>> thank you so much. [applause] >> we can happily continue the conversation at the signing table. there are still plenty of copies downstairs at the information desk that you see when you first walk into the store. we ask you purchase a book before we write in sharpie in it and we'll be here long enough, if you do that, we'll still be here. [inaudible conversations] >> you're watching booktv on c-span 2.

i had personal reasons for being interested in bill cosby, but as a journalist i was also fascinated by him as sort of a figure in our cultural and social history. not only as a pioneer, somebody who opened doors again and again, really the first comedian to not be labeled just a negro comedian. the first star of african-american star of primetime television. pioneer of children's

television, with his early guest appearances on sesame street and the electric company, and then fat albert. most successful, if you all remember advertising, pitchman in the country, in the '70s and 80s, jello ads and coca-cola and ford and so forth and that was before the cosby show. but then, as you all know, in the last -- after a career where he did not bring race and politics into his comedy, and onwas criticized for that, in the last ten years he has become very outspoken and controversial for strong stances he has taken in the black community that he sees as destructive. i wanted to know, where did this

come from? and were a lot of the views he has been expressing recently views he has had all along? sort of what drove him and what was his vision of the kind of social impact that he was going to have? plus, nobody had done it. he was rare in a figure of -- of hi significance and prominence and that nobody had really written a serious in-depth biography. so i decided i wanted to do it. then i discovered why nobody had written an in-depth biography. i had met him a few times. i didn't know him well. but sort of been -- greet him when he appeared on the television networks i worked for. but i did know alvin, a harvard

psychiatrist who was an adviser on the cosby show and is a good friend of bill and camille cosby. so, i called him, and i made my pitch for why i thought bill cosby would be a great subject for a book. and he agreed with me, and he offered to speak to cosby on my behalf. a week later he called back and said, i don't think he's going to help you. he has trust issues. francis fukuyama appeared at the texas book festival to talk about his latest book: "political order and political decay." he was interviewed and then took questions. this is 45 minutes. >> thank you so much for being

here this afternoon. it's a little warm here in the heart of texas. but that how we like it. but we're going to give a warm welcome to dr. fukuyama who came -- [applause] >> we're so happy you could join us today. i have a show here in austin called "idea lounge" on co-op radio, and as you know dr. fukuyama does not need an introduction but i will give a short one. a senior fellow at stanford university and one of the most respected thinkers the political science today and for the past 25, 30 years. usually what happens is when you're as famous as dr. fukuyama, you sort of ride the wave. you don't do good work or scholarshipment that is not what has hand here at all. you are in for such a treat. i'm so honored to be here and have an opportunity to have this

discussion with him, and i'm hoping that we will have a very warm and engaging conversation for about 15 minutes with you all at 3:30. so we'll chat for half an hour,'ll open it up for you at 3:30 for 15 minutes, please line up here if you would, kindly, and then you're welcome to ask your questions. the book we're going to be discussing is "political order and political decay." and apparently took him three months to write this? >> a little longer. >> a little longer. dr. talk toam mark what is this book about and what exactly is liberal democracy? >> well, the book actually started out as a effort to think through a problem that was created for american foreign policy after september 11th. because in iraq and afghanistan, you had this problem that you had this radical terrorist movement, islamist movement,

that was filling a vacuum that was basically left by a weak state, in the case of afghanistan it was a state that's always been weighing, in the case of the iraq, it was a formerly strong state that we undermined and then left a big vacuum. and i think up until the present moment with isis, now this new group in iraq and syria that we're now battling, these movements are not inherently that powerful. they have not really shown that they can actually run a modern technological civilization, but they thrive on the fact that everybody around them is so weak, and i think that's why it expanded into places like africa, mali, and cameroon, and northern nigeria, because these are places without states. they don't have states that can keep order and police and protect their own people. and american foreign policy has been wrestling with the problem, how do you build a state in a

