Editor's Note:

American political scientist Francis Fukuyama (Fukuyama) became famous for his 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man, which argued that the competition between ideologies that had previously driven history was over, and that the triumph of liberal democracy was inevitable. Fukuyama's theory has been controversial, and some scholars claim there has been a change in his recent works. Does Fukuyama still hold to his old views today? How does he see China's rise and the effects of globalization? Global Times (GT) reporter Wang Wen interviewed him on these questions.

GT: Have you changed your theories in the last two or three years and moved away from the views expressed in The End of History and the Last Man?

Fukuyama: Well, I don't think so. I haven't changed the theoretical bases of the way I see the world.

I have changed my views about some particular political issues.

I think in the last decade the US has made big mistakes, such as the Iraq War and the financial crisis in 2008, which were the outcomes of conservative policies that just didn't work very well in practice.

As a result of that, I parted company with a lot of my old friends. But that is just the policy difference.

I still think that there isn't much of alternative to liberal democracy as a political system

I think I'm much more conscious of how important institutions are. That really comes more from my work with developing countries.

You know in Africa, and South Asia there are a lot of countries that don't have state capacity. There is a high degree of corruption. They can't deliver services to their people.

So even they are democratic, they don't do well. So what I'm doing now is to try to understand the process of state building and strengthening the capacity  of states.

What I said in my last book was that the political system should really have three things. It has to have a state. It has to have the rule of law. It has to have some system of accountability. A country which lacks any of the three cannot work well.

GT: Have you changed your mind on any major issues?

Fukuyama: I would say, two big challenges to my original thesis have to do with Islamic fundamentalism and then with China.

So, one is the fundamentalism. I don't think it is a serious argument. I think their existence doesn't affect the nature of development of ideology very much. Because, you know, very few people want to live in that kind of society. They all come from Muslim countries that begin with. Nobody is converted to that. Nobody in the US or China turns into Islamists. 

The durability of the Chinese economic success is a different story. Because as an economic system, it is much more impressive.

No Muslim country has really succeeded in growing rapidly. China has done that. But in the end there will be some challenges.

GT: What do you think about China's democratization? What kind of changes are there?

Fukuyama: I just think that there are real problems in the way China is governed.

You know, among other things, I think recent affairs indicate that they are still not well established rules for leadership selection.

Many experts believe the market cannot be sustainable without grassroots feedback.

Well, I think the general nature of Chinese government is going to face challenges. I don't think the regime will be able to keep the economy growing forever.

When it comes to the rule of law, there will be a gradual expansion of the accountability of people to act according to rules and in some degree of response for the pressure.

But the thing in China is that once you get up to the elections in the Party, it stops.

GT: You've said the China model is hard to copy. But isn't the US model hard to copy too? Look at Iraq, Afghanistan, or the Philippines.

Fukuyama: That's true. The establishing of successful democracy is not that easy.

And I think a lot of struggles, you see, the developing countries have to do with the difficulty in the development that can be modeled.

But while we can talk about countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, these are special cases. Afghanistan was never a modern state to begin with. And numerous others failed at nation-building there.

We need to look at Indonesia. We need to look at Turkey. You know, these are all pretty healthy democracies.

GT: What do you think about social media?

Fukuyama: I think it's complicated. In general, it's not just social media, but information in general.

Information is cheaper, easier and more accessible. It's good for democracy, because information is power and if you give people information, you give them power instead of controlling them from a higher level.

So in general, it's good for democracy, but not in all respects.

Countries cannot control what people see and hear to the extent they used to be able to. I think in particular for some regimes, it's very threatening, because it allows people to organize, share information and you know that they sometimes want to organize against the regime.

But I think the benefits are much greater than any downsides. Because democracy is supposed to include protests and complaints, to hold the government accountable.

And I think social media just assures that possibility and forces the government to be able to cope with that.

GT: Did the financial crisis of 2008 challenge the US role or send it into decline?

Fukuyama: I think that is a dangerous assumption, because the US has been in trouble many times.

During the 19th century it saw repeated financial crises, as well as the Great Depression (1929-39).

When it was a rising power, it had its ups and downs, so the question is not whether the US experienced big setbacks before this current crisis.

But society has the ability to make resolutions afterward and create comebacks.