The impact one can have on building institutions like the modern state, the rule of law, and democracy is limited. The area where it’s easiest is the third category, building democracy. The first two, building the modern state and building a real rule of law, are much harder, and those are the areas that have been the real obstacles to the modernization of the political systems of many countries, including Ukraine. The reason that those are particularly difficult is that they’re essentially about power. If you hold an election, the old guard can think we will win the election. We know how to run candidates, we can contest things, we can protect our interests. If you want to build a modern state, it’s a different task. If you want to have a rule of law that applies to powerful people in a society, that is much harder because one is basically forcing them to give up power.
OP-ED
Francis Fukuyama: Why we can’t get enough of Ukraine
American political economist, chairman of the editorial board of The American Interest and author Francis Fukuyama, attends a conference during the first day of the 2013 Economic Forum in Aix-en-Provence (Rencontres Economiques d'Aix-en-Provence) on July 5, 2013.