place like afghanistan or iraq, where authority has collapsed? and i would say, we still have not figured this out. we're not very good at it. >> so, it's different to take power and then govern. >> yes. >> very different skill set. what is it that people don't quite understand about that process? >> so, there's really three central institutions that are necessary. one is the state itself, which is all about power. it's the ability to protect the community and deliver services, and then there's two others. the second one is law. the rule of law which constrains the state and forces the state to act according to rules that the community has set. and then there's finally democracy, which is an attempt to force the state to pay attention to the wishes of the whole pop late, -- population, and i think in many cases the democracy part of it has gotten ahead of the state-building part, and that's been our

problem. afghanistan and iraq held elections, but what they couldn't do was deal with a problem like corruption, and i think actually today in the world, corruption and utter state failure is really the central problem of politics. >> what about political accountability? and getting everyone involved -- if you have a rising middle class like in brazil or turkey or in china, a lot of those people are going to want accountable government because they've got property, the government can take it away and that's right the condition under which democracy has spread in many parts of the world. so it's -- it's a big effort to build political institutions that can actually do those demands for participation. ... why it health or

disappears is a problem. >> aristotle said this more than two oh thousand years ago, democracy works best in a society if a a broad middle class. the middle class people are educated. they aware of what the government is doing, and they have property, and if the government can take it away through taxation or confiscation, they won't be happen about that. so everywhere the middle class that when support for democracy. that's why in china, for exple, the is why i think in china, for example, the regime is going to have a big problem because right now there may be 30400 trainees that can be classified as middle class.

they're the ones text each other on the chinese equivalent of twitter. they are the ones who want more freedom and democracy is ever going to come, they are the ones that are going to push for it. >> there is a classic model under which democracy has developed and there are four main actors. the middle class, the working class, the owners of the peasants. can you give us an overall view of what each of these groups with interest to them the middle class wants to protect their own participation and/or income redistribredistrib ution, that kind of thing. >> this in a way is clearly a place like latin america, so venezuela has been subject to this dictatorship of hugo chavez for the last four years and you see the fact that poor people support him because he's in favor of redistribution, whereas

in that country most of the middle class actually want property rights because they don't want the government to arbitrarily take things away. whether some old landowning class that is the bulwark of conservatism. democracy is something -- nobody wants to live under tyranny, but democracy tends to come with societies that are a little bit richer for you do have middle-class people that a property that they want the government to protect. >> and so from the large landowners to exist in the world still. >> this is a big problem in why democracy did not arrive for many generations in europe in the 19 century because in a place that germany or france or russia particularly, you have a big class of landowners and that is still a problem in a place like packet in. pakistan is virtually a feeble country in which peasants live under servlet conditions and

largest aids and that is the reason democracy has never worked well because it is really controlled by landowning elite. i think he'll not get successful government in pakistan until there is something of a social revolution there. >> interesting. so these four, the peasantry are the ones that can become radicalized very quickly. is that right quick >> that's what happened in the chinese and the bolshevik revolution in vietnam but it turned out karl marx got it wrong because karl marx had it with the industrial proletariat that would be the bearers of revolution and it turned out workers were doing pretty well in europe. they were getting richer and becoming middle class, which is why there is never a communist revolution in germany or france or britain. in russia and vietnam and china, you did have equal societies

that form the backbone of communist movements. >> so other steps that need to be followed in order to a private democracy? can you put the cart before the horse? >> well, i guess it depends on who that who is because there's nobody left this power to say, for example, in east asia, in korea and taiwan, you had a lot of economic growth under an hour terry machine. in the 1980s, both of these countries democratize and many people say this is the best way to do it. this is what the europeans did in the 19th century. your economic growth on the democracy later. the fact is if you look around the world, most recently in hong kong and brazil and turkey in the air of spring in many other countries, people are going to way. they are unhappy with the quality of government. democracy in a sense of a

