International Forum for Democratic Studies Research Council Member

Francis Fukuyama

Stanford University

Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and is director of the FSI’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.

Dr. Fukuyama has written widely on questions concerning democratization and international political economy. His 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man, has appeared in over twenty foreign editions. His latest book, The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution, is part of a two-volume work on political development. The second volume, Political Order and Political Decay: From the French Revolution to the Present, is scheduled to be published in 2014.

Francis Fukuyama received his B.A. from Cornell University in classics, and his Ph.D. from Harvard in Political Science. He was a member of the Political Science Department of the RAND Corporation from 1979-1980, then again from 1983-89, and from 1995-96. In 1981-82 and in 1989 he was a member of the Policy Planning Staff of the U.S. Department of State, the first time as a regular member specializing in Middle East affairs, and then as Deputy Director for European political-military affairs. From 1996-2000 he was Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public Policy at the School of Public Policy at George Mason University, and from 2001-2010 he was Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. He served as a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics from 2001-2004.

Dr. Fukuyama is chairman of the editorial board of The American Interest, which he helped to found in 2005. He holds honorary doctorates from Connecticut College, Doane College, Doshisha University (Japan), Kansai University (Japan), and Aarhus University (Denmark). He is a non-resident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and at the Center for Global Development. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Rand Corporation, the Board of Directors of the National Endowment for Democracy, and a member of the advisory boards for the Journal of Democracy, the Inter-American Dialogue, and The New America Foundation. He is a member of the American Political Science Association, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Pacific Council for International Affairs.


Forum News

VIDEO: “Democracy Ideas: Francis Fukuyama on ‘Democracy and the Quality of the State'”, International Forum for Democratic Studies (Nov. 5, 2013)

Forum Events

“The Governance Agenda and Democratic Development,” International Forum for Democratic Studies (Oct. 6, 2014)

“Reconsidering Democratic Transitions”, Panel Event, International Forum for Democratic Studies (Sept. 19, 2013)

“Poverty, Inequality, and Democracy,” International Forum for Democratic Studies (Feb. 23, 2012)

“China, India, and the Future of Democracy,” followed by a presentation of NED’s Democracy Service Medal to Dr. Francis Fukuyama, International Forum for Democratic Studies, National Endowment for Democracy (Jun. 3, 2010)

“Identity, Immigration, and Liberal Democracy,” 2nd Annual Seymour Martin Lipset Lecture on Democracy in the World, International Forum for Democratic Studies (Nov. 2, 2005)

Forum Publications

“Why is Democracy Performing So Poorly?” Journal of Democracy (Jan. 2015)

“Reconsidering the ‘Transitions Paradigm,'” with Larry Diamond, Donald L. Horowitz, and Marc. F. Plattner, Journal of Democracy (Jan. 2014)

“Democracy and the Quality of the State,” Journal of Democracy (Oct. 2013)

Poverty, Inequality, and Democracy, co-editor with Marc F. Plattner and Larry Diamond, Johns Hopkins University Press (2012)

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