Speaker 1: Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background to show
Speaker 1: where we explore the stories behind the stories in the news.
Speaker 1: I'm Noah Feldman. This week we're in the middle of
Speaker 1: a Deep Background mini series on international power and the
Speaker 1: people who shape it. In this episode, we're fortunate to
Speaker 1: have one of the world's best known public intellectuals to
Speaker 1: help us explore important aspects of these questions. Francis Fukuiyama
Speaker 1: is a scholar based at Stanford University, where he's a
Speaker 1: professor of political science and a Senior Fellow at the
Speaker 1: Spoli Institute for International Studies. For thirty years now, he's
Speaker 1: been writing fascinating, influential books about democracy, political order, how
Speaker 1: it devel ellops, how it changes, and how it can decay.
Speaker 1: He first came to global attention with an essay and book,
Speaker 1: The End of History and the Last Man, published just
Speaker 1: at the point that the Cold War was beginning to
Speaker 1: come to an end. Since then, he's published, among other things,
Speaker 1: two massive six hundred and fifty page books on the
Speaker 1: nature of political order from pre human times to the
Speaker 1: French Revolution, and then on political order and political decay
Speaker 1: from the Industrial Revolution to the globalization of democracy. Most
Speaker 1: recently he published a fascinating book on identity and contemporary politics. Today,
Speaker 1: we're going to delve deep into the question of what
Speaker 1: decay is, whether the United States is entering a period
Speaker 1: of decay that is going to effect its global standing,
Speaker 1: its relationship with other countries in the world, and particularly China.
Speaker 1: Sometimes controversial, always provocative, and frequently extraordinarily deep, Frank Fukuyama
Speaker 1: is the perfect person with whom to discuss the trajectory
Speaker 1: of democracy in the world and in the United States today. Frank,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for being here. Frank, even before
Speaker 1: Donald Trump was elected, in fact, a good deal before,
Speaker 1: you published one of your big books called Political Order
Speaker 1: and Political Decay, in which you introduced the idea of
Speaker 1: a form of democratic decay and suggested that in a
Speaker 1: range of ways, the United States was starting to enter
Speaker 1: a period of such democratic decay, although not perhaps in
Speaker 1: every way. I wonder if we could begin with the
Speaker 1: concept of decay, and if we start with some definitions,
Speaker 1: we might be able to jump start a deeper conversation
Speaker 1: about what is and is not happening with respect to
Speaker 1: decay in the United States and of democracy in other
Speaker 1: democratic countries. Sure so, my teacher in graduate school. With
Speaker 1: Sam Huntington and his famous nineteen sixty eight book Political
Speaker 1: Order and Changing Societies, talked about the process of political
Speaker 1: decay where society has developed faster than political institutions. People's
Speaker 1: expectations rose, the political system didn't meet those expectations, and
Speaker 1: that led to instability. My concept is based on that.
Speaker 1: It's similar, but it goes off in a couple of
Speaker 1: different directions. So I do think that the ability of
Speaker 1: a political system to meet expectations is critical for stability.
Speaker 1: But the reason that they don't meet expectations oftentimes has
Speaker 1: to do with two factors. One of them is just
Speaker 1: the excessive rigidity of the system. It's too hard to reform,
Speaker 1: so that even though elites may recognize that the system
Speaker 1: is not keeping up with the demands placed on it,
Speaker 1: they can't do anything to fix it. But the other one,
Speaker 1: which wasn't really similar Sam's framework, was this idea of
Speaker 1: political capture by elites use their wealth and power to
Speaker 1: basically grab hold of parts of the state and to
Speaker 1: brend those parts to their own self interest. Both of
Speaker 1: these things were things I saw happening in the United States.
Speaker 1: We had obvious problems with our democracy that made it
Speaker 1: less responsive to popular demands, but we couldn't change it
Speaker 1: because we have a very rigid constitutional system that is
Speaker 1: extremely hard to change. But we also had this process
Speaker 1: by which very powerful organized interest groups were ensconcing themselves
Speaker 1: in different parts of the state and burnding it to
Speaker 1: their own wishes. And I think in many ways that
Speaker 1: was one of the conditions that led to this upsurge
Speaker 1: of populism represented by Donald Trump, that ordinary people felt
Speaker 1: the system wasn't serving them. So those are the senses
Speaker 1: in which I thought the system was. Hey, Frank, building
Speaker 1: on what you just said about populist authoritarianism, which in
Speaker 1: the US we had Donald Trump as our version, but
Speaker 1: we got him out after one term. So in global terms,
Speaker 1: that's actually a win in response to populist authoritarianism. If
Speaker 1: you compare that to places like Hungry or Poland, where
Speaker 1: populist authoritarians have so far been more durable, or certainly Russia.
