional equilibrium, in which existing stakeholders can veto necessary institutional change. Sometimes violence or the threat of violence is necessary to break out of the equilibrium.

- Francis Fukuyama

Most people living in rich, stable developed countries have no idea how Denmark itself got to be Denmark — something that is true for many Danes as well. The struggle to create modern political institutions was so long and so painful that people living in industrialized countries now suffer from a historical amnesia regarding how their societies came to that point in the first place.

- Francis Fukuyama

In China, once collective farms were disbanded in 1978 under the leadership of the reformer Deng Xiaoping, agricultural output doubled in the space of just four years.

- Francis Fukuyama

Human beings are rule-following animals by nature; they are born to conform to the social norms they see around them, and they entrench those rules with often transcendent meaning and value. When the surrounding environment changes and new challenges arise, there is often a disjunction between existing institutions and present needs. Those institutions are supported by legions of entrenched stakeholders who oppose any fundamental change.

- Francis Fukuyama

Free markets are necessary to promote long-term growth, but they are not self-regulating, particularly when it comes to banks and other large financial institutions.

- Francis Fukuyama

The nation will continue to be a central pole of identification, even if more and more nations come to share common economic and political forms of organization.

- Francis Fukuyama