Anthony Giddens - short summary of ideas

Anthony Giddens is a very committed sociologist: he wants to change the world. He developed a new formal theory:
Structuration theory. A social theory that bridges the difference between macro and micro sociologists. Central focus is
the idea of agency.
Nation-states take on a new role in modernity, but they are still a crucial power container. Giddens says that the classics
(Durkheim, Marx, Weber) were looking at the first shift to modernity. He found out that it is different because of changes in
four institutions: Capitalism, Industrialism, Surveillance (the state), Military (the state). Market and politics have
become separated, The state surveys, and this is backed up by their monopoly of violence (the military, in the end). All
clusters are relevant at the same time, the classics looked at only one cluster. Reflexive modernity leads to time-space
distantiation: social relations are stretched. People are also disembedded: no longer naturally connected to society.
Globalisation brings some disruptions, but is not overall bad. Trust changes, and politics become life politics. Trust takes
a different form: symbols (eco-labels) but also faceless commitments. It has to do with 1. Past performance. 2.
Technology used. 3. People involved. Thus, active trust management is needed: at access-points their doubts are
reassured (see Goffman). He has also done work on life politics: how should we live, but also connecting the personal
and the planetary.

Giddens Distinguishes between emancipatory politics and life politics. The former is about overcoming tradition, and
breaking illegitimate domination: you look at other people. It can take three forms: Exploitation, Inequalities and
Oppression, though there is a lot of overlap. The answers are more clear: Justice, Equality and Participation are
necessary. Emancipatory politics is about moving away from something, but it doesn’t state where you’re going. Life
politics is a politics of the self. It is about the choices you have after being emancipated. These individual choices affect
politics: if all women work society can change. It is related to four themes. 1. Self-identity. Your identity involves actions,
and to assert your identity you need to work on your body (e.g. to be healthy you have to eat healthy).
2. Reproduction. Because of new techniques, the definition of life is challenged. Biological reproduction is now
completely social. And sexuality is no longer related to reproduction. 3. Globalisation. Choices of individual humans can
have a large effect on the planet’s ecology. These new global problems require a global coordination, but this is hard as
these global problems seem far removed from individuals. 4. Existence. Ehh? Individuals should be aware of the
questions these themes raise, and they should try to answer them.
Anthony Giddens, Baron Giddens (born 18 January 1938) is a British sociologist who is known for his theory of
structuration and his holistic view of modern societies.

The nature of sociology

Before 1976, most of Giddens' writings offered critical commentary on a wide range of writers, schools and traditions.
Giddens took a stance against the then-dominant structural functionalism (represented by Talcott Parsons), as well as
criticising evolutionism and historical materialism. In Capitalism and Modern Social Theory (1971), he examined the
work of Weber, Durkheim and Marx, arguing that despite their different approaches each was concerned with the link
between capitalism and social life. Giddens emphasised the social constructs of power, modernity and institutions,
defining sociology as:

“ "the study of social institutions brought into being by the industrial transformation of the past two or three
centuries." ”
In New Rules of Sociological Method (1976) (the title of which alludes to Durkheim's Rules of the Sociological Method of
1895), Giddens attempted to explain 'how sociology should be done' and addressed a long-standing divide between
those theorists who prioritise 'macro level' studies of social life — looking at the 'big picture' of society — and those
who emphasise the 'micro level' — what everyday life means to individuals. In New Rules... he noted that the
functionalist approach, invented by Durkheim, treated society as a reality unto itself, not reducible to individuals. He
rejected Durkheim's sociological positivism paradigm, which attempted to predict how societies operate, ignoring the
meanings as understood by individuals.[15] Giddens noted:

“ "Society only has form, and that form only has effects on people, insofar as structure is produced and
reproduced in what people do".[16] ”

He contrasted Durkheim with Weber's approach — interpretative sociology — focused on understanding agency and
motives of individuals. Giddens is closer to Weber than Durkheim, but in his analysis he rejects both of those
approaches, stating that while society is not a collective reality, nor should the individual be treated as the central unit
of analysis.[15]

Rather he uses the logic of hermeneutic tradition (from interpretative sociology) to argue for the importance of agency
in sociological theory, claiming that human social actors are always to some degree knowledgeable about what they are
doing. Social order is therefore a result of some pre-planned social actions, not automatic evolutionary response.
Sociologists, unlike natural scientists, have to interpret a social world which is already interpreted by the actors that
inhabit it. According to Giddens there is a "Duality of structure" by which social practice, which is the principal unit of
investigation, has both a structural and an agency-component. The structural environment constrains individual
behaviour, but also makes it possible. He also noted the existence of a specific form of a social cycle: once sociological
concepts are formed, they filter back into everyday world and change the way people think. Because social actors are
reflexive and monitor the ongoing flow of activities and structural conditions, they adapt their actions to their evolving
understandings. As a result, social scientific knowledge of society will actually change human activities. Giddens calls this
two-tiered, interpretive and dialectical relationship between social scientific knowledge and human practices the
"double hermeneutic".Giddens also stressed the importance of power, which is means to ends, and hence is directly
involved in the actions of every person. Power, the transformative capacity of people to change the social and material
world, is closely shaped by knowledge and space-time.[17] In New Rules... Giddens specifically wrote[18] that: Sociology
is not about a 'pre-given' universe of objects, the universe is being constituted — or produced by — the active doings of
subjects. The production and reproduction of society thus has to be treated as a skilled performance on the part of its
members. The realm of human agency is bounded. Individuals produce society, but they do so as historically located
actors, and not under conditions of their own choosing. Structures must be conceptualised not only as constraints upon
human agency, but also as enablers. Processes of structuration involve an interplay of meanings, norms and power.