Speaker 1: Do you see populist authoritarianism then as just a symptom
Speaker 1: of decay that's actually caused by capture by elites, that is,
Speaker 1: the public. A lot of members of the public feel
Speaker 1: like they can't get access and so they give you,
Speaker 1: in turn trump or a victor orbon or. Is it also,
Speaker 1: that is to say, not just a symptom of the
Speaker 1: other causes of decay, but also a contributor to the decay,
Speaker 1: because at least in ordinary terms of the word decay,
Speaker 1: you know, you have someone who's an authoritarian, they will
Speaker 1: undercut democratic institutions even further and make them seem illegitimate
Speaker 1: and even less responsive to popular demand. Well, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: all of those things. So, first of all, the particular
Speaker 1: form that decay took after twenty sixteen, with the rise
Speaker 1: of populist nationalists, was not simply the result of rigid
Speaker 1: political systems. I mean, Japan has a very rigid political system,
Speaker 1: but I don't think it's really suffering from the kind
Speaker 1: of decay that we're experiencing. So there was something else
Speaker 1: going on in society, which, when combined with the rigidities
Speaker 1: of the system, I think produced this populist upsurge. You know,
Speaker 1: those changes in society I think had to do with
Speaker 1: economics and society. The society was splintering into at least
Speaker 1: two very distinct cultural groups, one of which was very
Speaker 1: well educated, open to a cosmopolitan, globalized world doing quite well,
Speaker 1: and the other part tended to live in smaller towns
Speaker 1: and cities or in the countryside, felt disconnected from all
Speaker 1: of the big socioeconomic and technological changes that had been happening.
Speaker 1: And that explains the particular resentments that emerged. That meant
Speaker 1: that the populace backlash when it came, wasn't just about economics.
Speaker 1: It was also about culture. It was about people feeling
Speaker 1: that the elites in the country had stolen the national identity,
Speaker 1: transformed it into something that they weren't comfortable with. That
Speaker 1: involved the downplaying of patriotism, of religion, of a lot
Speaker 1: of traditional social values. And so I think it required
Speaker 1: those sorts of social transformations mixed together with the rigidities
Speaker 1: of the system and the elite capture that led to
Speaker 1: our current situation. As your question about which way the
Speaker 1: causality moves, I think, you know, as in many phenomena,
Speaker 1: it moves in both directions. So I think the external
Speaker 1: changes in the economy and technology promoted this kind of
Speaker 1: social fracturing. But once the society fractured, it fed back
Speaker 1: into the decay because you know, people felt that they
Speaker 1: were trapped in this unreformable system. I want to go
Speaker 1: deeper into the polarization component of what you're describing. Before
Speaker 1: we do, let me just ask a further follow up
Speaker 1: question about this broader picture of decay. The causes of
Speaker 1: decay that you're describing are pretty country specific. Rigidity in
Speaker 1: a system could vary from country to country, Capture by
Speaker 1: elites could vary from country to country. Even polarization might
Speaker 1: be different depending on where you are. Yet, the decay
Speaker 1: of democracies constitutional democracies broadly speaking, is a phenomenon we're
Speaker 1: seeing in lots of different countries with pretty different circumstances
Speaker 1: over the last decade or so. Why this convergence among
Speaker 1: countries that are pretty different from each other if the
Speaker 1: core causes of decay are basically specific to the country, Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, just a kind of social scientific caution.
Speaker 1: I don't think we should overgeneralize, because you know, what's
Speaker 1: going on in Russia is very different from India, is
Speaker 1: different from Hungary, is different from the United States, and
Speaker 1: so there are very specific characteristics. But I would say
Speaker 1: that what's common is that sociological cleavage that I just
Speaker 1: described that almost everywhere you look, people that vote for
Speaker 1: liberal politicians tend to live in big cities or urban
Speaker 1: agglomerations that are well connected to the global economy. The
Speaker 1: people that vote for populous politicians tend to live in
Speaker 1: second and third tier cities, towns, villages, or in the countryside.
