Francis Fukuyama's The Future Of History

Francis Fukuyama’s The Future of History is a political economics essay that was written in 2012 in the Foreign Affairs Journal. Fukuyama’s 2012 publication of The Future of History resulted in a vigorous debate by other conservative thinkers as to how government should respond to globalization and the advent of rapid technological advancement. The stagnation of living standards in the U.S. since the 1970s is a particularly important topic in political science because it has far-reaching consequences for the American people and the U.S.’s global economic and military power. Neither the conservative nor liberal political parties have come up with explanations as to why Americans’ real wages have not increased, nor they have not put forth any concrete plans on how to address this decrease in the U.S. standard of living. The Future of History is one of the few famous political science essays in recent years to address the causes, effects, and possible policy prescriptions …show more content…
The most persuasive appeal to the reader’s ethos might be the author himself. If an individual were to read The Future of History with no background information on Fukuyama, he might likely conclude that Fukuyama is a liberal writer because he argues against traditional conservative beliefs such as near friction-less free markets and small government. Yet the audience that the essay is intended for, academic political theorists and economists, know that Fukuyama is a famous conservative thinker who is one of the intellectual founders of the neo-conservative ideology which dominated the foreign policy of the George W. Bush administration. The fact that a well-known conservative thinker is arguing against certain core conservative beliefs adds a sense of credibility to his essay that could not be mustered if a liberal thinker were to pen the