popular grassroots to repress. ideally in some sense maybe with one more economic development before you had democracy, but in most countries that is not an option. >> westerly survey. let's look at democracy in certain parts of the world. let's look at what is happening in india, compare that to japan, tunisia and russia. do you think that's fair? >> that is absolutely fair. those are all very different problems. just think about this example. in the late 1990s, there is an economist who did a survey of schools in northern india in certain northern indian state's beauty discovered 50% of schoolteachers were not showing up despite the fact you're getting paid. there is a good cry and a vigorous democracy. in 10 years of reform efforts. they did another survey and churned out the percentage of

teachers not showing up our lives exactly the same. 50%. they could not fix this problem. india has free press. they've got parties that contest opposition. it is a free society, but they cannot deliver these very basic services and that is why they vote quite massively for the current prime minister because they want a strong leader. they want somebody that can break through all of this weakness and actually get something done. japan on the other hand is in a certain way like the united states for a severus term a certain degree of political decay that is getting to be an old democracy. one of the reasons you have the fukushima nuclear disaster that was handled so badly was the nuclear industry has basically

captured the regulators and controlled by the japanese regulatory authority curtain back to this present moment that control the situation. so they've got the problem to develop a democracy or interest groups have managed to to put a hold on the whole thing. >> so russia, what an interesting case. so there was a time when putin wasn't as strong as he is. there was a resurgence. is he is our? is he a puppet master? what's going on? >> russia is a good example of the new world in which the big dividing line is not so much democracy versus authoritarian government, the kleptocratic government versus modern government. modern government is supposed to serve the interests. the government is not there for the private enrichment of the people running the government and in russia it's kind of the

opposite, that putin and the disney cronies from the oligarchs around them essentially one-to-one onto power because they can milk resources from the state. since its oil and energy revenues and so forth and they justify their rule on the basis of a nationalist story they've been selling the russian people. the reality of the government is just an unbelievably high degree of corruption and that is the fight going on in ukraine because these young protesters in kiev, wanted to get rid of mr. putin who is this the on the coalition was an extremely corrupt, i don't know if you saw pictures of this, that he was building a palace for himself outside of kiev there were six times the size of the white house and funneling billions of dollars out of ukraine for the benefit of his own family and i miss the big dividing line in the world between these highly

corrupt governments and governments to try to be modern in the sense of being impersonal. >> ukraine had an opportunity they are to move towards reform. what happened? why did they drop the ball? >> in 2004 you have this orange revolution in which a young protesters that forced the new election or push this victory on a covert child. the child. then the government that the power the democratically elected government failed to deal with the problem of corruption. they were bickering. they themselves were very corrupt and as a result in 2010, unicode which was voted back in in a free and fair election. this is why i think the big struggle is in a sense from many countries not over democracy. there is democracy in ukraine and russia. the big struggle is whether you can only clean government on a government that tries to serve

the public interest. >> speaking about this, let's look at eject because egypt has a wonderful opportunity. they thought they had an opportunity. they didn't realize the military went into tactical retreat. they were regrouping and came right back. but it happened since? >> you know, egypt is a terrible tragedy because higher to the air of spring, a lot of people thought the arabs were passive. they didn't care about democracy. they are happy to live under an authoritarian government. the one thing the air of spring showed as that's not true. there's no culture reason why arabs like to live under it to radical government anymore than anyone else. the big, big problem when i have this opening up to mubarak sat down for the army forced him to step down, they didn't know how to convert that energy and anger into organizations and institutions. there was an organization in egypt that you how to do this,

which was the muslim brotherhood, they won the first parliamentary presidential elections and i gave the army an excuse to come back into power. >> very interesting. do you think there is for europe? >> not in the short run. the army is in there. i hate to say, but a certain amount of americans support and i think it is going to be another generation until there's another effort to open up the system again. >> america likes authoritarian regimes in the middle east. they are more stable, via? >> america has had these interests in fighting terrorism and securing oil supply. we've got a big opportunity right now because thanks to taxpayers and north dakota and places like that, the united states is about to become an exporter of liquefied natural gas, which is going to directly, directly undercut people like

