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Fukuyama and the State: Anatomy of an Illusion
English translation of the article by Jamel BENJEMIA published in Le Temps on Sunday, September 7, 2025
Fukuyama and the State:
Anatomy of an Illusion
By Jamel BENJEMIA
What is a State? Sometimes it feels like a stronghold against chaos; sometimes it is a tent flapping in the wind, its fabric on the point of ripping open. Between the two lies an unstable zone, a hard place to breathe. In "State Building. Governance and World Order in the 21st Century," Francis Fukuyama is convinced that he can outline the whole construction with the geometric assurance of an architect armed with a compass. Yet the State is more than geometry; it is a story in the making, a scar with a voice. For Hobbes it was a monstrous sovereign, for Weber a rational machine. At the beginning of the 21st century, democracy was marketed by the West as a messianic project: a graft forced upon unwilling bodies, a poisoned gift, a colonialism dressed in new clothes. The result, in each case, is the same: the State refuses to be tamed. Fukuyama wants to build strong institutions without realizing that no rock will lift itself. He proclaims that the whole world is his, but societies are not deceived. The State is not just a structure but a collective breath. And so the question remains, stubborn and unresolved: can the State be raised like a road is built, or is it no more than a moving mirage generated by fear and hope?
The Universal as Trompe-l’œil
Fukuyama assumes that history moves in one direction, along one well-defined road, toward the modern State. But civilizations do not all rise simultaneously: some branch, others converge, still others lose their bearings. China, from the start, built a sophisticated bureaucracy while Europe languished in feudal darkness. Africa was forced into artificial borders drawn up by colonial rulers. The Arab world oscillates between longing for empires and the stubbornness of the tribe. Yet Fukuyama collapses this multiplicity into a single path, as if the State were an algebraic function for which he alone holds the key. He mentions the Meiji Japanese as an institutional miracle, but says nothing of the peasant revolts and the humiliations inflicted on traditional society. He turns history into a parable with a moral. In his hands, the State becomes a theoretical edifice, but the stones sound hollow, for he has forgotten the "dirty hands" Sartre spoke of, stained with the grease of power. A State is not built like an intellectual monument; it rises from shadows and sweat, from the outburst of imperfection never reconciled with an ideal perfection, from the imperfect compromise between the dream and the mould at hand, between aspiration and actuality.
Strength and Its Blindness
" A State has to be strong," Fukuyama writes, "otherwise it collapses." The seductive formula hides a simple truth: strength can be as poisonous as it is protective. It may shield, but just as often it crushes. Machiavelli knew this well: to exercise power is to dissemble and intimidate, not to pretend to neutrality. Fukuyama skirts this point, but never confronts it directly. Speaking of Latin America, he reduces decades of dictatorships and guerrilla wars to an "institutional deficit," masking U.S. intervention and imperial dominance. The Prussian bureaucracy he admires was in fact fertile ground for authoritarian oppression, an agency of discipline rather than justice. The firm State, the "Leviathan State," becomes shortsighted: it perceives order but not injustice, measures efficiency but not legitimacy. As Camus warned in "L’Homme révolté: "Power without justice is the revolt of slaves in waiting."
The Elusive Limits
Yes, a State too strong becomes tyranny, and a State too weak becomes no State at all, says Fukuyama. His solution is moderation: the limited State. Yet that is close to a truism. Who today would advocate outright dictatorship or total anarchy? The real difficulty lies in the application of this principle across different peoples and histories. He speaks of separation of powers, the rule of law, counterbalances, but overlooks what Tocqueville grasped when he studied America: the civic engagement of associations, the vitality of civil society, those invisible forces that make a nation stand beyond written law. Fukuyama forgets that the boundaries of the State are not only constitutional but also social, cultural, and symbolic. In sub-Saharan Africa, he deplores weak administrative structures but ignores the resilience of customary and voluntary institutions. He praises democracy in India without acknowledging the enduring force of castes and communities that govern daily life. In South Africa’s post-apartheid transition, it became clear that even the most beautiful constitution is lifeless without truth and reconciliation. To restrain the State is to root it also in common memory; to neglect this is to confuse text with life.
The Western Shadow
Beneath the polished surface of his prose, in the depths of his sentences, lingers a shadow: the West still convinced it sits at the world’s center. Fukuyama cites Hobbes, Tocqueville, and Weber, yet remains silent on Ibn Khaldoun, Césaire, and Fanon, voices close to the deposits of power, to hidden contributions, to cycles of servitude and to the scars of colonial history. In his account, Asia is reduced to bureaucracy, Africa to unfulfilled promise, the Arab world to a chronicle of inevitable collapse. He presents reconstructed Germany as a shining model, but omits the American tutelage that nurtured it: the military occupation, the Marshall Plan, without which the structure would have collapsed long ago. This singular case becomes, in his view, an archetype, as if nations could spring up magically, independent of power dynamics, the strong hands that lift them, or the umbilical ties that bind them. In "Les Damnés de la terre," Fanon foresaw that the postcolonial State would always bear the face of the colonizer, even repainted. By failing to acknowledge these marks, Fukuyama reduces geopolitics to the map of a land surveyor, as if history were no longer a throbbing memory but a territory flattened into perfect lines. Yet a State is never alone; it is pierced by outside forces and shaken by inner upheavals, as if ashamed of them. To erase them is to conjure an imaginary world, a comforting lie that blinds.
The Illusion Dissected
The paradox is striking: a book both brilliant and brittle, audacious yet timorous. Fukuyama dreams of universal blueprints but delivers a fragile model. The strength of his argument lies in the questions he raises; the weakness lies in his belief that there is a single answer. The State is not an abstraction. It is woven from life itself, from hardship and sacrifice. "Stupidity consists in wanting to conclude." Flaubert said that. Fukuyama concludes too quickly, as if politics were reducible to institutions. Yet order is always elusive. It hovers in suspension, incomplete, stubborn, resistant.
The State, Inheritance, and Becoming
It would be mistaken to dismiss Fukuyama’s book outright. Its flaws open the door to deeper questions: what binds peoples together? The State has been one answer—always precarious, never definitive. Arendt saw this in "The Human Condition," politics is not a machine, but a space shared in common. Fukuyama invokes institutions, but forgets forgiveness and hope, which cannot be planned. Valéry warned: "Civilizations are mortal. " So too are States. They survive on trust more than force. Here lies the blind spot. To govern is not engineering but alchemy. The State is fashioned in the streets as much as in institutions, in flesh as much as in treaties. His silence on this only makes the truth more pressing. For the State is not a decree. It is chaos briefly subdued, a constant threat of eruption held for an instant by those who refuse to be ruled by fear or by outsiders. It is precarious, vital, always hanging above the thin line between order and collapse.
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