Kevin: We all love to complain about the government. It's slow, it's bureaucratic, it's always in our business. But what if the real problem isn't that the state is too strong, but that for most of human history, it's been too weak? What if the alternative to a state isn't freedom, but a world run by the 'tyranny of cousins,' where your life is dictated by an endless web of family obligations? Michael: And what if building a modern, prosperous, and free society—what Francis Fukuyama calls 'getting to Denmark'—is a historical accident, a political miracle that most civilizations, including ancient and powerful ones like China, never achieved? Kevin: Exactly. In his book, The Origins of Political Order, Fukuyama argues that we take our political institutions for granted because we've forgotten how bloody, difficult, and improbable their creation was. Today we'll dive deep into this from three perspectives. First, we'll explore the Leviathan's Dilemma—why we need a powerful state but struggle to build one. Michael: Then, we'll unpack the 'three pillars of liberty'—the state, rule of law, and accountability—and why getting them to balance is so rare. And finally, we'll ask how anyone actually manages to 'get to Denmark,' exploring the messy, accidental paths that led to modern accountable government.

Kevin: To understand why we even need a state, Fukuyama takes us to a fascinating modern-day failure: Melanesia. In the 1970s, countries like Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands were granted independence and handed a beautiful, modern, Westminster-style government, just like Britain's. It should have worked perfectly. Michael: It's like being given the keys to a brand-new Ferrari. What could go wrong? Kevin: Everything, it turns out. Because underneath this shiny new political system was a society that had operated for thousands of years on a completely different principle: tribalism. In Melanesia, the fundamental social unit isn't the individual citizen; it's the wantok. This is a group of people, a segmentary lineage, who all trace their descent back to a common ancestor. Michael: So your loyalty isn't to a political party or an ideology, it's to your cousins. And your cousins' cousins. It's the 'tyranny of cousins' you mentioned. Kevin: Precisely. And in this system, leadership isn't based on policy platforms; it's based on being a "Big Man." A Big Man earns his status by being able to distribute resources—pigs, money, favors—to his wantok. So when these new democracies were set up, who did people vote for? Not the person with the best 10-point plan for the economy. They voted for their Big Man. Michael: And what does that Big Man do once he's elected to parliament? Kevin: He does what a Big Man is supposed to do: he uses his new government position to funnel as many resources as possible back to his wantok. What we in the West would call 'corruption' is, in his social context, his primary duty. The result is a parliament with no coherent parties, no national identity, just a collection of Big Men competing to bring home the bacon for their specific kin group. Michael: It's a system designed for individuals, dropped onto a system designed for groups. And the group logic always wins. It also explains why economic development stalls. Fukuyama points out that over 95% of the land in these countries is held under customary tenure. You can't sell it, because it doesn't belong to you as an individual; it belongs to the wantok, including your dead ancestors and your unborn descendants. Kevin: Imagine trying to get a mortgage on that. Or a mining company trying to negotiate a land deal. You have to get every single cousin, living and dead, to agree. It’s impossible. This is the default state of human society. Fukuyama argues that our most basic, biological forms of cooperation are kin selection—favoring our relatives—and reciprocal altruism—scratching the backs of our friends. Creating a modern, impersonal state requires us to overcome our own nature. Michael: So, if that's the default, how does any society break out of it? Fukuyama's answer is pretty grim. It's not economics. It's war. Kevin: Yes, and his prime example is ancient China. Around 1100 BC, the Yellow River basin was a patchwork of thousands of tribal entities, just like Melanesia. But then, for about 500 years, they fought an unbelievable series of wars. In the so-called Spring and Autumn period, there were over 1,200 wars. It was a brutal, centuries-long tournament. Michael: A survival-of-the-fittest for political systems. Kevin: Exactly. And what the Chinese discovered was that armies of aristocrats on chariots, led by the king's cousins, kept losing to states that could field massive, disciplined infantry armies of peasants. But to do that, you need a massive, impersonal bureaucracy. You need to conduct a census to know who to conscript. You need tax collectors to pay for their weapons. You need logistics to feed them. You need to promote generals based on talent, not whether they're your brother-in-law. Michael: Because your idiot brother-in-law general will get your whole army, and your kingdom, wiped out. Military necessity forces you to abandon the 'tyranny of cousins.' Kevin: And by 221 BC, this process is complete. The state of Qin has conquered all its rivals and created the world's first truly modern state: a centralized, bureaucratic empire. They solved the first great problem of political order. They built the Leviathan. But as we'll see, that's only one-third of the story.

