Far be it from me to dispute someone with Francis Fukuyama’s record of being neoliberally correct about how history works, but that essay seems to rest on a kind of circular reasoning. Britain didn’t experience “civil wars” after 1689, because subsequent internal conflicts weren’t “civil wars”, because they… happened after 1689?
You might wave away the American colonies, Ireland, India etc., but even on mainland Britain, the Chartists (for example) changed the political settlement through conflict with the state. (Despite what liberals may believe, people didn’t vote to give themselves the vote). And you could frame the first world war as a kind of imperial genocide committed by the UK against its own population – at least as deadly and pointless as the civil war, only we don’t call it “brother against brother” because all the brothers with power were on the same side.
I mean, liberal democracy and the rule of law have been helpful, but let’s not confuse ourselves into thinking they’re more important than the material outcomes they’re supposed to serve, or that they can serve those outcomes if the powerless forget who the enemy is.
