Francis Fukuyama and Yascha Mounk Wonder, Is Democracy Finished?

LIBERALISM AND ITS DISCONTENTS
By Francis Fukuyama
THE GREAT EXPERIMENT
Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure
By Yascha Mounk

The philosopher Francis Fukuyama is probably best known for a misinterpretation of his work. His 1992 book, “The End of History and the Last Man,” was assumed to be a statement of fact rather than the description of a process. He has been defending himself ever since: “The word ‘end’ was not meant in the sense of ‘termination’ but ‘target’ or ‘objective,’” he wrote in 2019. The Soviet Union had collapsed; Marxist collectivism wasn’t the “end” of history. Liberal democracy was. Fukuyama thus committed the sin of optimism, a dicey destination for a serious thinker. In his new book, “Liberalism and Its Discontents,” Fukuyama acknowledges that we’re in a rocky patch on the road toward that “end.”

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