# Fukuyama's Political Order and Political Decay explained: state, rule of law and accountability > In Political Order and Political Decay (2014), Francis Fukuyama argues that a well-governed country needs three institutions in balance: a strong, impersonal state, the rule of law and democratic accountability. The order matters: where a professional civil service was built before mass democracy, as in Germany, bureaucracies stayed clean; where democracy came first, as in Greece and Italy, parties used public jobs to win votes. Institutions also decay, through capture by insiders and through vetocracy, which is why radical centrism treats institutional reform as ongoing work. - URL: https://www.radicalcentre.eu/en/articles/fukuyama-political-order-and-political-decay-explained - Language: en - Publisher: radical centre / centro radical - Published: 2026-10-14 - Topic: Ideas & history - Author: radical centre - Licence: CC BY 4.0 ## Key points - Fukuyama's three building blocks are the state, the rule of law and democratic accountability; good government needs all three in balance. - Sequence matters: Germany built its civil service before democracy and kept it clean; Greece and Italy democratised first and developed clientelism. - The United States ran a spoils system in the 19th century and only began building a merit bureaucracy after the Pendleton Act of 1883. - Political decay comes from intellectual rigidity and repatrimonialisation, the capture of the state by insiders; vetocracy is one of its forms. - For Spain, the book turns Democracia 21's clean-up agenda into a question of institutional design that has to be renewed in every generation. Francis Fukuyama is best known for *The End of History*. The book that matters most for this week is a later one: *Political Order and Political Decay*, published in 2014 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux and in Spanish by Deusto in 2016 as *Orden y decadencia de la política*. It is the second volume of a long history of political institutions, running from the French Revolution to the Arab Spring, and it asks a question that sits underneath every item on the clean-up list Miriam González presented at the launch of [Democracia 21](/en/articles/democracia-21-miriam-gonzalez-proposals-radical-centre) on 10 October: why are some states impersonal, competent and accountable, while others are run as a network of favours? ## Three pieces that have to grow together Fukuyama's answer starts with three building blocks. The first is the state: an organisation able to collect taxes, keep order and deliver services. The second is the rule of law: rules that bind the rulers as well as the ruled. The third is democratic accountability: rulers answer to citizens, through elections and other means. On his own Stanford page he describes the aim as strong, impersonal and accountable political institutions, and the book's argument is that you need all three in balance. Each piece alone goes wrong. A strong state without law or accountability is efficient tyranny. Law and accountability without a capable state give you a country where everyone can object and nothing gets built. The interesting cases are the ones in between, and that is where Europe comes in. ## Why the order matters The most useful idea in the book is about sequence. Fukuyama, building on the political scientist Martin Shefter, compares countries by what they built first. Where a professional bureaucracy existed before mass democracy, parties arrived to find the jobs already filled by career officials and had to compete for votes with programmes. Germany is his example: its civil service came first, and Germany's administration stayed efficient and largely clean. Where democracy came before a modern civil service, parties had something valuable to offer voters directly, public jobs and favours, and they used it. Greece and Italy are his examples of countries that developed clientelistic politics this way. As Branko Milanovic summarises the review literature, Fukuyama even treats clientelism as a kind of early form of accountability: a politician who hands out jobs is at least answering to someone. The United States is the third case, and the most hopeful one. Fukuyama describes nineteenth-century American politics as thoroughly clientelistic. After Andrew Jackson, government posts changed hands with every election, and Post Office jobs were used to win votes. A merit-based federal civil service only began with the Pendleton Act of 1883, and building it out took a long time. Clientelism can be reversed. It takes a coalition with an interest in clean government, and patience. Britain fits the same story. It reformed its civil service before it extended the vote widely, so the expanding electorate met a professional administration. ## Decay The second half of the title matters as much as the first. Fukuyama argues that institutions decay even in successful countries, for two reasons. One is intellectual rigidity: rules that made sense for one era are defended long after the circumstances changed. In his 2013 essay that previewed the book he wrote, plainly, "One source of decay has to do with intellectual rigidity." The other is what he calls repatrimonialisation: insiders, families and interest groups recapturing the state for their own benefit, by perfectly legal means such as lobbying and campaign finance. He applies this to the United States without mercy and concludes that its system of checks and balances has become a vetocracy, where too many actors can block decisions and too few can make them. We explain that term in [What is vetocracy?](/en/articles/what-is-vetocracy-fukuyama-dunkelman). ## What the book gives radical centrism Fukuyama refuses the usual ideological sort. The left in Europe tends to talk about accountability and about limiting private economic power. The right and the market-liberal tradition talk about a strong state that enforces contracts, protects property and spends efficiently. Fukuyama says both are right and that neither is enough, because the third element, the impersonal administration, has a history and a politics of its own. It has to be built, defended against patronage and renewed when it decays. That gives us a position for this week. Spain built its modern democracy after 1978 on top of an administration with strong professional corps, the cuerpos de funcionarios, recruited by competitive exam. That is a real asset in Fukuyama's terms. The weak points are the layers parties can reach: political appointees, advisers, the boards of oversight bodies and public companies. The radical-centre reading of González's list is that its best items close those layers to patronage. Merit in appointments, fewer advisers and watchdogs without party loyalists all protect the impersonal state. Accountability then has to be designed so that it disciplines without paralysing, because a country that adds checks without adding capacity drifts towards the vetocracy Fukuyama warns about. There is one more lesson in the American story. Reform came when people outside the party machines wanted it badly enough. Fukuyama's history is a reminder that clean institutions are a political project with supporters on every side, and that they last only as long as someone keeps maintaining them. Through this week we take each of the speech's institutional proposals and test it against this frame: does it strengthen the state, the law or accountability, and does it keep the three in balance? Next, [how clientelism slows growth](/en/articles/clientelism-growth-greece-italy-spain-fukuyama), with Spain's regional data. ## FAQ ### What is Political Order and Political Decay about? It is the second volume of Francis Fukuyama's history of political institutions, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2014. It runs from the French Revolution to the present and explains why some states became effective, impersonal and accountable while others stayed clientelistic, and how even successful institutions decay. ### What are Fukuyama's three pillars of political order? The state (the capacity to get things done), the rule of law (rules that bind rulers too) and democratic accountability (rulers answer to citizens). He argues that a modern, well-governed country needs all three in balance. ### What does Fukuyama mean by political decay? Institutions stop adapting to new circumstances (intellectual rigidity) and powerful insiders and interest groups capture them for their own benefit, which he calls repatrimonialisation. He describes the American system as having become a vetocracy. ### Is there a Spanish edition? Yes. Deusto published it as Orden y decadencia de la política in 2016, translated by Jorge Paredes. ## Sources - [Political Order and Political Decay](https://fukuyama.people.stanford.edu/politicalorderandpoliticaldecay), Stanford University (Francis Fukuyama) (2014) - [The Decay of American Political Institutions](https://www.the-american-interest.com/2013/12/08/the-decay-of-american-political-institutions/), The American Interest (2013) - [Political Decay in Our Time: A review of Fukuyama's vol. 2](https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/04/12/2019/political-decay-our-time-review-fukuyamas-vol-2), Global Policy Journal (Branko Milanovic) (2019) - [Twilight of Democracy](https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/?p=9549), Claremont Review of Books (Christopher Caldwell) (2014) - [Political Order and Political Decay (review)](https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/francis-fukuyama/political-order-and-political-decay/), Kirkus Reviews (2014) - [Orden y decadencia de la política](https://www.planetadelibros.com/libro-orden-y-decadencia-de-la-politica/207329), Deusto (Planeta) (2016)