Michael: Okay, so China builds this incredibly powerful, modern state by 221 BC. They've solved the problem of getting beyond the family. They have an engine of power. But Fukuyama argues this is only one-third of the puzzle. This is where we get to what he calls the 'miracle of modern politics.' Kevin: Right. He lays out three essential pillars for a successful, stable, liberal democracy. The first is what we just discussed: a strong State. That's the ability to concentrate and use power effectively and impersonally. China had this in spades. Michael: That's the engine. Kevin: The second pillar is the Rule of Law. And this is a very specific definition. It's not just having laws. It's the belief that there is a body of law—coming from God, or nature, or ancient custom—that is superior to the ruler. The king himself is bound by it. If the law is just whatever the emperor says it is today, that's not the rule of law. Michael: So the rule of law is the brakes. It’s a check on the engine of state power. Kevin: A perfect analogy. And the third pillar is Accountable Government. This is the idea that the ruler is ultimately responsible not just to God or the law, but to the people he governs. In the modern world, we think of this as democracy and elections. Michael: And that's the steering wheel. It directs the state's power toward the interests of the people. So you have an engine, brakes, and a steering wheel. But here's the paradox: the engine is designed to go, while the brakes and steering are designed to constrain it. It's a miracle they don't just tear the whole car apart. Kevin: That is the miracle. And it's why it's so rare. Let's go back to our examples. China got the engine, a V12, by the 3rd century BC. But it never, ever developed the brakes. It's the only major world civilization that never had a transcendental religion that could serve as a source of law independent of the state. The Emperor was the son of Heaven, sure, but he was also the head of the earthly religion. There was no separate priestly class to stand up to him and say, "Your Majesty, you cannot do that, it is against God's law." The law was simply the Emperor's command. Michael: So, no brakes. What about India? Kevin: India is the opposite story. It developed the most powerful brakes imaginable, but never built a very good engine. From very early on, Indian society was structured by Brahmanic religion. The highest caste, the Brahmins, were the priests and interpreters of sacred law. The second-highest, the Kshatriyas, were the warriors and kings. The king, the political ruler, was spiritually subordinate to the priest. Michael: So the king had to go to the Brahmin for legitimacy. The law was already there, in the hands of the priests, before the king even showed up. Kevin: Exactly. India had a powerful rule of law that deeply constrained political power. But this same social system, with its rigid jatis or castes, made it almost impossible to build a strong, centralized state. The society was so strong and self-organizing that the state was always weak. It could never penetrate and reorder society the way the Chinese state could. Michael: So China has a state but no rule of law. India has a rule of law but no strong state. Neither of them gets to Denmark. This sets up the question of how anyone, anywhere, ever managed to get all three.

Kevin: This brings us to the final, and perhaps most surprising, part of the story: how did the West get accountability? If China had the state and India had the rule of law, who got the steering wheel? Fukuyama argues it was a complete and utter accident. Michael: It wasn't planned. Nobody sat down in the year 1000 and said, "Let's design a liberal democracy." It was a messy, contingent, and peculiar path. And it starts with a very unlikely hero: the Catholic Church. Kevin: It's a fascinating argument. Fukuyama points out that while China and India remained deeply kinship-based societies, something strange happened in Europe. The family structures started to break down much earlier. And the culprit was the Church. Michael: For its own reasons, the Church wanted to accumulate land and wealth. And the biggest obstacle to that was strong kinship groups that kept property within the family for generations. So, the Church systematically dismantled them. It banned marriage to close kin, which was common. It banned the levirate, where a widow marries her husband's brother, keeping her and the property in the family. It banned adoption, which clans used to create heirs. Kevin: And most cleverly, it made it very easy for a childless widow to inherit her husband's property and then, in her old age, donate it to the Church for the salvation of her soul. This was a direct attack on the agnatic, or male, line of descent. Over centuries, these policies atomized European society. The individual, not the kin group, became the primary social unit. Michael: This is a profound point. The transition out of the 'tyranny of cousins' happened on a social level in Europe, driven by the Church, long before any powerful king came along to force it from the top down, like in China. Kevin: And this created the fertile ground for a new form of social organization to emerge: feudalism. Feudalism gets a bad rap, but Fukuyama argues it was a step forward. Unlike kinship, which is based on blood, feudalism was based on a contract. A vassal swore an oath of service to a lord in exchange for protection and land. This was a voluntary, legal agreement between two unrelated individuals. Michael: It introduces the idea of reciprocal obligation and rights, which is a seed of accountability. And that seed gets planted in institutions like the English Parliament. This wasn't a democratic body; it was an assembly of powerful, land-owning nobles, bishops, and knights. Kevin: And here's the crucial accident. In the 16th and 17th centuries, monarchs all over Europe tried to become absolutists, like the Emperor of China. They wanted to crush these feudal assemblies and rule without constraint. In France, Spain, and Russia, the king won. But in England, the Parliament was just strong enough, just cohesive enough, to fight back. Michael: They fought a civil war. They cut off the king's head. Later, in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, they fired another king and hired a new one from Holland, William of Orange. But they made him sign a contract first. Kevin: And that contract, the Bill of Rights, established the core principle of accountability: the king is subject to the law, and he cannot raise taxes without Parliament's consent. "No taxation without representation." It was a deal struck between elites, but the principle was revolutionary. Michael: And less than a hundred years later, that very principle is copied and pasted into the American Declaration of Independence. The idea that government derives its power from the consent of the governed wasn't a philosopher's dream; it was the outcome of a messy political bargain won by stubborn English nobles. That's the accidental path to Denmark.

Kevin: So, when you pull it all together, Fukuyama's story shows that political order isn't a linear path that everyone follows. It's a fragile, improbable balance of competing forces. China got a powerful state early but never developed the constraints of law or accountability. Michael: India got powerful religious and social constraints—a form of rule of law—but this very strength prevented the rise of an effective state. Society was strong, but the state was weak. Kevin: And the West, particularly England, stumbled into a unique sequence. The Church weakened kinship, feudalism created contractual relationships, and a fight between a king and his nobles accidentally produced the first institutions of accountability. It got the state, the rule of law, and accountability, but in a sequence and for reasons that are almost impossible to replicate. Michael: Fukuyama's work leaves us with a sobering thought. We who are lucky enough to live in these 'Denmarks' tend to take them for granted. We complain about gridlock and inefficiency. But we forget that these institutions are historical miracles. The real question he poses for our time is this: In a world where an efficient authoritarian system like China's can build a high-speed rail network in the time it takes us to approve the environmental impact study, can our checked-and-balanced, often frustratingly slow, democracies prove they are still the more sustainable model in the long run? Kevin: He still bets on our system. An authoritarian state is great when you have a good emperor, but it's a disaster when you have a bad one, because there are no checks, no way to stop the damage. Our system is designed to prevent the worst, even if it sometimes slows down achieving the best. Michael: It's a bet on our system, but one that requires us to understand just how precious, and precarious, it truly is. It's not the default state of humanity. It's the exception. And it's an exception worth understanding and defending.