Yoshihiro Francis Fukuyama (born October 27, 1952) is an American
political scientist,
political economist, and author. Fukuyama is known for his book
The End of History and the Last Man (1992), which argued that the worldwide spread of
liberal democracies and free market
capitalism of the West and its lifestyle may signal the end point of humanity's sociocultural evolution and become the final form of human government. However, his subsequent book
Trust: Social Virtues and Creation of Prosperity (1995) modified his earlier position to acknowledge that culture cannot be cleanly separated from economics. Fukuyama is also associated with the rise of the
neoconservative movement, from which he has since distanced himself.