Speaker 1: And that's very true almost universally. That's true in Hungary,
Speaker 1: it's true in Turkey, it's true in Russia's true in
Speaker 1: the United States, it's true in Britain. And so I
Speaker 1: do think that there is a common sociology that connects
Speaker 1: all of the new forms of populism with one another.
Speaker 1: And probably the single biggest, you know cleavage there really
Speaker 1: has to do with education, because education has pushed people.
Speaker 1: First of all, it's affected very much their economic prospects,
Speaker 1: but it's also pushed them in very cultural directions. And
Speaker 1: so that's constant. But I think then you get into
Speaker 1: country specific differences. So in India, the populism has taken
Speaker 1: the form of religion rather than nationalism. I mean, the
Speaker 1: two overlap, you know, considerably, but there's a very specific
Speaker 1: desire to return India to its religious, you know, Hindu
Speaker 1: religious roots. There are other countries that, you know, in
Speaker 1: a way I've been able to mitigate the populism like Italy,
Speaker 1: that you don't have this red blue cleavage that we
Speaker 1: have in the United States, because you know, our winner
Speaker 1: take all, first past the post electoral system really rewards
Speaker 1: that kind of biarification into a two party system, whereas
Speaker 1: Italy's system is always rewarded much greater splintering, and in
Speaker 1: a way that's been a good thing because that's protected
Speaker 1: them from a populous takeover. So I guess one further
Speaker 1: thing to say is that we in the United States,
Speaker 1: I think, have a particularly unhappy historical legacy, which is
Speaker 1: a legacy of race. I do think that in the
Speaker 1: United States that racial history is particularly important in explaining
Speaker 1: a lot of the depth of the effective polarization, you know,
Speaker 1: the emotional part of the polarization that we're experiencing, which
Speaker 1: I think is much weaker in most European countries. That's
Speaker 1: a fascinating point. I tend to agree with you that
Speaker 1: there are very few powers in Europe to the kind
Speaker 1: of systemic racism in the United States that emerged from
Speaker 1: the history of slavery and then segregation in law, and
Speaker 1: then subsequently segregation to some degree in practice. That said,
Speaker 1: I do think if you look at a place like
Speaker 1: France with a colonial legacy, at a large population of
Speaker 1: people who are descendants of people who lived in colonies,
Speaker 1: specifically in North Africa. There are certainly tendencies towards, let's say,
Speaker 1: differential policing of different communities based on race, different economic
Speaker 1: opportunities based on race. It's just that the French pretend
Speaker 1: they can make that disappear by saying we don't see race.
Speaker 1: So I hear the point. I think it's a very
Speaker 1: interesting one. Let me ask about the identity issue that
Speaker 1: you're pointing two now, and you address that in another
Speaker 1: book on identity that was published a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1: I want to begin by asking about the right left
Speaker 1: politics around identity. You know, there was a long period
Speaker 1: of time in which the left in the US was
Speaker 1: gradually embracing the idea of identity politics, and the right
Speaker 1: was pretty skeptical of it and was arguing against identity politics.
Speaker 1: And yet, as you note in the book, one consequence
Speaker 1: of the rise of Trump has been the emergence of
Speaker 1: identity politics on the right. So how does it change
Speaker 1: things that everyone, as it were, on the political spectrum
Speaker 1: thinks that identity is crucial to human self expression. Well,
Speaker 1: for for someone like me, who's basically an old fashioned liberal,
Speaker 1: it makes liberal democracy extremely difficult. Let me just get
Speaker 1: a couple of definitional things. Clear, identity is a very
Speaker 1: broad concept, and it can be used for good purposes
Speaker 1: and bad purposes. And you know, I argued in that
Speaker 1: book Identity, that we actually need national identity. I mean,
Speaker 1: we need a common set of historical references narratives that
Speaker 1: bind us together as Americans. And each one of us
Speaker 1: is carrying around multiple identities in our professional lives, in
Speaker 1: our families, and our religion, you know, and so forth.
