Francis Fukuyama - State-Building Governance and World Order in the 21st Century (2004)

Segment

The state is an ancient human institution dating back some 10,000 years to the first agricultural societies that sprang up in Mesopotamia. In China a state with a highly trained bureaucracy has existed for thousands of years. In Europe the modern state, deploying large armies, taxation powers, and a centralized bureaucracy that could exercise sovereign authority over a large territory, is much more recent, dating back four or five hundred years to the consolidation of the French, Spanish, and Swedish monarchies. The rise of these states, with their ability to provide order, security, law, and property rights, was what made...