The sociological observer cannot make social life available as 'phenomenon' for observation independently of drawing
upon his knowledge of it as a resource whereby he constitutes it as a 'topic for investigation'.
Immersion in a form of life is the necessary and only means whereby an observer is able to generate such
characterisations.

Sociological concepts thus obey a double hermeneutic.

In sum, the primary tasks of sociological analysis are the following: (1) The hermeneutic explication and mediation of
divergent forms of life within descriptive metalanguages of social science; (2) Explication of the production and
reproduction of society as the accomplished outcome of human agency.

Structuration

Further information: Theory of structuration

Giddens' theory of structuration explores the question of whether it is individuals or social forces that shape our social
reality. He eschews extreme positions, arguing that although people are not entirely free to choose their own actions,
and their knowledge is limited, they nonetheless are the agency which reproduces the social structure and leads to
social change. His ideas find an echo in the philosophy of the modernist poet Wallace Stevens who suggests that we live
in the tension between the shapes we take as the world acts upon us, and the ideas of order that our imagination
imposes upon the world. Giddens writes that the connection between structure and action is a fundamental element of
social theory, structure and agency are a duality that cannot be conceived of apart from one another and his main
argument is contained in his expression "duality of structure". At a basic level, this means that people make society, but
are at the same time constrained by it. Action and structure cannot be analysed separately, as structures are created,
maintained and changed through actions, while actions are given meaningful form only through the background of the
structure: the line of causality runs in both directions making it impossible to determine what is changing what. In
Giddens own words (from New rules...) :

“ "social structures are both constituted by human agency, and yet at the same time are the very medium of this
constitution."[19] ”

In this regard he defines structures as consisting of rules and resources involving human action: the rules constrain the
actions, the resources make it possible. He also differentiates between systems and structures. Systems display
structural properties but are not structures themselves. He notes in his article Functionalism: après la lutte (1976) that:

“ "To examine the structuration of a social system is to examine the modes whereby that system, through the
application of generative rules and resources is produced and reproduced in social interaction."[19] ”

This process of structures (re)producing systems is called structuration. Systems here mean to Giddens "the situated
activities of human agents"[19] (The Constitution of Society.) and "the patterning of social relations across space-
time"[19] (ibid.). Structures are then "...sets of rules and resources that individual actors draw upon in the practices that
reproduce social systems’"[20] (Politics, Sociology and Social Theory) and "systems of generative rules and sets,
implicated in the articulation of social systems"[19] (The Constitution of Society.), existing virtually "out of time and out
of space"[19] (New rules....). Structuration therefore means that relations that took shape in the structure, can exist
"out of time and place": in other words, independent of the context in which they are created. An example is the
relationship between a teacher and a student: when they come across each other in another context, say on the street,
the hierarchy between them is still preserved.

Structure can act as a constraint on action, but it also enables action by providing common frames of meaning. Consider
the example of language: structure of language is represented by the rules of syntax that rule out certain combinations
of words.[15] But the structure also provides rules that allow new actions to occur, enabling us to create new,
meaningful sentences.[15] Structures should not be conceived as "simply placing constrains upon human agency, but as
enabling."[18] (New rules....) Giddens suggests that structures (traditions, institutions, moral codes, and other sets of
expectations — established ways of doing things) are generally quite stable, but can be changed, especially through the
unintended consequences of action, when people start to ignore them, replace them, or reproduce them differently.

Thus, actors (agents) employ the social rules appropriate to their culture, ones that they have learned through
socialisation and experience. These rules together with the resources at their disposal are used in social interactions.
Rules and resources employed in this manner are not deterministic, but are applied reflexively by knowledgeable actors,
albeit that actors’ awareness may be limited to the specifics of their activities at any given time. Thus, the outcome of
action is not totally predictable.

Connections between micro and macro

Structuration is very useful in synthesising micro and macro issues. On a micro scale, one of individuals' internal sense of
self and identity, consider the example of a family: we are increasingly free to choose our own mates and how to relate
with them, which creates new opportunities but also more work, as the relationship becomes a reflexive project that
has to be interpreted and maintained. Yet this micro-level change cannot be explained only by looking at the individual
level as people did not spontaneously change their minds about how to live; neither can we assume they were directed
to do so by social institutions and the state.

