Second Thoughts: The End of History 10 Years Later

Francis Fukuyama is professor of public policy at George Mason University and author of The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order (Free Press). This article, adapted by the author from: "Second Thoughts: The Last Man in a Bottle" in the summer issue of The National Interest, was distributed through NPQ's quarterly column, "Summing Up the Century," by the Los Angeles Times Syndicate.

Washington - The summer of 1999 marks the 10th anniversary of the publication of my article, "The End of History?" in the journal The National Interest, and for this occasion I have been asked to write a retrospective on my original hypothesis. My critics have demanded that I reconsider and hopefully recant my view that history is over at regular intervals since the article was originally published. For the, I will state my bottom line at the outset: nothing that has happened in the past 10 years challenges, in my view, the conclusion that liberal democracy and a market-oriented economic order are the only viable alternatives for modern societies.

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