Speaker 1: The kind of identity that's really toxic for a democracy
Speaker 1: are those that are related to fixed characteristics. But even
Speaker 1: that is not so terrible, because you know, if you're female,
Speaker 1: if you're African American, if you're gay, you know, you
Speaker 1: have specific experiences that bind you to other people in
Speaker 1: that category that make you different from others. But I
Speaker 1: think that where identity politics becomes dangerous for democracy is
Speaker 1: when people begin to regard those kinds of fixed identities
Speaker 1: as essential to the way that they define themselves, such
Speaker 1: that they trump you know, other economic interests or opinions
Speaker 1: or things of that sort. And I think that's the
Speaker 1: situation that unfortunately the country has slid into, you know,
Speaker 1: the in the Halcyon nineteen eighties, we would argue over
Speaker 1: policy issues like should taxes be higher or lower, or
Speaker 1: should we have more or less you know, social welfare spending,
Speaker 1: and those, you know, are ultimately issues that can be compromised.
Speaker 1: But when you get into some of the extremes of
Speaker 1: the identity debate today, you have people saying, well, you know,
Speaker 1: on the extreme right, this is essentially a white, you know,
Speaker 1: European country, and you have people on the left saying,
Speaker 1: you know, this is a racist country of white patriarchy
Speaker 1: that's also never going to change. And those kinds of
Speaker 1: positions are really not negotiable, you know, in any meaningful way.
Speaker 1: And that also prevents people experiencing kind of a common
Speaker 1: sense of identity, which then allows them to compromise, wise,
Speaker 1: to deliberate, to argue about things, but ultimately to believe
Speaker 1: that they're part of a common political system in which
Speaker 1: they don't get everything they want. But you know, because
Speaker 1: it's basically a liberal democratic one, they also are represented
Speaker 1: and their voices are heard in a perverse way, though
Speaker 1: there's some overlap between the views of people who intensely
Speaker 1: disagree with each other. There, I mean to the extent
Speaker 1: that a kind of Afro pessimist view would say that
Speaker 1: racism is baked into the structure of the United States
Speaker 1: and cannot change, and to the extent that some white
Speaker 1: supremacists who embrace white supremacy, they would say the same.
Speaker 1: And so presumably, and you don't say this in the book,
Speaker 1: but presumably a middle ground position which would give us
Speaker 1: common cause, would give some acknowledgement to historical practices of racism,
Speaker 1: while simultaneously talking about the capacity for change that the
Speaker 1: United States needs to have, even if it were true
Speaker 1: that it never done so in a meaningful way in
Speaker 1: the past, and I think that's debatable. It needs to
Speaker 1: change in order to in order to go forward. Well,
Speaker 1: that's exactly right. You know. One of the ironies of
Speaker 1: the present moment is that the left and the right
Speaker 1: have in a way joined hands. On the left, you know,
Speaker 1: a certain type of essentialist identity politics in the end
Speaker 1: becomes indistinguishable from that kind of right wing nationalism that
Speaker 1: we're all blown into. These groups. We have these lived
Speaker 1: experiences that are shared only among those groups, and that
Speaker 1: there's really no common experience that can bind us together.
Speaker 1: I actually think that this is a wrong but also
Speaker 1: very destructive, and it should be perfectly possible to come
Speaker 1: up with a narrative that actually bridges the left and
Speaker 1: right in this country where you say, yes, there was
Speaker 1: an original sin of slavery that was continued shamefully well
Speaker 1: into the twenty a century. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: the situation of African America as women, gays, and lesbians,
Speaker 1: you know, all of these marginalized groups is better than
Speaker 1: it was, and in many ways, I think we are
Speaker 1: living in the kind of most equal and open society
Speaker 1: that America has ever had. It's just that we have
Speaker 1: problems at the extremes, and many people don't don't believe
Speaker 1: that particular centrist narrative. But it is also true that
Speaker 1: in January sixth, twenty twenty one mob of people actually
Speaker 1: invaded the Capitol in what was, to my mind an
Speaker 1: extraordinary symbol of democratic decay. The people who were doing
Speaker 1: that were devoted to the idea that democracy hadn't functioned
Speaker 1: the way it ought to have, and that they could
Speaker 1: do something about it, and they could do something about
Speaker 1: it by force, and they had encouragement that we can
Speaker 1: argue about where there was incitement, but they had encouragement
Speaker 1: from the person who had been president of the United States.
