The End of History

Francis Fukuyama's Hegelian argument that liberal democracy represents the final form of human government — not that events would cease, but that ideological evolution had reached its endpoint.

History as ideological struggle: following Hegel (via Kojève), Fukuyama argues that history is the development of human consciousness toward the recognition of freedom. Liberal democracy — the political form that gives equal recognition to all citizens — is the endpoint of this process, because no coherent alternative has emerged. The book was systematically misread as claiming no bad things would happen; Fukuyama argued that ideological evolution, not geopolitical conflict, had ended. His later work revised this optimism after 9/11 and the 2008 financial crisis.