On a macro scale, one of the state and social organisations like multinational capitalist corporations, consider the
example of globalization, which offers vast new opportunities for investment and development, but crises — like the
Asian financial crisis — can affect the entire world, spreading far outside the local setting in which they first developed,
and last but not least directly influences individuals. A serious explanation of such issues must lie somewhere within the
network of macro and micro forces. These levels should not be treated as unconnected; in fact they have significant
relation to one another.[15]
To illustrate this relationship, Giddens discusses changing attitudes towards marriage in developed countries.[21] He
claims that any effort to explain this phenomenon solely in terms of micro or macro level causes will result in a circular
cause and consequence. Social relationships and visible sexuality (micro-level change) are related to the decline of
religion and the rise of rationality (macro-level change), but also with changes in the laws relating to marriage and
sexuality (macro), change caused by different practices and changing attitudes on the level of everyday lives (micro).
Practices and attitudes in turn can be affected by social movements (for example, women's liberation and
egalitarianism), a macro-scale phenomena; but the movements usually grow out of everyday life grievances — a micro-
scale phenomenon.[15]

All of this is increasingly tied in with mass media, one of our main providers of information. The media do not merely
reflect the social world but also actively shape it, being central to modern reflexivity.[15] David Gauntlett writes in
Media, Gender and Identity that:“ "The importance of the media in propagating many modern lifestyles should be
obvious. [...] The range of lifestyles — or lifestyle ideals — offered by the media may be limited, but at the same time it
is usually broader than those we would expect to just 'bump into' in everyday life. So the media in modernity offers
possibilities and celebrates diversity, but also offers narrow interpretations of certain roles or lifestyles — depending
where you look."[15] ”

Another example explored by Giddens is the emergence of romantic love, which Giddens (The Transformation of
Intimacy) links with the rise of the 'narrative of the self' type of self-identity: "Romantic love introduced the idea of a
narrative into an individual's life."[22] Although history of sex clearly demonstrates that passion and sex are not modern
phenomena, the discourse of romantic love is said to have developed from the late 18th century. Romanticism, the 18th
and 19th century European macro-level cultural movement is responsible for the emergence of the novel — a relatively
early form of mass media. The growing literacy and popularity of novels fed back into the mainstream lifestyle and the
romance novel proliferated the stories of ideal romantic life narratives on a micro-level, giving the romantic love an
important and recognized role in the marriage-type relationship.

Consider also the transformation of intimacy. Giddens asserts that intimate social relationships have become
'democratised', so that the bond between partners – even within a marriage – has little to do with external laws,
regulations or social expectations, but is based on the internal understanding between two people – a trusting bond
based on emotional communication. Where such a bond ceases to exist, modern society is generally happy for the
relationship to be dissolved. Thus we have 'a democracy of the emotions in everyday life' (Runaway World, 1999).[16]

A democracy of the emotions – the democratising of everyday life – is of course an ideal, more or less approximated to
in the diverse contexts of everyday life. There are many societies, cultures and contexts in which it remains far from
reality - where sexual oppression is an everyday phenomenon. In The Transformation of Intimacy Giddens introduces
the notion of ‘plastic sexuality’ – sexuality freed from an intrinsic connection with reproduction, and hence open to
innovation and experimentation.[23][24] What was once open only to elites becomes generalised with the advent of
mass contraception: sexuality and identity become far more fluid than in the past. These changes are part and parcel of
wider transformations affecting the self and self-identity.
Inevitably, Giddens concludes that all social change stems from a mixture of micro- and macro-level forces. Self-identity
Giddens says that in the post-traditional order, self-identity is reflexive. It is not a quality of a moment, but an account
of a person's life. Giddens writes that “ "A person's identity is not to be found in behaviour, nor — important though
this is — in the reactions of others, but in the capacity to keep a particular narrative going. The individual's biography, if
she is to maintain regular interaction with others in the day-to-day world, cannot be wholly fictive. It must continually
integrate events which occur in the external world, and sort them into the ongoing 'story' about the self."[25] ”

More than ever before we have access to information that allows us to reflect on the causes and consequences of our
actions. At the same time we are faced with dangers related to unintended consequences of our actions and by our
reliance on the knowledge of experts. We create, maintain and revise a set of biographical narratives, social roles and
lifestyles – the story of who we are, and how we came to be where we are now. We are increasingly free to choose
what we want to do and who we want to be (although Giddens contends that wealth gives access to more options). But
increased choice can be both liberating and troubling. Liberating in the sense of increasing the likelihood of one's self-
fulfilment, and troubling in form of increased emotional stress and time needed to analyse the available choices and
minimise risk of which we are increasingly aware (what Giddens sums up as "manufacturing uncertainty"). While in
earlier, traditional societies we would be provided with that narrative and social role, in the post-traditional society we
are usually forced to create one ourselves. As Giddens puts it:“ "What to do? How to act? Who to be? These are focal
questions for everyone living in circumstances of late modernity — and ones which, on some level or another, all of us
answer, either discursively or through day-to-day social behaviour."[26] ”

Modernity

Giddens' recent work has been concerned with the question of what is characteristic about social institutions in various
points of history. Giddens agrees that there are very specific changes that mark our current era, but argues that it is not
a "post-modern era", but just a "radicalised modernity era"[27] (similar to Zygmunt Bauman's concept of liquid
modernity), produced by the extension of the same social forces that shaped the previous age. Giddens nonetheless
differentiates between pre-modern, modern and late (high) modern societies and doesn't dispute that important
changes have occurred but takes a neutral stance towards those changes, saying that it offers both unprecedented
opportunities and unparalleled dangers. He also stresses that we haven't really gone beyond modernity. It's just a
developed, detraditionalised, radicalised, 'late' modernity. Thus the phenomena that some have called 'postmodern' are
to Giddens nothing more than the most extreme instances of a developed modernity.[15] Along with Ulrich Beck and
Scott Lash, he endorses the term reflexive modernisation as a more accurate description of the processes associated
with the second modernity, since it opposes itself (in its earlier version) instead of opposing traditionalism, endangering
the very institutions it created (such as the national state, the political parties or the nuclear family).

