Political Order and Political Decay by Francis Fukuyama Page B

by different social groups on the other that prevent any sort of collective action. Few countries can decide to turn themselves into Singapore, moreover; replacing a poorly administered democracy with an equally incompetent autocracy buys you nothing.
    Nor should this book’s emphasis on the need for effective states be construed as a preference for a larger welfare state, or “big government” as it is understood in American political discourse. I believe that virtually all developed democracies face huge long-term challenges from unsustainable spending commitments made in years past that will only increase as populations age and birth rates decline. Much more important than the size of government is its quality. There is no necessary relationship between big government and poor economic outcomes, as one can see prima facie by comparing the large welfare states of Scandinavia to the minimalist governments of sub-Saharan Africa. There is, however, a very powerful correlation between the quality of government and good economic and social outcomes. Moreover, an expansive state that is nonetheless perceived as effective and legitimate will have a much easier time downsizing and reducing its own scope than one that is excessively constrained, feckless, or unable to exercise real authority.
    This volume will not provide any straightforward answers, and certainly not any easy ones, to the question of how to improve the quality of government. That is something I have written about in other contexts. But one cannot begin to understand how bad governments might become good ones unless one understands the historical origins of both.

 
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    BUREAUCRACY
    How study of the state is the study of bureaucracy; recent efforts to measure the quality of government; variance in the quality of government across countries and the need for a historical understanding of these outcomes
    For many people around the world, the central problem of contemporary politics is how to constrain powerful, overweening or, indeed, tyrannical governments. The human rights community seeks to use law as a mechanism for protecting vulnerable individuals from abuse by states—not just authoritarian regimes but also liberal democracies that are sometimes motivated to bend the rules in pursuit of terrorists or other threats. Prodemocracy activists, such as those that led the Rose and Orange Revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine, and the Tunisian and Egyptian protesters at the start of the Arab Spring, hoped to use democratic elections to hold rulers accountable to their people. In the United States, citizens are constantly vigilant against real and perceived abuses of government power, from excessively onerous environmental requirements to restrictions on guns to domestic surveillance by the National Security Agency.
    As a consequence, much of the discussion of political development has centered in recent years on the institutions of constraint—the rule of law and democratic accountability. But before governments can be constrained, they have to generate the power to actually do things. States, in other words, have to be able to govern.
    The existence of states able to provide basic public services cannot be taken for granted. Indeed, part of the reason many countries are poor is precisely that they don’t have effective states. This is obvious in failed or failing states including Afghanistan, Haiti, and Somalia, where life is chaotic and insecure. But it is also true in many better-off societies with reasonably good democratic institutions.
    Take the case of India, which has been a remarkably successful democracy since its creation in 1947. In 1996, the activist and economist Jean Drèze produced a Public Report on Basic Education that surveyed the state of primary education in a number of Indian states. One of the most shocking findings was that in rural areas, fully 48 percent of teachers failed to show up for their jobs. This understandably