Speaker 1: I want to use all of what you've been saying,
Speaker 1: and it's extremely helpful and clarifying to shift to the
Speaker 1: question of what this means for the power of democracies
Speaker 1: in the world, especially the US, relative to the emerging
Speaker 1: alternate models, and particularly the model of China. And to
Speaker 1: frame that question, I just want to begin by saying,
Speaker 1: it does seem really clear, at a distance of nearly
Speaker 1: thirty years since the end of the Cold War, that
Speaker 1: while liberal democracy did not definitively win a victory overall
Speaker 1: alternative systems, some form of market capitalism did. So, you know,
Speaker 1: the Chinese model is one that it's a state directed capitalism,
Speaker 1: but it's clearly market driven, and it's clearly capitalist. And
Speaker 1: at the same time as we're seeing decay and democracy,
Speaker 1: we're seeing innovation and variation on the Chinese side. I
Speaker 1: don't think that means that China's government has solved all
Speaker 1: of the problems that a government that wants to be
Speaker 1: legitimate has to be solved by a long shot. But
Speaker 1: they are offering a model that has brought a lot
Speaker 1: of people out of poverty, that seems stable, that seems functional,
Speaker 1: and that seems to be legitimate to a very large
Speaker 1: number of its citizens. So I wonder whether you think
Speaker 1: that the US's decay is really going to contribute to
Speaker 1: the process of its decline in global power and influence
Speaker 1: relative to China, because it's coming at just a moment
Speaker 1: when the Chinese system seems to be doing fairly well. Well, yes,
Speaker 1: I think that that's already happened. I think that our
Speaker 1: ability to respond to China has been very much weakened
Speaker 1: by our internal divisions, not to speak of Russia, where
Speaker 1: many Republicans have openly said that they dislike the Democrats
Speaker 1: more than they dislike you know, Vladimir Putin's Russia. So
Speaker 1: if there is ever a case of, you know, a
Speaker 1: great power being weakened by internal dissension, this is it.
Speaker 1: You know, I would say that we need to be
Speaker 1: a little bit cautious about projecting China's current status forward
Speaker 1: in history. It's true that they have done extraordinarily well
Speaker 1: over the last forty years in bringing their country up
Speaker 1: out of poverty, but you know, there are big problems
Speaker 1: in that system that have to do with what they
Speaker 1: themselves call the bad emperor problem. That is to say,
Speaker 1: any system with checks and balances on executive power, like
Speaker 1: our system is going to do worse than an authoritarian
Speaker 1: system in many circumstances, because an authoritarian system can turn
Speaker 1: on a diamond. If you've got a competent, wise leader
Speaker 1: at the top of the hierarchy, they can make a
Speaker 1: very very rapid shift. But you know what's happened in
Speaker 1: Chinese tree is you get a bad leader without saying,
Speaker 1: kind of unchecked power, and that becomes very dangerous and
Speaker 1: it was hugely destructive during a cultural revolution when Mao
Speaker 1: is really the last bad emperor that they had. Whether
Speaker 1: Shijimping goes down that path, I don't know, but he
Speaker 1: looks like he wants to. But you know, at this
Speaker 1: point you have to admit that they're doing relatively a
Speaker 1: lot better than we are, because they do seem to
Speaker 1: be quite purposeful and we do not. We'll be right back, Frank,
Speaker 1: may I push back just ever so gently on the
Speaker 1: bad emperor problem formulation. I mean from roughly nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: two when Dung Shoping stepped down till say twenty and
Speaker 1: twelve when it became clear that Shijinping was when he
Speaker 1: took over, going to do things differently. So for a
Speaker 1: twenty year period in between, the Chinese had a couple
Speaker 1: of rounds where there was no real emperor, where power
Speaker 1: was shared collectively among a group of pretty senior Communist
Speaker 1: party leaders, and they actually agreed amongst themselves to do
Speaker 1: ten year terms and then rotate and step down, and
Speaker 1: they actually did it. Now, I myself was I think
Speaker 1: inappropriately optimistic that that would be institutionalized, that that would
Speaker 1: continue over time. And it also had a big flaw,
Speaker 1: which was once you were only going to serve ten years,
Speaker 1: you had a lot of incentive to be as corrupt
Speaker 1: as possible, so you would still have money and influence
Speaker 1: for your family once your ten years was up. So
Speaker 1: they hadn't solved the transitions problem, but they had made
Speaker 1: progress towards solving it, and in that period they seemed
Speaker 1: to have to some degree come to terms with the
Speaker 1: bad emperor problem by a kind of balanced collective government.