putin. his ability to threaten essentially blackmail ukraine and western europe with his natural gas, that ability is going to and over the next five years of america ramps up to export gas to the rest of the world. we've been driving down oil prices because of new technologies. american innovation is going pretty strong. that'll change the balance of power in the middle east because for the first time we are going to be largely oil independent within a couple years from now will change our calculation about her interest in a part of the world. >> teenage as doing relatively okay. >> it was the best country in the middle east. it's a small advantage. it has a big no cost and it's the one success story that entire region where you do get to a successful democracy in a

few years. by the way, i think people misunderstand and say there's no democracy is here three years after the arab spring. i have a chapter of my new book about europe in the year 1848. it was like the air of spring. you had revolutions in every single continental european within the states of two or three months and within a year they were all reversed. there is a bit authoritarian come back in was 100 years until europe actually became democratic. so i think the expectation that you can democratize back quickly is a very naïve expectation. >> do you think it was naïve for america to go into the middle east and the conflicts engage to bring democracy, thinking if we get rid of saddam hussein,

democracy will naturally bloom? >> the two are different. afghanistan we were perfectly justified in invading a 2001 because we had to get rid of osama bin laden and al qaeda. the mistake they are staying too long, expanding the war beyond the original once al qaeda was gone, continuing the war. iraq was a mistake from beginning to end because the cost in terms of american prestige in terms of people killed, iraqis killed and interned for the mess that exists right now, in the history books that will go down as one of the biggest in american foreign policy. >> china is very interesting because it became a state long before states in europe, yet when it comes to democracy, what's happening? >> well, china, people don't understand they developed the

modern state ended his 2300 years ago in the ching dynasty in the third century b.c. they had a meritocratic country. the only thing they didn't have was rule of law or democracy. so they basically invented dictatorship. that's the simplest way to put it. that's the characteristic of chinese rule ever since. i think what is different about china now long tradition is the fact that their society has undergone changes of the source that the united states or europe went through from the mid-1900s to the middle of the 20th century and they've done this in a generation. as much social change will have political implications. there is no way the socialist rigid system adapter that kind of social upheaval.

that is why the system is either going to adapter is going to explode. >> let's look at south america very quickly before we look at america. how would you compare chile? >> well, chile is a successful country. they went through dictatorship in the 1970s and 80s, but it's adopted market economy and it has become at the poor end, but basically developed country now. brazil, the problem again is not democracy. they are about to have a presidential election next week. it's a very vigorous open society, but it's very, very corrupt. it's hard to find a brazilian legislature that does not have a pretty shady record. part of the big struggle in the country if can you get past the corruption to deliver something

like a service for health care, education. one of the reasons there is a high level of poverty in brazil as their public education system is just atrocious. deliver things that people really want, and that's the struggle. it's less the struggle over democracy right now. >> wonderful. let turn our attention to the next ten minutes to america. so, you are saying some hard things about america, doctor. you're saying that america is now beginning to experience decay as a democracy, and you say there are two reasons, growing economic inequality, concentration of wealth by the elite which has allowed them to purchase immense political power and manipulate the system to further their own interests, and undo influence of interest groups. >> i think that all of those things are true, and they become more problematic because of our basically fundamental institutional setup that the

founding fathers created. the founding fathers created a system of checks and balances because they were worried about one thing above all, which was maximizing individual freedoms, and prevent are tyranny. they really feared and distrusted centralized government, and with good reason. that's why the colonists fought a revolution against the british monarch okay bump they divided into a system of political balances which -- called veto points where a small, well-organized group, can stop a decision of the whole in order to protect their interests. now, for most of the 20th 20th century, that sim worked pretty well because the two political parties overlapped substantially so presidents were able to do things, like roosevelt or johnson or ronald reagan. but today, because of polarization, there's no overlap between the parties.

