Francis Fukuyama Reflects on His Career and the Challenges Facing Liberal Democracy

Bob Bauer interviews Francis Fukuyama, the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and author of The End of History and the Last Man. They discuss his new memoir, In the Realm of the Last Man, which, among other things, seeks to address misconceptions about the argument for which he is best known and to depict his intellectual arc; how excessive proceduralism fetters American government and drives voters toward populist candidates; whether reform would take a crisis; why Fukuyama posits that the post-Trump years may bring civil service and permitting reforms that were previously out of reach; and the necessity of educating young people on liberal values. Bauer and Fukuyama close by discussing changing one’s mind: the psychological barriers to it (particularly in an insular group setting), the liberation that expressing it can bring, and the interpersonal costs it involved in the case of Fukuyama’s departure from the neoconservative movement.

Get full access to Executive Functions at www.execfunctions.org/subscribe