Speaker 1: Then came Shi Jinping, who on the one hand, has
Speaker 1: made real strides against the corruption problem thereby legitimating the
Speaker 1: power of a communist party, but Obviously, when you're that
Speaker 1: much of a dictator, you do run into the bad
Speaker 1: emperor problem, right, what if someone in his position didn't
Speaker 1: didn't do well. It seems at least possible to me
Speaker 1: that they could rotate between these models that, you know,
Speaker 1: following Shijinping, they might go back to something more collective again.
Speaker 1: And while that doesn't have the clear predictability of the
Speaker 1: rule of a monarchy where you know that the eldest
Speaker 1: will inherit or a democracy where at least in principle
Speaker 1: you're supposed to have an election and the person with
Speaker 1: the most votes is supposed to win, it might actually
Speaker 1: be a way of maintaining a degree of stability for them. Well,
Speaker 1: that's looks that's all possible. I think that, however, the
Speaker 1: temptation to hold on to power, whether it's Hijinping or
Speaker 1: a successor, is going to be very, very great. The
Speaker 1: only reason that party secretaries gave up power after nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine was that they were all so traumatized by
Speaker 1: what had happened during the Cultural Revolution that they said,
Speaker 1: never again are we going to allow one guide to
Speaker 1: be able to hold that kind of power over us.
Speaker 1: They had to be really scared, you know, by that.
Speaker 1: But I do think that it's not clear that you
Speaker 1: can just alternate between these different unconstrained power periods and
Speaker 1: then constrained power periods, and that that could happen according
Speaker 1: to some nice, you know, peaceful institutional schedule. I do
Speaker 1: think that, you know, what drives the distribution of power
Speaker 1: is the experience of the abuse of power. And if
Speaker 1: you don't have that abuse, you know, firmly in your mind,
Speaker 1: you're probably not going to be willing to distribute power
Speaker 1: in the manner that they did, you know, in the
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties. But I you know, the two big questions
Speaker 1: are whether the United States can regain its mojo, you know,
Speaker 1: whether it can overcome the current I think really crippling
Speaker 1: of partizanship and polarization, restore something of a kind of
Speaker 1: national identity and national vision that would allow it to
Speaker 1: be effective in projecting a model out into the world.
Speaker 1: And conversely, you know, what's going to happen to the
Speaker 1: Chinese model, because I think if we continue to bump
Speaker 1: along the way we have, being as divided as we
Speaker 1: are for the next twenty years, and the Chinese keep growing,
Speaker 1: then yeah, it's going to be a world that's really
Speaker 1: dominated by China, or would be China's that want to
Speaker 1: share in some of that authoritarian glory. Are you saying, though,
Speaker 1: in that sense, that some decline on the part of
Speaker 1: us is probably inevitable and it maybe that's not such
Speaker 1: a terrible thing, or do you see that as actually
Speaker 1: pretty devastating thing, especially if the decline comes relative to
Speaker 1: undemocratic governments. I mean, I suppose I'm asking you to
Speaker 1: balance two different hats that you wear. One is the
Speaker 1: theorist who explains political development at a broad level. The
Speaker 1: other is as some who's committed, as I take it
Speaker 1: to the values of liberal democracy as actually the right values,
Speaker 1: the best values to have. You know, I preferred living
Speaker 1: in a world where the United States set the standard
Speaker 1: for global political institutions, and I don't look forward to
Speaker 1: going into a world dominated by a competent but overbearing
Speaker 1: and tyrannical China. But I do think that a world
Speaker 1: that was more genuinely multipolar, in which there were different
Speaker 1: approaches to doing things, and in which the United States
Speaker 1: didn't have that same degree of arrogance about itself and
Speaker 1: its own institutions, would probably be a better world. And
Speaker 1: it would probably lead to a kind of American foreign policy.
Speaker 1: So it's very equivocal answer to your question. So on
Speaker 1: the one hand, yeah, I don't look forward to a
Speaker 1: Chinese dominated world. But on the other hand, when we
Speaker 1: had the power, we didn't use it all that wisely.
