State-Building: Governance and the World Order in the 21st Century

Francis Fukuyama's work, State-Building: Governance and the World Order in the 21st Century, explores the development of state apparatuses that hold a monopoly on the legitimate use of force within a territory. This process, historically rooted in Western Europe, involves establishing a standing army, bureaucracy for taxation, standardized legal procedures, and the incorporation of populations as citizens.1

Fukuyama's earlier work, The End of History and the Last Man, posited that liberal democracy represented the final stage of ideological evolution. In State-Building, he examines how nascent democracies can achieve success, considering the altered dynamics of state building in the 21st century, where interstate military competition is less of a driving force for rationalization and state capacity.21