The New ‘End of History’ If there is a political system that has emerged victorious from the coronavirus pandemic, it is Asian democratic technocracy. When Francis Fukuyama’s seminal essay The End of History? was published in 1989, there was a question mark at the end of the title—and rightly so. He was making a tentative hypothesis, not the strident assertion attributed to him in subsequent years. But the apparent stability of the conditions that prompted his inquiry justifiably lulled many in the West into a false sense of superiority. With the Cold War about to suddenly and spectacularly end, Fukuyama was undeniably prescient, but he was also pushing on an open door.