Giddens concentrates on a contrast between traditional (pre-modern) culture and post-traditional (modern) culture. In
traditional societies, individual actions need not be extensively thought about, because available choices are already
determined (by the customs, traditions, etc.).[15] In contrast, in post-traditional society people (actors, agents) are
much less concerned with the precedents set by earlier generations, and they have more choices, due to flexibility of
law and public opinion.[15] This however means that individual actions now require more analysis and thought before
they are taken. Society is more reflexive and aware, something Giddens is fascinated with, illustrating it with examples
ranging from state governance to intimate relationships.[15] Giddens examines three realms in particular: the
experience of identity, connections of intimacy and political institutions.[15]

The most defining property of modernity, according to Giddens, is that we are disembedded from time and space. In
pre-modern societies, space was the area in which one moved, time was the experience one had while moving. In
modern societies, however, the social space is no longer confined by the boundaries set by the space in which one
moves. One can now imagine what other spaces look like, even if he has never been there. In this regard, Giddens talks
about virtual space and virtual time. Another distinctive property of modernity lies in the field of knowledge.

In pre-modern societies, it was the elders who possessed the knowledge: they were definable in time and space. In
modern societies we must rely on expert systems. These are not present in time and space, but we must trust them.
Even if we trust them, we know that something could go wrong: there's always a risk we have to take. Also the
technologies which we use, and which transform constraints into means, hold risks. Consequently, there is always a
heightened sense of uncertainty in contemporary societies. It is also in this regard that Giddens uses the image of a
'juggernaut': modernity is said to be like an unsteerable juggernaut travelling through space. Humanity tries to steer it,
but as long as the modern institutions, with all their uncertainty, endure, we will never be able to influence its course.
The uncertainty can however be managed, by 'reembedding' the expert-systems into the structures which we are
ccustomed to. Another characteristic is enhanced reflexivity, both at the level of individuals and at the level of
institutions. The latter requires an explanation: in modern institutions there is always a component which studies the
institutions themselves for the purpose of enhancing its effectiveness. This enhanced reflexivity was enabled as
language became increasingly abstract with the transition from pre-modern to modern societies, becoming
institutionalised into universities. It is also in this regard that Giddens talks about "double hermeneutica": every action
has two interpretations. One is from the actor himself, the other of the investigator who tries to give meaning to the
action he is observing. The actor who performs the action, however, can get to know the interpretation of the
investigator, and therefore change his own interpretation, or his further line of action. This is the reason that positive
science, according to Giddens,[citation needed] is never possible in the social sciences: every time an investigator tries
to identify causal sequences of action, the actors can change their further line of action. The problem is, however, that
conflicting viewpoints in social science result in a disinterest of the people. For example, when scientists don't agree
about the greenhouse-effect, people will withdraw from that arena, and deny that there is a problem. Therefore, the
more the sciences expand, the more uncertainty there is in the modern society. In this regard, the juggernaut gets even
more steerless. While emancipatory politics is a politics of life chances, life politics is a politics of lifestyle. Life politics is
the politics of a reflexively mobilised order — the system of late modernity — which, on an individual and collective
level, has radically altered the existential parameters of social activity. It is a politics of self-actualisation in a reflexively
ordered environment, where that reflexivity links self and body to systems of global scope ... Life politics concerns
political issues which flow from processes of self-actualisation in post-traditional contexts, where globalising influences
intrude deeply into the reflexive project of the self, and conversely where processes of self-realisation influence global
strategies. — Anthony Giddens Modernity and self-identity. Self and society in the late modern age 1991, [28] In A
Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism, Giddens concludes[19] that: There exists no necessary overall
mechanism of social change, no universal motor of history such as class conflict; There are no universal stages, or
periodisation, of social development, these being ruled out by intersocietal systems and "time-space edges" (the ever-
presence of exogenous variables), as well as by human agency and the inherent "historicity" of societies; Societies do
not have needs other than those of individuals, so notions such as adaptation cannot properly be applied to them;

Pre-capitalist societies are class-divided, but only with capitalism are there class societies in which there is endemic class
conflict, the separation of the political and economic spheres, property freely alienable as capital, and "free" labour and
labour markets;

While class conflict is integral to capitalist society, there is no teleology that guarantees the emergence of the working
class as the universal class and no ontology that justifies denial of the multiple bases of modern society represented by
capitalism, industrialism, bureaucratisation, surveillance and industrialisation of warfare;

Sociology, as a subject pre-eminently with modernity, addresses a reflexive reality.

