JHU SAIS Professor Francis Fukuyama Publishes New Book on State-Building

Washington, D.C.-May 4/2004 - Francis Fukuyama, the Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy at the Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), recently published State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century. Cornell University Press released the book on 05/1.

In 1989, Fukuyama, author of the best-selling The End of History and the Last Man , famously predicted "the end of history" with the ascendancy of liberal democracy and global capitalism. The topic of his latest book is, therefore, surprising: the building of new nation-states.

The end of history was never an automatic procedure, Fukuyama argues, and the well-governed polity was always its necessary precondition. "Weak or failed states are the source of many of the world's most serious problems," he believes. Fukuyama traces what we know-and more often don't know-about how to transfer functioning public institutions to developing countries in ways that will leave something of permanent benefit to the citizens of the countries concerned. These are important lessons, especially as the United States wrestles with its responsibilities in Afghanistan, Iraq and beyond.

Fukuyama begins State-Building with an account of the broad importance of "stateness." He rejects the notion that there can be a science of public administration, and discusses the causes of contemporary state weakness. He ends the book with a discussion of the consequences of weak states for international order, and the grounds on which the international community 05/legitimately intervene to prop them up.

Other recent books by Fukuyama include Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution; The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order; and Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity.

SAIS is one of the country's leading graduate schools devoted to the study of international relations. Located along Embassy Row in Washington's Dupont Circle area, the school enrolls more than 450 full-time graduate students and mid-career professionals and has trained more than 10,000 alumni in all aspects of international affairs.