I never studied with Jim Wilson while getting my degree in the Harvard Government Department, though he was there at the time. My contacts with him came later, when we served together on the President’s Council on Bioethics in the early 2000s, and as fellow members of the Board of Governors of the Rand Graduate […]

It is the best of times and the worst of times for Russia’s once and future President Vladimir Putin. Victory in this week’s Presidential election is almost certain, but the Prime Minister is no longer the absolute master of Russian politics. Not only does he face a protest movement that includes some of the most […]

Since I took a look at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for The American Interest late last year, the future of both agencies has remained uncharted by Congress. My piece offered a brief history of the Depression-era birth of Fannie Mae and its younger thrift-inspired sibling, Freddie Mac. For much of that history, these government-sponsored […]

The American Interest notes with deep sorrow and regret the passing of James Q. Wilson (May 27, 1931–March 2, 2012), eminent American public policy scholar and a member of the AI’s editorial board. He was 80.Update:Francis Fukuyama on James Q. Wilson.Wilson in the AI:The Sources of American Conduct, Autumn 2005A Quarter Century of Broken Windows […]

Belatedly I have just read a report issued in June 2011 by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, an organization that has been producing interesting survey data about worldwide religion with astounding frequency. This one is titled “Evangelical Protestant Leaders”. It contains the results of a survey of Evangelical leaders from all over […]

The decline of the blue social model is a subject I’ve been thinking about for the last thirty years. My first book, Mortal Splendor: The American Empire in Transition was written in the mid 1980s from the standpoint of someone who still believed that the blue model was synonymous with progress and civilization. In that […]

Two weeks after the ruling of the Spanish Supreme Court that convicted Baltasar Garzón and led to his disbarment as a magistrate, the media is close to unanimous in portraying the case as a Francoist assault on the democratic institutions in Spain and the revenge of malicious peers, envious of Garzón’s international standing.   In […]

This week’s horrible news out of Afghanistan—NATO personnel shot inside the Interior Ministry, bombs going off and riots all over the country following reports of Korans being burned by US soldiers—brings doubts about President Obama’s carefully chosen Afghan strategy to a head. The murders in the Interior Ministry were a shocking display of incapacity and […]

We received the following letter from the State Secretary for Government Communication, Dr. Zoltán Kovács, on February 10, responding to Francis Fukuyama’s February 6 post, “What’s Wrong with Hungary?“The text of the letter follows: Budapest, 10 February, 2012 Dear Professor Fukuyama, Thank you for your response; your admission of the factual mistakes in your original post […]

During my five years as Hungarian Ambassador in Washington, DC, we used public communications extensively—both traditional tools and “outside the box” ones. Every day my staff and I were on the lookout for new outlets to portray our country in a positive light.In that vein, my two appearances on the Colbert Report were, without doubt, […]