The Third Way

In the age of late and reflexive modernity and post scarcity economy, the political science is being transformed. Giddens
notes that there is a possibility that "life politics" (the politics of self-actualisation) may become more visible than
"emancipatory politics" (the politics of inequality); that new social movements may lead to more social change than
political parties; and that the reflexive project of the self and changes in gender and sexual relations may lead the way,
via the "democratisation of democracy", to a new era of Habermasian "dialogic democracy" in which differences are
settled, and practices ordered, through discourse rather than violence or the commands of authority.[19]

Giddens, relying on his past familiar themes of reflexivity and system integration, which places people into new relations
of trust and dependency with each other and their governments, argues that the political concepts of 'left' and 'right'
are now breaking down, as a result of many factors, most centrally the absence of a clear alternative to capitalism and
the eclipse of political opportunities based on the social class in favour of those based on lifestyle choices. Giddens
moves away from explaining how things are to the more demanding attempt of advocacy about how they ought to be.
In Beyond Left and Right (1994) Giddens criticises market socialism and constructs a six-point framework for a
reconstituted radical politics:[19] repair damaged solidarities -recognise the centrality of life politics accept that active
trust implies generative politics -embrace dialogic democracy rethink the welfare state confront violence

The Third Way (1998) provides the framework within which the 'third way' - which Giddens also terms the 'radical
centre'[29] - is justified. In addition, The Third Way supplies a broad range of policy proposals aimed at what Giddens
calls the 'progressive centre-left' in British politics. According to Giddens: “ "the overall aim of third way politics
should be to help citizens pilot their way through the major revolutions of our time: globalisation, transformations in
personal life and our relationship to nature".[19] ” Giddens remains fairly optimistic about the future of humanity:
“ "There is no single agent, group or movement that, as Marx's proletariat was supposed to do, can carry the
hopes of humanity, but there are many points of political engagement which offer good cause for optimism".[19]
(Beyond Left and Right) ” Giddens discards the possibility of a single, comprehensive, all-connecting ideology or political
programme. Instead he advocates going after the 'small pictures', ones people can directly affect at their home,
workplace or local community. This, to Giddens, is a difference between pointless utopianism and useful utopian
realism,[3] which he defines as envisaging "alternative futures whose very propagation might help them be
realised".[19] (The Consequences of Modernity). By 'utopian' he means that this is something new and extraordinary,
and by 'realistic' he stresses that this idea is rooted in the existing social processes and can be viewed as their simple
extrapolation. Such a future has at its centre a more socialised, demilitarised and planetary-caring global world order
variously articulated within green, women's and peace movements, and within the wider democratic movement.[19]

The Third Way was not just a work of abstract theory, but influenced a range of left of centre political parties across the
world – in Europe, the US, Latin America and Australasia.[30] Although close to New Labour in the UK, Giddens
dissociated himself from many of the interpretations of the third way made in the sphere of day-to-day politics. For him
it was not a succumbing to neoliberalism or the dominance of markets.[31] The point was to get beyond both free
market fundamentalism and traditional top down socialism – to make the values of the centre-left count in a globalising
world. He argued that ‘the regulation of financial markets is the single most pressing issue in the world economy’ and
that ‘global commitment to free trade depends upon effective regulation rather than dispenses with the need for it’.[32]

In 1999, Giddens delivered the BBC Reith Lectures on the subject of ‘Runaway World’, subsequently published as a book
of that title.[21] The aim was to introduce the concept and implications of globalisation to a lay audience. He was the
first Reith Lecturer to deliver the lectures in different places around the world;[33] and the first to respond directly to e-
mails that came in while he was speaking. The lectures were delivered in London, Washington, New Delhi and Hong
Kong and responded to by local audiences. Giddens received the Asturias Prize for the social sciences in 2002.[34] The
award has been labelled ‘the Spanish Nobel Prize’, but stretches well beyond the sphere of science. Other recipients of
the Prize that year included Woody Allen,[35] Tim Berners-Lee,[36] the inventor of the World Wide Web, and conductor
Daniel Barenboim.

Samuel Phillips Huntington (April 18, 1927 – December 24, 2008) was an American political scientist, adviser and
academic. He spent more than half a century at Harvard University, where he was director of Harvard's Center for
International Affairs and the Albert J.

Huntington was the White House Coordinator of Security Planning for the National Security Council. He is best
known for his 1993 theory, the "Clash of Civilizations", of a post-Cold War new world order. He argued that future
wars would be fought not between countries, but between cultures, and that Islamic extremism would become the
biggest threat to world peace. Huntington is credited with helping to shape U.S. views on civilian-military relations,

political development, and comparative government.[1] Notable arguments[edit]

Political Order in Changing Societies[edit]

Main article: Political Order in Changing Societies

During 1968, just as the United States' war in Vietnam was becoming most intense, Huntington published Political
Order in Changing Societies, which was a critique of the modernization theory which had affected much U.S. policy
regarding the developing world during the prior decade.

Huntington argues that, as societies modernize, they become more complex and disordered. If the process of social
modernization that produces this disorder is not matched by a process of political and institutional modernization—a
process which produces political institutions capable of managing the stress of modernization—the result may be
violence.