Speaker 1: And I think that, you know, a little bit more
Speaker 1: modesty is probably befitting in a way that's almost in
Speaker 1: the deep sense of the word an ironic stance, you know,
Speaker 1: not irony in the cheap sense of the term, but
Speaker 1: in the deep sense of the term, that you're taking
Speaker 1: on board that alongside your commitment to the values that
Speaker 1: you believe in that I believe into the values of
Speaker 1: constitutional liberal democracy, we have to admit that in global
Speaker 1: affairs we made a lot of serious errors, and they
Speaker 1: weren't just random errors. They were errors associated with our
Speaker 1: faith in the constitutional liberal democracy that we're still committed to.
Speaker 1: I think there's something kind of profound about that position
Speaker 1: that you're taking. Well, you know, during the debate on
Speaker 1: the Iraq War, I remember this very well. The Bush
Speaker 1: administration was basically saying, just trust us, we're the dominant
Speaker 1: power and we're going to do the right thing. And
Speaker 1: I just remember arguing with someone my conservative pro Iraq
Speaker 1: war friends. You know, when I said, we don't believe
Speaker 1: that in our domestic politics, in American politics, we've never said, oh,
Speaker 1: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, they're good guys. Just trust them
Speaker 1: to do the right thing. We don't need all this
Speaker 1: structure of constitutional checks and balances because they'll make the
Speaker 1: right decisions. You know. In the end, we just don't
Speaker 1: believe that. We believe that power is dangerous no matter
Speaker 1: who wields it, and just because you like the person
Speaker 1: that happens to be wielding power doesn't mean that that's
Speaker 1: a good long term solution. And that's why we build
Speaker 1: institutions to constrain power, because when the powerholder changes, maybe
Speaker 1: the next guy isn't going to be so great. And
Speaker 1: it seemed to me that at that time we should
Speaker 1: have been applying some of our principles of constitutional government
Speaker 1: to international affairs and not just said, yeah, well we're
Speaker 1: the United States. We're good guys, so just trust us
Speaker 1: to do the right thing. That's a potentially in conclusion.
Speaker 1: Then the conclusion there would be that we should have
Speaker 1: done a better job of understanding our own constitutional values
Speaker 1: and practices and if we had done, we wouldn't have
Speaker 1: been so naive about the possibility of exporting them and
Speaker 1: exporting them in a very superficial way. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: that view says more like we should be doubling down,
Speaker 1: but in the correct way on our own values and
Speaker 1: our commitment to it, and that would have led us
Speaker 1: to recognize that invading a country and deciding we're going
Speaker 1: to put in place of conscertutional democracy is rather absurd
Speaker 1: aspiration to hold. Well, you know, if you really want
Speaker 1: to go down the road of this kind of debate,
Speaker 1: it's a complicated one. It goes back to Machia Valerie
Speaker 1: and Carl Schmidt and a lot of other people who
Speaker 1: have made an argument over the years that actually constitutional
Speaker 1: law based government is sometimes problematic because sometimes executive power
Speaker 1: is actually necessary and sometimes you actually do have to
Speaker 1: just trust the executive to do the right thing because
Speaker 1: you know, the constitutional rules don't allow you to act appropriately.
Speaker 1: And you know, that's an argument that I think is
Speaker 1: probably not taken seriously enough by many Americans that are
Speaker 1: so imbued with this idea that we have to constrain power,
Speaker 1: that they don't see cases where the use of powers
Speaker 1: is also necessary. You know, it leads to a political
Speaker 1: system that is I think actually fairly risk averse. You
Speaker 1: can see it right now with Joe Bowden right that
Speaker 1: we're all glad we had all these checks and balances
Speaker 1: on the presidency that kept Donald Trump from building his
Speaker 1: border wall and doing all these terrible things that he
Speaker 1: wanted to do. But those same checks and balances now
Speaker 1: prevent Joe Bowden from building the kind of welfare state
Speaker 1: and social protections that he wants to create. And so
Speaker 1: we've you know, we've settled for a relatively risk averse
Speaker 1: political system that puts a floor under bad stuff, but
Speaker 1: it also kind of puts a ceiling on top of
Speaker 1: good stuff. Whether it would be better to shift the
Speaker 1: floor and ceiling maybe worries both of them a little bit.
Speaker 1: That's an interesting question. Well, I look forward to discussing
Speaker 1: that with you in the future. I just want to
Speaker 1: thank you so much, Frank for your characteristically thoughtful and
Speaker 1: balanced insight, and for your extraordinary and still growing a
Speaker 1: body of work exploring the nature of political development and
Speaker 1: the nature of political order, which is so good to
Speaker 1: think with. Thank you. Sure, it's been fun talking with you. Noah,
Speaker 1: Thanks very much for having me on the podcast. Listening
Speaker 1: to Francis Fukuyama talk about his extraordinary body of work
Speaker 1: accrued over years and years made me realize that the
Speaker 1: problems that American democracy faces today are not entirely new.