this wouldn't be that bad a thing in a parliament re system, but in our presidential system, it basically means that every well-organized group can use that check and balance system to stop things they don't like. that's why we have a tax code that is an embarrassment to the country. it's full of basically privileges -- [applause] >> there's a fundamental difference between a privilege and a liberty. a liberty is a freedom from the government that applies to everybody. a privilege is something that applies to just me, my family, maybe my corporation, and we have a very high corporate tax rate, but very few corporations pay this because they have negotiated through their lobbyists exemptions for themselves, and the result is something that is not representative and not fundamentally fair. and then you have a congress that has not been able to pass a budget really since 2008. and all of this, i think, very

simple things. immigration reform or the mildest forms of gun control where you get very strong popular majorities in the country that say they want this. congress can't pass it because any well-organized interest group can veto actions by the whole. i think that's where we're stuck. that's why i call the situation that we have vetocraciy. >> you said that american state deals poorly with major challenges because? >> well, okay to be fair, the united states in some dimensions actually is fairly effective. so, for example, the federal reserve board and -- to be fair the u.s. congress actually dealt, i think, with the financial crisis reasonably well. much better than the europeans did. because a lot of powers delegated to certain institutions like the treasury

and the fed that actually allow it to act in an emergency. i think despite the fear over ebola, actually in the end our public health system is going to -- they've made some mistakes in the last couple of weeks but it's going to hold up and going to dem moan straight to people why you need a strong, effective government. so there are parts of the u.s. that actually work pretty well. i think in foreign policy we still have pretty strong ability to make decisions, and although americans are not eager to leap into another war, we still can exercise power globally much more effectively than the europeans or other powers. the big problems, i think, come in dealing with long-term problems, things that are not meet crises, like looking forward in terms of budget deficits in terms of doing things like long-term entitlement reform. these are things that are beyond the capacity of the american

political system. >> now, you wrote one most famous books in political science 25 years ago. is that right? >> you said that. i didn't. >> i remember reading it. it was just remarkable. it was called "end of history." what was the thesis of the book and now, looking back at it, where are you? due still believe it? you were associated with the neocons, the neoconservative movement. what was the book. >> the book was not a neoconservative book. the book was actually written in this tradition of haigle and marx and european philosophy, and the history that i was talking about was hit with a capital h. that is to say the evolution of human society, they go from hunter-gatherer to agricultural to industrial to post industrial, and the question of the end of history is not the termination of history. it's the question of, where is history pointing? so for many years, progressive

intellectuals said it's pointing towards communism. that was marc's view. marx believed that history would end in a communist utopia. all i did was get up and say in 1989, we're not going get there we're nod headed towards communism. we're headed towards liberal democracy, if anything, and i think that's still true. i think the only reasonable alternative model out there that is a real challenge of the china model, but for a whole variety of ropes i don't think that is a sustainable, either economic or political system, so i still basically believe that the foundations of the theory are true. >> why isn't china sustainable? economically or politically? >> well, i think, first of all, they privilege growth over other things like environment, clean air, clean soil, water, this sort of thing to such an extent they have many liabilities built into the system. the bigger problem is,

political. they've got essentially a very strong state with no rule of law and no democratic accountability. it's an unchecked dictatorship, and that system can work well as long as they've got a go emperor in place. if you have a good emperor they can do things quickly like build high-speed rail and internet connectivity and so forth. but if they get a bad emperor, there's no checks and balances and, therefore no way to stop this person. and right now, you have a leader in china, cheng chui ping, who is conducting a burn on the grounds of anticorruption, who may be one of the most powerful leaders in china since mao. >> globalization and technological change in a

capitalist economy. what is america's response? >> i think that democracy is fundamentally challenged by technological change because the whole impact of the information technology revolution, automation, robots, all of these things, has been to erode middle class employment. machines can subtattoo -- smart machines can substitute for more and more different kinds of hum yap labor. the result is the median income is eight% lower today than in 2007 prior to the financial crisis, and this is a problem that affects all countries in europe because they've got a bigger welfare state, they can mask the effects but they're still suffering from that same erosion of jobs, and as aristotle said, if you don't have a broad middle class it's very hard to sustain a democracy and that's the central political