During the 1970s, Huntington was an advisor to governments, both democratic and dictatorial. During 1972, he met
with Medici government representatives in Brazil; a year later he published the report "Approaches to Political
Decompression", warning against the risks of a too-rapid political liberalization, proposing graduated liberalization,
and a strong party state modeled upon the image of the Mexican Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). After a
prolonged transition, Brazil became democratic during 1985.

During the 1980s, he became a valued adviser to the South African regime, which used his ideas on political order
to craft its "total strategy" to reform apartheid and suppress growing resistance. He assured South Africa's rulers
that increasing the repressive power of the state (which at that time included police violence, detention without trial,
and torture) can be necessary to effect reform. The reform process, he told his South African audience, often
requires "duplicity, deceit, faulty assumptions and purposeful blindness." He thus gave his imprimatur to his hosts'
project of "reforming" apartheid rather than eliminating it.[11]

Huntington frequently cited Brazil as a success, alluding to his role in his 1988 presidential address to the American
Political Science Association, commenting that political science played a modest role in this process. Critics, such
as British political scientist Alan Hooper, note that contemporary Brazil has an especially unstable party system,
wherein the best institutionalized party, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's Workers' Party emerged in opposition to
controlled-transition. Moreover, Hooper claims that the lack of civil participation in contemporary Brazil results from
that top-down process of political participation transitions.

The Third Wave[edit]

In his 1991 book, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century, Huntington made the argument
that beginning with Portugal's revolution during 1974, there has been a third wave of democratization which
describes a global trend which includes more than 60 countries throughout Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa
which have undergone some form of democratic transition. Huntington won the 1992 University of
Louisville Grawemeyer Award for this book.[12]

"The Clash of Civilizations"[edit]

Further information: Clash of Civilizations

Map of the nine "civilizations" from Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations."

During 1993, Huntington provoked great debate among international relations theorists with the interrogatively-titled
"The Clash of Civilizations?", an influential, oft-cited article published in Foreign Affairsmagazine. In the article, he
argued that, after the fall of the Soviet Union, Islam would become the biggest obstacle to Western domination of
the world. The West's next big war therefore, he said, would inevitably be with Islam.[13] Its description of post-Cold
War geopolitics and the "inevitability of instability" contrasted with the influential End of History thesis advocated
by Francis Fukuyama.

Huntington expanded "The Clash of Civilizations?" to book length and published it as The Clash of Civilizations and
the Remaking of World Order in 1996. The article and the book posit that post-Cold War conflict would most
frequently and violently occur because of cultural rather than ideological differences. That, whilst in the Cold War,
conflict occurred between the Capitalist West and the Communist Bloc East, it now was most likely to occur
between the world's major civilizations—identifying seven, and a possible eighth: (i) Western, (ii) Latin American,
(iii) Islamic, (iv) Sinic (Chinese), (v) Hindu, (vi) Orthodox, (vii) Japanese, and (viii) African. This cultural organization
contrasts the contemporary world with the classical notion of sovereign states. To understand current and future
conflict, cultural rifts must be understood, and culture—rather than the State—must be accepted as the reason for
war. Thus, Western nations will lose predominance if they fail to recognize the irreconcilable nature of cultural
tensions. Huntington argued that this post-Cold War shift in geopolitical organization and structure requires the
West to strengthen itself culturally, by abandoning the imposition of its ideal of democratic universalism and its
incessant military interventionism. Underscoring this point, Huntington wrote in the 1996 expansion, "In the
emerging world of ethnic conflict and civilizational clash, Western belief in the universality of Western culture suffers
three problems: it is false; it is immoral; and it is dangerous."[14]

The identification of Western Civilization with the Western Christianity (Catholic-Protestant) was not Huntington's
original idea, it was rather the traditional Western opinion and subdivision before the Cold War era.[15]

Critics (for example articles in Le Monde Diplomatique) call The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World
Order the theoretical legitimization of American-caused Western aggression against China and the world's Islamic
and Orthodox cultures. Other critics argue that Huntington's taxonomy is simplistic and arbitrary, and does not take
account of the internal dynamics and partisan tensions within civilizations. Furthermore, critics argue that
Huntington neglects ideological mobilization by elites and unfulfilled socioeconomic needs of the population as the
real causal factors driving conflict, that he ignores conflicts that do not fit well with the civilizational borders identified
by him, and they charge that his new paradigm is nothing but realist thinking in which "states" became replaced by
"civilizations".[16]Huntington's influence upon U.S. policy has been likened to that of British historian Arnold
Toynbee's controversial religious theories about Asian leaders during the early twentieth century.