Speaker 1: They go back before the election of Donald Trump, and
Speaker 1: even into the period when Barack Obama was president, when
Speaker 1: many liberals like me were a bit too self congratulatory
Speaker 1: about the trajectory of democracy in the United States. They
Speaker 1: can be seen clearly in the administration of George W. Bush,
Speaker 1: when the United States invaded Iraq and tried to create
Speaker 1: democracy there and in Afghanistan to little avail, and indeed,
Speaker 1: they can even be traced back further to the presidencies
Speaker 1: of George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, in which
Speaker 1: many political elites suffered from an over enthusiasm about the
Speaker 1: prospect of democracy and how it seemed to have won
Speaker 1: the Cold War, when in fact it was market capitalism
Speaker 1: that had won the battle, and democracy was rising and spreading,
Speaker 1: at least in part as a piggyback on the successes
Speaker 1: of capitalism. In Frank's view, the sources of decay include
Speaker 1: excessive rigidity in our democratic system as well as capture
Speaker 1: by political elites, which in turn has led to a
Speaker 1: rise of populist authoritarianism. He sees these problems not only
Speaker 1: in the United States, but in a range of places
Speaker 1: in the democratic world, and he recognizes that they are
Speaker 1: leading to a genuine decline in the nature of democracy.
Speaker 1: From this, Frank notices arise in identity politics not merely
Speaker 1: on the left, but equally on the right, that in
Speaker 1: turn makes it extremely difficult, in his view, for our
Speaker 1: democracy to achieve the kinds of political consensus that are
Speaker 1: necessary to make change. Although Frank is rightfully cautious about
Speaker 1: assuming that the Chinese system of government has solved the
Speaker 1: problems that democracy is good at solving, he nevertheless acknowledges
Speaker 1: that the Chinese model has become a powerful one, and
Speaker 1: a significant one, and centrally the model with which democracy
Speaker 1: now has to grapple. The upshot, for Frank, is a
Speaker 1: reality of decay and decline, which he says, we don't
Speaker 1: necessarily need to treat as the end of the world.
Speaker 1: On the one hand, we should continue to believe in
Speaker 1: constitutional liberal democracy and try to make it better and
Speaker 1: to update it and make it work in the world
Speaker 1: that we have. On the other hand, we should admit
Speaker 1: that part of the reason we've gotten here is because
Speaker 1: of internal difficulties and conflicts within liberal democracy that need
Speaker 1: to be updated and that have resulted in serious mistakes
Speaker 1: that the United States has made in the world. In
Speaker 1: that sense, and only in that sense, he offers modesty
Speaker 1: as a model for thinking about what democracy is capable
Speaker 1: of accomplishing. The problems we discussed this week are enormous, structural,
Speaker 1: and complicated. My primary takeaway is that there are no
Speaker 1: clear or correct answers when discussing such important issues. What
Speaker 1: is needed is thoughtfulness, comparison, a little bit of irony,
Speaker 1: and a lot of realism about the world in which
Speaker 1: we live. Until the next time I speak to you, Bewell,
Speaker 1: think deep thoughts and have a little fun. Deep Background
Speaker 1: is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. Our producer is
Speaker 1: Mola Board, our engineer is ben Toalliday, and our showrunner
Speaker 1: is Sophie Crane mckibbon. Editorial support from noahm Osband. Theme
Speaker 1: music by Luis Gara at Pushkin. Thanks to Mia Lobell,
Speaker 1: Julia Barton, Lydia Jeancott, Heather Faine, Carlie Migliori, Maggie Taylor,
Speaker 1: Eric Sandler, and Jacob Weisberg. You can find me on
Speaker 1: Twitter at Noah R. Feldman. I also write a column
Speaker 1: for Bloomberg Opinion, which you can find at bloomberg dot
Speaker 1: com slash Feldman. To discover Bloomberg's original Slater podcasts, go
Speaker 1: to Bloomberg dot com Slash podcasts, and if you like
Speaker 1: what you heard today, please write a review or tell
Speaker 1: a friend. This is deep background