Francis Fukuyama: America’s Putin-esque direction

Paddy O’Connell speaks to Professor Francis Fukuyama about the
threats to liberal democracies around the world. The American
political economist and international relations scholar, who is
currently a senior fellow at Stanford University, has written
widely on issues about development and international politics.


He is best-known for his 1992 book ‘The End of History and the
Last Man’. He argued that the end of the Cold War, marked by the
fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union,
represented the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution, and
the universalisation of Western liberal democracy as the final
form of human government.


But three decades on, Western liberal democracy appears to be
struggling to adapt to the many challenges of the 21st century.
Amid geopolitical instability, its future does not appear as
universal as Fukuyama once proposed, even in the US. The
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Presenter: Paddy O’Connell Producer: Ben Cooper Editor: Nick
Holland


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(Image: Professor Francis Fukuyama. Photo by Thomas
Trutschel/Photothek via Getty Images)