The New York Times obituary on Samuel Huntington notes, however, that his "emphasis on ancient religious
empires, as opposed to states or ethnicities, [as sources of global conflict] gained...more cachet after the Sept. 11
attacks."[17]

Huntington wrote that Ukraine might divide along the cultural line between the more Catholic western Ukraine and
Orthodox eastern Ukraine:

While a statist approach highlights the possibility of a Russian-Ukrainian war, a civilizational approach minimizes
that and instead highlights the possibility of Ukraine splitting in half, a separation which cultural factors would lead
one to predict might be more violent than that of Czechoslovakia but far less bloody than that of Yugoslavia.[18]

Who Are We and immigration[edit]

Huntington's last book, Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity, was published during May
2004. Its subject is the meaning of American national identity and the possible cultural threat posed to it by large-
scale Latino immigration, which Huntington warns could "divide the United States into two peoples, two cultures,
and two languages".
Other[edit]
Huntington is credited with inventing the phrase Davos Man, referring to global elites who "have little need for
national loyalty, view national boundaries as obstacles that thankfully are vanishing, and see national governments
as residues from the past whose only useful function is to facilitate the elite's global operations". The phrase refers
to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where leaders of the global economy meet.[19]

During the 1980s, the South African apartheid government of P.W. Botha became increasingly preoccupied with
security. On Huntington's advice, Botha's government established a powerful state security apparatus to "protect"
the state against an anticipated upsurge in political violence that the reforms were expected to cause. The 1980s
became a period of considerable political unrest, with the government becoming increasingly dominated by Botha's
circle of generals and police chiefs (known as securocrats), who managed the various States of Emergencies.[20]

Yoshihiro Francis Fukuyama (/ˌfuːkuːˈjɑːmə/; born October 27, 1952) is an American political scientist, political
economist, and author. Fukuyama is known for his book The End of History and the Last Man (1992), which argued
that the worldwide spread of liberal democracies and free market capitalism of the West and its lifestyle may signal
the end point of humanity's sociocultural evolution and become the final form of human government. However, his
subsequent book Trust: Social Virtues and Creation of Prosperity (1995) modified his earlier position to
acknowledge that culture cannot be cleanly separated from economics. Fukuyama is also associated with the rise
of the neoconservative movement,[2]from which he has since distanced himself.

Writings[edit]

Fukuyama is best known as the author of The End of History and the Last Man, in which he argued that the
progression of human history as a struggle between ideologies is largely at an end, with the world settling on liberal
democracy after the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Fukuyama predicted the eventual
global triumph of political and economic liberalism:

What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of postwar
history, but the end of history as such.... That is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the
universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.

Authors like Ralf Dahrendorf argued in 1990 that the essay gave Fukuyama his 15 minutes of fame, which will be
followed by a slide into obscurity.[12][13] He continued to remain a relevant and cited public intellectual leading
American communitarian Amitai Etzioni to declare him "one of the few enduring public intellectuals. They are often
media stars who are eaten up and spat out after their 15 minutes. But he has lasted."[14]

According to Fukuyama, one of the main reasons for the massive criticism against The End of History was the
aggressive stance that it took towards postmodernism. Postmodern philosophy had, in Fukuyama's opinion,
undermined the ideology behind liberal democracy, leaving the western world in a potentially weaker position.[15] The
fact that Marxism and fascism had been proven untenable for practical use while liberal democracy still thrived was
reason enough to embrace the hopeful attitude of the Progressive era, as this hope for the future was what made a
society worth struggling to maintain. Postmodernism, which, by this time, had become embedded in the cultural
consciousness, offered no hope and nothing to sustain a necessary sense of community, instead relying only on
lofty intellectual premises.[16] Being a work that both praised the ideals of a group that had fallen out of favor and
challenged the premises of the group that had replaced them, it was bound to create some controversy.
Fukuyama has written a number of other books, among them Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of
Prosperity and Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution. In the latter, he qualified his
original "end of history" thesis, arguing that since biotechnology increasingly allows humans to control their
own evolution, it may allow humans to alter human nature, thereby putting liberal democracy at risk.[17] One possible
outcome could be that an altered human nature could end in radical inequality. He is a fierce enemy
of transhumanism, an intellectual movement asserting that posthumanity is a desirable goal.

In another work, The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstruction of Social Order, Fukuyama explores
the origins of social norms, and analyses the current disruptions in the fabric of our moral traditions, which he
considers as arising from a shift from the manufacturing to the information age. This shift is, he thinks, normal and
will prove self-correcting, given the intrinsic human need for social norms and rules.

In 2006, in America at the Crossroads, Fukuyama discusses the history of neoconservatism, with particular focus
on its major tenets and political implications. He outlines his rationale for supporting the Bush administration, as well
as where he believes it has gone wrong.

In 2008, Fukuyama published the book Falling Behind: Explaining the Development Gap Between Latin America
and the United States, which resulted from research and a conference funded by Grupo Mayan to gain
understanding on why Latin America, once far wealthier than North America, fell behind in terms of development in
only a matter of centuries. Discussing this book at a 2009 conference, Fukuyama outlined his belief that inequality
within Latin American nations is a key impediment to growth. An unequal distribution of wealth, he stated, leads to
social upheaval, which then results in stunted growth.[18]

Neoconservatism[edit]
As a key Reagan Administration contributor to the formulation of the Reagan Doctrine, Fukuyama is an important
figure in the rise of neoconservatism, although his works came out years after Irving Kristol's 1972 book crystallized
neoconservatism.[19] Fukuyama was active in the Project for the New American Century think tank starting in 1997,
and as a member co-signed the organization's 1998 letter recommending that President Bill Clinton support Iraqi
insurgencies in the overthrow of then-President of Iraq Saddam Hussein.[20] He was also among forty co-signers
of William Kristol's September 20, 2001 letter to President George W. Bush after the September 11, 2001
attacks that suggested the U.S. not only "capture or kill Osama bin Laden", but also embark upon "a determined
effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq".[21]