and economic challenge that any government in the united states is going to have to face going forward. >> wonderful. yes, please. >> why even though having democracy most of the western europe, why was it unable to get out of the financial crisis and the impact of it quick enough? >> so, why was europe not able to deal with the crisis effectively? on a national level, i think there are many actually pretty effective democracies in europe. germany, suiterland, netherlands, scandanavia: the big problem is the design of the european union, and frankly, the problem is the u.on union looks like the united states. a federal system, complex divide powers but allocate power in the

wrong bay. brussel is powerful where i shouldn't be. on the labeling of food and cheese and wine and this sort of thing, brussels was also telling pool they can't do things they'd like to do, and it's very annoy, bull things wrist counsels, like monetary policy or fiscal policy, they're extremely weak. they don't have the power the fed does or the u.s. congress does, and that what's really led to the euro crisis in 2010, and they're not out of it. in no way out of it. >> your description about what is going on in the united states was quite clear, and is the way i see it, too. what do you think is going to happen? >> crystal ball. yes. >> well, i guess i have to say that at the moment i'm kind of pessimistic because it seems to me that after the financial crisis, given that it originated of wall street, you should have

seen a big populous upsurge that would lead to, for example, adequate financial regulation that would solve the original problem, and that hasn't happened. in fact, the only big mobilization we have seen since the crisis has actually been on the right with the tea party. politically it's very strange and i don't think there's been adequate leadership where you had progressive coalition where there is a leader that can adequately explain what happened and point to a way forward, particularly when dealing with this technological challenge that i mentioned, and, therefore, i think we're stuck where we are. and so i unfortunately think that the only way we'll get out of this is by some big external shock. if the dollar collapses or there's another big banking crisis or a war or something, that will kind of shock us out

of our complacency. i hate to say this. i think that's the way political change has to come about often times. >> kind of an an adjacent n, who often has to come about. >> kind of on an adjacent know, what do you feel the rule is of a well-informed electorate in a modern democracy and what role could not have in shaping the types of mobilization you talk about here and restructuring places like china? >> well, look, a well-educated and well-informed electorate is absolutely critical to the function of the democracy. there is no question about it americans don't pay attention. i don't teach in schools anymore. students don't understand the basic structure of the american government or the american constitution. they give very poor information given to them on television and

highly opinionated blog readers on the internet is very real information. so it's possible in this country to believe really absurd aims for a very long period of time. that is an extremely important dimension of citizenship. citizenship has not been emphasized in this country for very long time. the fact all of us have this duty as citizens to keep informed and to participate and to vote and to basically care about the public sphere. there has been this denigration of public affairs for the last generation that i think has been very distraught to. .. [inaudible question] >> -- what you see for special interests versus what is going for all. from a historical perspective, how does a country get out of

that sort of decay or decline? there are examples of countries or civilizations that have gotten out of it, where democracy gets to the point where it is more or less controlled by extremely powerful interest groups, to the point almost where i would say it's not that we haven't been able to get anything done for the past five year although that's been awful, but it's the only things we have gotten done have been for special good interest groups. i want you to expound on this from a historical perspective. >> this is great. i get to tell you also historical story. in the old regime in france, before the french revolution, the degree of corruption and privileges got to the following extent, that the french kings louis xiii, louis xiv were to broke because of all the wars they taught, they actually would

sell government offices to rich individuals so you could buy the position of treasurerrer of france for a abide the position of the treasurer of france for a big sum of money and collect taxes and keep all the taxes for yourself and not only that but you could take this office if you could give it to your children as part of their inheritance. this was officeholding and comes from this french practice. how do the french do it and fix the system they try to reformat several times in the 18th century and hadn't had a revolutionary and beheaded all the people that have these offices. so that is in the first volume of this political order series. talking abou t