Francis Fukuyama

Fukuyama, Francis, 1952–, American political scientist, b. Chicago, grad. Cornell (B.A., 1974), Harvard (Ph.D., 1981). He has been a political scientist at the RAND Corporation (1979–80, 1983–89, 1995–96), served on the State Dept.'s policy planning staff (1981–82, 1989), and taught George Mason Univ. (1996–2000), Johns Hopkins (2001–2010), and Stanford (2010–). Fukuyama is best known for the international best seller The End of History and the Last Man (1992), in which he suggests that the last political stage in humanity's long history is liberal democracy. Long considered a neoconservative, he broke with the movement over the Iraq War and other policies of the G. W. Bush administration, which is reflected in America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservatives (2006). His other books include Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity (1995), Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution (2002), State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century (2004), and The Origins of Political Order (2011).

See studies by K. M. Jensen, ed. (1990), J. L. Luzkow (2003), and C. Hughes (2011).

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