In a New York Times article from February 2006, Fukuyama, in considering the ongoing Iraq War, stated: "What
American foreign policy needs is not a return to a narrow and cynical realism, but rather the formulation of a
'realistic Wilsonianism' that better matches means to ends."[22] In regard to neoconservatism he went on to say:
"What is needed now are new ideas, neither neoconservative nor realist, for how America is to relate to the rest of
the world – ideas that retain the neoconservative belief in the universality of human rights, but without its illusions
about the efficacy of American power and hegemony to bring these ends about."[22]

Current views[edit]
Fukuyama began to distance himself from the neoconservative agenda of the Bush administration, citing its
excessive militarism and embrace of unilateral armed intervention, particularly in the Middle East. By late 2003,
Fukuyama had voiced his growing opposition to the Iraq War[23] and called for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation
as Secretary of Defense.[24]
At an annual dinner of the American Enterprise Institute in February 2004, Dick Cheney and Charles
Krauthammer declared the beginning of a unipolar era under American hegemony. "All of these people around me
were cheering wildly,"[25] Fukuyama remembers. He believes that the Iraq War was being blundered. "All of my
friends had taken leave of reality."[25] He has not spoken to Paul Wolfowitz (previously a good friend) since.[25]

Fukuyama declared he would not be voting for Bush,[26] and that the Bush administration had made three
mistakes:[27]

 Overstating the threat of Islamic extremism to the US

 Failing to foresee the fierce negative reaction to its "benevolent hegemony". From the very beginning showing a
negative attitude toward the United Nations and other intergovernmental organizations and not seeing that it
would increase anti-Americanismin other countries
 Misjudging what was needed to bring peace in Iraq and being overly optimistic about the success with
which social engineering of western values could be applied to Iraq and the Middle East in general.

Fukuyama believes the US has a right to promote its own values in the world, but more along the lines of what he
calls "realistic Wilsonianism", with military intervention only as a last resort and only in addition to other measures. A
latent military force is more likely to have an effect than actual deployment. The US spends 43% of global military
spending,[28] but Iraq shows there are limits to its effectiveness.

The US should instead stimulate political and economic development and gain a better understanding of what
happens in other countries. The best instruments are setting a good example and providing education and, in many
cases, money. The secret of development, be it political or economic, is that it never comes from outsiders, but
always from people in the country itself. One thing the US proved to have excelled in during the aftermath of World
War II was the formation of international institutions. A return to support for these structures would combine
American power with international legitimacy. But such measures require a lot of patience. This is the central thesis
of his 2006 work America at the Crossroads.

In a 2006 essay in The New York Times Magazine strongly critical of the invasion, he identified neoconservatism
with Leninism. He wrote that neoconservatives:[29]

believed that history can be pushed along with the right application of power and will. Leninism was a tragedy in its
Bolshevik version, and it has returned as farce when practiced by the United States. Neoconservatism, as both a
political symbol and a body of thought, has evolved into something I can no longer support.

Fukuyama announced the end of the neoconservative moment and argued for the demilitarization of the War on
Terrorism:[29]

[W]ar is the wrong metaphor for the broader struggle, since wars are fought at full intensity and have clear
beginnings and endings. Meeting the jihadist challenge is more of a "long, twilight struggle" [quoting John F.
Kennedy's inaugural address] whose core is not a military campaign but a political contest for the hearts and minds
of ordinary Muslims around the world.

Fukuyama endorsed Barack Obama in the 2008 US presidential election. He states:[30]

I'm voting for Barack Obama this November for a very simple reason. It is hard to imagine a more disastrous
presidency than that of George W. Bush. It was bad enough that he launched an unnecessary war and undermined
the standing of the United States throughout the world in his first term. But in the waning days of his administration,
he is presiding over a collapse of the American financial system and broader economy that will have consequences
for years to come. As a general rule, democracies don't work well if voters do not hold political parties accountable
for failure. While John McCain is trying desperately to pretend that he never had anything to do with the Republican
Party, I think it would be a travesty to reward the Republicans for failure on such a grand scale.

In a 2018 interview with New Statesman, when asked about his views on the resurgence of socialist politics in the
United States and Great Britain, he responded:[31]

It all depends on what you mean by socialism. Ownership of the means of production – except in areas where it’s
clearly called for, like public utilities – I don’t think that’s going to work. If you mean redistributive programmes that
try to redress this big imbalance in both incomes and wealth that has emerged then, yes, I think not only can it
come back, it ought to come back. This extended period, which started with Reagan and Thatcher, in which a
certain set of ideas about the benefits of unregulated markets took hold, in many ways it’s had a disastrous effect.
At this juncture, it seems to me that certain things Karl Marx said are turning out to be true. He talked about the
crisis of overproduction… that workers would be impoverished and there would be insufficient demand.