The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution

I wrote two very long books, The Origins of Political Order and Political Order and Political Decay. In them, I laid out the tripartite framework—about needing to understand that you’ve got these three components: the state (and hopefully a modern state), the rule of law, and democratic accountability, and that they are all separate. Historically, they appeared at different times. And you can mix and match. So Iran has kind of democratic elections—they just had one. They’re not so free and fair but sometimes there’s a surprise. What they don’t have is anything like a real rule of law that constrains their state. Singapore doesn’t have elections—or has kind of fake elections—but it has a pretty strong rule of law. It’s a way of understanding the diversity of political forms around the world, and also where they came from. The disadvantage is these two books, together, are around 1100 pages long. It’s not like you can go to them for a quick summary and get all that content in a really easy way.

The best books on Liberal Democracy recommended by Francis Fukuyama