A trent'anni dalla fine della storia : Francis Fukyama e l'eterno ritorno delle lotta per il riconoscimento

In his new book Identity, Francis Fukuyama returns to the themes explored in his controversial first work, 1992’s The End of History and the Last Man, which brought him worldwide fame. At the time, Fukuyama argued that, with the end of the Cold War, the likely extension of the liberal democratic order across the entire world would put an end to the struggle for recognition, which he saw as being the great engine of human history. Today, quite differently, it is the persistence of disregarded requests for recognition that seems to Fukuyama as the main source of the political phenomena currently shaking up the world, such as populist nationalism, Islamic fundamentalism, or the great power nationalism of Russia and China. The article argues that, in Identity, Fukuyama makes a persuasive case that contemporary political science is too inclined to accept explanations of political action borrowed from economics, and therefore is losing the sight of the thymotic dimension of politics. The article also contends that Fukuyama’s new book offers an interesting framework for interpreting the current crisis of the liberal order in the United States and Europe, which nonetheless does not seem to be automatically applicable to the phenomenon of illiberal nationalism that can be observed in other parts of the world, nor to the rejection of the liberal-democratic model by states (also with thymotic motivations) such as Russia and China.