Question

Why does Fukuyama think that we are at “the end of history” and how is his idea relevant to comparative economics?

Answer 1

Francis Fukuyama famously argued that the end of the Cold War was "the end of the ideological evolution of mankind and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government." He did not predict the future when he proclaimed the "end of history;" he proclaimed a verdict: History had shown that liberal democracy was the most successful form of government. History had ended in the sense that we had arrived at an answer to one of the key questions about the purpose (or telos, to be philosophically specific) of human civilization, one that had inspired human curiosity

The claim of Fukuyama-not its caricature-is as compelling and strong as ever. His claim that there is no conceivable ideological rival to liberal democracy is still true: despite China's rise and fall, the rise and fall of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, the return of Russian belligerence, and the waves of populism and nationalism sweeping the globe, there is no alternative, comprehensive set of political and economic ideas capable of rivaling liberal, univocal democracy.

Post-historic ennui fuels those forces and drives them. They act as parasites on liberalism: they depend simultaneously on and undermine the liberal order. The solution may be for the liberal state to step back and allow greater room for flourishing and meeting the spiritual needs of human beings for the pre-political institutions of society— the family, religious institutions, and civil society. Only such institutions can shield the natural human impulse toward political and religious fanaticism.